Reply to Niece just finished her freshman year at University of Chicago. She hates it.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]She earned very high marks and she does not wish to return. And not just for known reasons like violent crime, weather, and its isolated location in the Midwest, and more specifically, on the deep south side of Chicago. We had a long lunch and here are her words in quotes: Her classmates are "repulsively obnoxious" and "insufferable," her professors were "checked out" or "barely spoke English," the university seems "unprofessional" and in "disarray," and most of the staff she encountered were "useless" and "incompetent." "It looks like a serious university but it does not operate like a serious university."

It was not her first choice but she was so excited when we met for lunch late last summer. It is sad to see her so unhappy after a year.[/quote]

You realize it is hard to take you seriously when you lead with “the violent crime” and the “isolated location”.

First, the area around the school has crime, but the school itself is fine.

2nd… a city of 5 million people is hardly an isolated location.

Why even mention those two points…doesn’t sound like they had anything to do with your niece liking or not liking the school.[/quote]

The location, weather, and crime is why the campus ethos is lacking, from faculty and administrators to low-level staff. If you were a high-flying researcher or administrator, would you prefer the coasts, [b]the warm Sun Belt[/b] — or south side Chicago crime and cold weather? If you were a nurse or a random service worker, would you want to work downtown or the wealthy north and western suburbs of Chicago (for more pay!) — or commute down to the dangerous and isolated south side Chicago island the campus is in?[/quote]

Some students may care a lot about lounging at the pool in the sun, but "high-flying researchers or administrators" would take Hyde Park over backwards, cultural wastelands like Tuscaloosa, Baton Rouge, etc. any day.  [/quote]

California (UCLA, Stanford, UCSD, USC, UCSB) is in the Sun Belt. As are research powerhouses including UT-Austin, Florida, Emory, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt, Duke and UNC. The booming South is a "wasteland" and talented people who can work anywhere in the nation love the idea of high crime, high taxes, terrible weather, and being on an isolated crime-ridden island in the Midwest. So what's that leave? You overpay for some rock stars but have to scrape the bottom of the talent pool to fill the rest of the roster, which impacts the ethos, vibe and professionalism of your campus. Why would a random talented staffer or service worker commute to the south side when they can make more working downtown or on the north shore? Draw a 5 mile radius around UChicago's campus and that's the bleak local talent pool.[/quote]

Many people commute 5 miles to work.  Moot point. [/quote]

Look at what is around five miles of UChicago. Some of the most horrific slums in the U.S. That is their local workforce or they need to recruit talented people from further away ex. downtown, but why would folks further away want to waste their life commuting an hour each way to the dangerous and isolated campus on the south side for work, when they can make equal or more money working in the much safer and less depressing downtown Chicago or in a nice western or northern suburb? It's illogical, right? Universities have thousands of employees, so when a large percentage are scraping the bottom of the barrel, and they struggle with retention, and fail to fill positions, the entire campus ethos does not feel like a premium product to students paying $85,000 annually. UChicago college students are not enjoying a polished Ivy League or Stanford caliber ethos. They're probably not even getting a Georgetown ethos.[/quote]

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