Unease at Wayne State University

[hashishinahooka]

Are changing admissions policies freezing out minority students

Comments

[kitanabychoice]

This doesn't surprise me. As a product of DPS, I know what a huge disadvantage I was at compared to people graduating from other districts (not even mentioning how I was lightyears behind people in other states).

Considering that WSU is one of the best options for Detroiters to get university education, it upsets me that WSU is trying to price us out. It seems to me more and more than higher education is a money making scheme like everything else.

And the bit about community colleges always bothers me. Sometimes it's a good route, but sometimes community colleges just don't offer similar degree programs and it makes it really difficult to transfer credits and the like.

[hashishinahooka]

And the bit about community colleges always bothers me. Sometimes it's a good route, but sometimes community colleges just don't offer similar degree programs and it makes it really difficult to transfer credits and the like.

Agreed. The other problem is the two closest CC for Detroiters are problematic. WCCCD is nearly a waste of time as most colleges in the area won't accept their credits, nor do they have a wide variety of programs. HFCC has its own problems with racism, and financial aid there is keeping a lot of people out. A lot of my friends there were unable to attend this semester because the financial aid office is so understaffed that they took forever processing people's paperwork.

[kitanabychoice]

Yeah, I know some of the problems with HFCC. I went to HFCC for a little while because they had a graphic design and the other community colleges didn't, and HFCC took forever to process my financial aid. Not only that but I ended up not having enough financial aid to cover everything, so I still had half a class to pay for and $300 worth of books and art supplies. Not to mention that from my house, it took three buses to get there and I basically woke up at 6AM for a 9AM class. Every day.

I ended up going to University of Phoenix online (edit: and the funny thing is that with UoP, I somehow ended up with SURPLUS financial aid then... wtf?), which might even classify as a bigger mistake because I wasted a ton of money and I live in Phoenix now and everyone is like "lol oh you" at my degree.

[roseofjuly]

It's pretty fucked up that you couldn't find enough financial aid to cover a community college. I mean, that's kind of the point of them, right? To make them affordable for the community?

[redstar826]

I graduated from Wayne State a couple of years ago. I didn't realize this was happening

[hashishinahooka]

I had been hearing rumors while I was briefly attending HFCC, but now that I'm back, I can see little changes. I actually see less Black students on campus than I did when I started in '04, and it's slowly making the transition from a commuter school to a stay-on-campus school.

[redstar826]

I graduated in '08, and I felt like the campus itself was very diverse (my own program was less so), that's why it surprised me a bit to read this :(

[anolinde]

A few people I spoke with claimed that grades from DPS students are not considered equal to those of students from schools in places such as West Bloomfield or Grosse Pointe.

Don't colleges do this already? Like, they have a general idea of how "good" a school is, so they consider, say, a 4.0 GPA from a top-ranked public school to be harder to obtain (and therefore better than) a lower-ranked public school? That's what my high school told us, anyway...

[hashishinahooka]

I've never heard this before, personally. However, it's always been WSU's tradition to be as inclusive as possible and give students from the inner-city an opportunity to attend a university.

[thelilyqueen]

That's what I'd heard too, though it's only part of the story. I'd personally be more impressed with a kid who got a 3.5 at a lower-ranked school while working or parenting their child or younger sibling(s) than a kid who got a 4.0 at a higher ranked school who could afford tutors and didn't 'have' to do anything but school.

[roseofjuly]

So would I, especially given that in my short and limited TA experience with the mostly privileged class of the U.S., the students who are poorer, older, and working tend to be far more motivated and hard-working than the ones whose parents are giving them an allowance. I met with a student yesterday - Saturday - for an hour. She's in her early 30s and she works full-time; she was willing to come up to the campus on a Saturday afternoon to sit with me for an hour and go over the material, so I was willing to meet with her. But I have some straight-from-high-school kids who don't even want to come to my Friday morning office hours because apparently 11 am on a Friday is too early for them

[marmar627]

Honestly, this doesn't surprise me at all. I live in Toledo, and I hadn't really heard much from WSU until about a year ago. Now, every time I turn on the TV, I see a commercial for the school, and iirc, we get in-state tuition rates. They're clearly going for a non-Detroit demographic now. Their reasoning is probably, "oh, we'll get transfers into the city of Detroit who can help gentrify it, which will also help us in the long run." But I can't help but feel that it could make things worse - as above commenters have pointed out, community college options don't necessarily help students. Detroit is going to be just as educationally challenged, if not more, because Wayne State isn't attempting to cater to DPS students who can succeed at the school. Wayne State can try to raise its standards all they want, but if the DPS graduates are still languishing because they can't get into WSU, it's not going to help the city.

[hashishinahooka]

Yep, and the whole area (Midtown) is becoming more and more gentrified, which is causing all sorts of problems. You have a lot of Whites moving in and changing the landscape of the area, but there are still inner city problems there that they aren't used to. Many of the new White citizens are complaining that things haven't changed to suit their needs.

[kitanabychoice]

Wayne State can try to raise its standards all they want, but if the DPS graduates are still languishing because they can't get into WSU, it's not going to help the city.I'm gonna go out on a limb and say they don't want to help DPS graduates or the city, really. The saddest thing about Detroit is that everybody knows how terrible the school system is, but somehow all that happens is that the students get blamed. My school had all kinds of problems -- we had security guards and metal detectors, but the school was overbooked and 35 in a classroom and 3 to a locker. There were 10 year old books in most classes, they were falling apart, hell, try finding a modern microscope or projector... the list is endless

[roseofjuly]

And that's the thing...school systems think the kids don't know when nobody gives a shit about them, but of course they know. And they blame the kids when they don't show up to school or try to leave so they can go ahead and get to working, but - the kids know the school system doesn't care about them and would rather them disappear into the working class.

[romp]

I need a day off from watching the US dismantle decades of progress.

[hinoema]

Oh god, yes. You just summed up my entire feelings about life right now.