Ahh, registration time, the heady swirl of anticipation, the sweet crackling of the newly printed class schedule, the eager glee with which I look forward to collecting those nice final senior electives. The end of the tunnel is in sight!
Senior, only 20 more credits to go! That will be Mr. GargoyleWB, B.S.E.E. to you, good sir!
Then I get this letter in the mail. Here’s what it says…
Holy ausgefucken mother scheissfelching santorum!!! :mad: Since when can you bankrupt a fucking university!!! That’s it? Wham bam thank you maam!!!
What about my fucking degree??? You were the only fucking school within a gazillion miles with a night engineering program, since many of us work our fucking selves through college!!!
Seriously. My degree just got dropped, poof, gone, by. I feel like Bjork from Dancer in the Dark, swinging from the noose.
What the hell do I do now? I am NOT starting this shit over again! :mad:
What types of classes did you have left? Is there any hope you could transfer your classes to a program that has your remaining courses in an on-line format?
<< To a computer user, “No” means “Maybe it’ll work if I try it again”. >>
Damn! You’re only about a semester away from gradutating! They should have least allowed a semester notice and given the seniors an opportunity to gradutate! You have what, 100 credits? Most colleges require at least 30 of residency before they’ll grant a degree.
“Since when can you bankrupt a fucking university?!?!?”
Since forever? It’s a business that sells education and yours seems to have been a particularly small business (less than 200 students). Private colleges go bankrupt all the time. I know that’s hard to believe for younger people who growing up thinking that educational institutions are like, umm, institutions.
“What the hell do I do now?”
What you should do is see what kind of paperwork you can get your hands on that documents your education so you can hopefully transfer credits to another school. Find out if anyone (Wetmore Center? seems connected and still surviving) will be maintaining student records. Hard to say how easy it’ll be to get that stuff when they close down. Since night class seems to be a main point for you, you might have a big decision in the future - longer to finish or re-arrange your schedule. Good luck.
I am truly sorry. As a recent Computer Engineering graduate, I understand that those ECE couses can be really tough. My alma mater offered online courses that I presume you could complete at night and we were relatively small. I am sure larger universities, albeit more expensive, will offer something for you where you may be able to transfer most of your credits. This blows.
For what it’s worth, you’re unlikely to need to start anything over again. ABET accredited engineering programs are required to have policies in place to accept transfer credit from other schools. Unfortunately, different schools have slightly different graduation requirements, so you might have to take a couple make-up classes. Still, taking an extra few credits is better than retaking the entire four years worth.
Of course, that won’t help you if you’re working days and can’t attend classes. I’m not sure what the solution is for that. You can find a list af accredited engineering programs in Washington here (select “search by state”), if it’s any help. I imagine the departmental staff would be pretty sympathetic, if you call them.
Ugh. Sigh. Yeah, I suppose it’s time to scrape for a transfer somewhere. My wife is starting up university full time days again though, so night classes and working full time are the only thing I can do. Or correspondence school maybe. Most schools, even if they do “accept” credit, still have a maximum transfer of two years of credits. So I’ll be a junior again.
Maybe drop out and start a band? Finally live the dream? My mom still raves about how good I was playing at playing “Mississippi River” on the violin back in second grade…
Does Rolling Stone magazine still have those mail-in diplomas in the back pages? You think they’d take transfer credit?
For any Dopers looking for a college, here is one point that folks rarely talk about and it can be crucial: if a private college has no endowment, it is doomed.
This is not a shot at GargoyleWB for “not paying attention.” (Sometimes, as when your location and life limit your opportunities to secure the major in your chosen field, you simply have to take what is available, regardless the risk.) However, private schools (and, in some states, public schools) live or die by their endowment, not tuition, and a school that lacks one or has one insufficient for their needs is always one semester away from closing down.
Along with instructor:student ratios, “name” lecturers, course specialties, and number of keggers per term, the endowment is a key indicator that should be included in any prospective student’s evaluation.
My undergrad college closed down in 2000 for the exact same reason.
The saddest part? If it had stayed open for another year, it would’ve celebrated its 200th anniversary.
We had a lot of international students – I’d wager to say they made up over half of the total enrollment, which hovered around 300-350. We later learned that the school spent most of their marketing $ overseas because most international students could afford to pay the tuition. We had very few scholarship and/or students on heavy financial aid.
OTOH, had I gone to your typical university, I would’ve ran screaming into the night. I’d always gone to small schools, I thrived on the personal attention and the everyone-knowing-me aspect, plus I loved being a Very Big Fish in a Very Small Pond. I never would’ve survived at that age otherwise.
My condolences to the OP. When my school closed down, the administration took great pains to make sure everyone currently enrolled found another school which accepted their credits. I hope yours does the same. They should.
Since they were ABET rated, there is a good chance that another school will accept all your credits, provided that the people who run your current school work their asses off to try to smooth things out for the students.
You need to get angry, and motivated, with the rest of your student body. There is IMO a moral burden on the leaders of your school to at a minimum work something out so you can transfer to another college. Be loud, angry, and make sure that they understand this moral burden. Get the media involved if at all possible. Get some letters of recommendation from your professors that you did well under, explaining the situation and asking that other departments at other colleges give you full consideration. Shit, write your Congresspeople, local and national-level. You do not want to be in a situation where only 60 of your credits are reluctantly accepted by somewhere else and you repeat an entire year.
Sorry to hear of your plight, but do not give up. Look for alternatives. Some colleges can be very flexible in light of special circumstances. I fell 3 credits short of graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, I had more than enough credits, but fell three short in sociology. ( my own mistake) I would have had to wait another six months to take a course that would meet the requirement, but a talk with the Registrar and she agreed to give me a waiver and allow me to take an extra Psych course instead, which was offered at the time as a telecourse (snail mail video tapes instead of on-line) Back then nobody had a computer.
My point is colleges can be much more flexible than you might think, and in many the registrar wields a lot of power to make case by case exceptions. Perhaps you can find someplace you can transfer credits, finish online and get the residency requirement waived. I would give a try.
Yeah, from my experience at this unfortunate small school, there can be a lot of rule bending and petitioning. I have hope, last night’s six-pack of Guinness helped me gain some perspective.
That UND distance program may be just the ticket I’m looking for.
I promised myself I wouldn’t think about school until Monday though.
