Anyone who attends UH can attest to the fact that it is not a very student-friendly campus. There are a myriad of things that point to this.
One of the first indicators of this is the official website of the University. Unfortunately, it is one of the first things a prospective student will check before applying to UH. The official website is disjointed and poorly designed. It is full of false leads and dead ends.
It is commonplace for universities to make it hard for prospective students to find information about tuition prices and general student expenses. They do this by burying the information – UH does this. However, it also seems like UH makes a point of over-zealously burying all other relevant information.
As a Tier One university, UH should strive to make the campus more student-friendly. Redesigning the website would be a good place to start, but that is not the only area that needs improvement.
The campus parking lots are a battlefield every morning because of the acute deficit of available spaces. This often causes students to either lose valuable sleep by waking up thirty minutes earlier than they should, or forces them to be chronically tardy to their classes.
After making an appointment to speak with an advisor, it is often a couple of weeks before that meeting actually takes place — long after the problem has either solved itself, or has grown by a snowball effect into a much larger predicament.
The financial aid office is generally mute when it comes to communicating valuable information about policy changes. Transcripts are often sent, lost by the administration and then resent only to be lost by them a second time.
Because of the high volume of crimes that occur on campus, students tend to scramble to their cars as soon as night starts to fall. The campus loses its personality after dark.
A six-volume book could be written about how non-user friendly Peoplesoft is.
If UH wants to continue to grow, these issues need to be addressed. Students are the foundation of a university. It doens’t seem like UH realizes this.
TIER ONE TIER ONE TIER ONE TIER ONE DIVERSITY GO COOGS TIER ONE TIER ONE TIER ONE TIER ONE TIER ONE DIVERSITY GO COOGS TIER ONE TIER ONE TIER ONE TIER ONE TIER ONE DIVERSITY GO COOGS TIER ONE TIER ONE TIER ONE TIER ONE TIER ONE DIVERSITY GO COOGS TIER ONE
we aren't tier one
brian as of last year we are Tier One
nope
Information technology is vastly underused here in terms of school-student interaction. The potential is huge.
UH is *not* a Tier One school. UH has been classified as having "very high research activity" by the Carnegie Foundation. It is *not* a ranking. Carnegie does not use the term "Tier One." From carengiefoundation.org: "It is important to note that the groups differ solely with respect to level of research activity, not quality or importance." There's a lot of research going on at UH, but the Carnegie classification does not indicate that it is necessarily good or significant (undoubtedly, much of it is, even so). "Tier One" in the real world (i.e., outside the UH marketing department) generally refers to admission by invitation into the American Assoc. of Universities. There are 61 univ. in the AAU, incl. UT and A&M. Not to say Tier One isn't a noble ambition for UH; it's just a long ways off. UH needs to stop misleading potential applicants. It borders on deception, IMO.
You're still wrong. Tier One in the real world refers to US News. When prospective students say "I want to go to a Tier One University" they definitely are not talking about the AAU, though of course there probably is a high degree of overlap.
Point taken; students are not talking about the AAU. Even though US News doesn't designate Tier One schools, there probably is, as you mentioned, a great deal of overlap. My point stands, though, that the University would be better served in the long run by not incessantly touting a quantitative classification as a qualitative distinction. I doubt that demonstrates the level of institutional integrity or rationality that either the AAU or US News look for when considering universities.
I think UH is smart to not play US News's rankings game. Many of the criteria are very arbitrary and it seems like the weighting changes occasionally.
As far as AAU, if it is indeed invitation-only, then there is really no point in even caring about that group or its rankings.
If you're suggesting we stop this obsessive quest to compare ourselves with other schools in pursuit of an apparently vague and nebulous descriptor, I agree. Let's just focus on improving UH. The *perception* of Tier One will follow. The whole UH marketing spin of "Carnegie-designated Tier One" is not only deceptive (at best), but it is also distracting. My personal take is that it gives UH an air of immaturity. It's akin to the person who introduces himself by saying, "Hi. I'm Joe. I'm in Mensa." Ugh. We need to *demonstrate* Tier One, not decree it ourselves.
It also limits UH to a certain path towards respectability. Basically by that I mean UH seems to want to follow a tried and true formula to attain a result that other schools also want, which is fine, but UH has less resources at its disposal so it seems like it has chosen to run a race in which it is guaranteed to fall farther and farther behind. I don't care either way what the administrators say in the marketing brochures but I would like to see UH try to be more creative, even scrappy.
Agreed. Good points and good discussion. (I do think it's critical how UH markets and presents itself to the public, but I'll quit harping on that…)
UH is *not* a Tier One school. UH has been classified as having "very high research activity" by the Carnegie Foundation. It is *not* a ranking. Carnegie does not use the term "Tier One." From carengiefoundation.org: "It is important to note that the groups differ solely with respect to level of research activity, not quality or importance." There's a lot of research going on at UH, but the Carnegie classification does not indicate that it is necessarily good or significant (undoubtedly, much of it is, even so). "Tier One" in the real world (i.e., outside the UH marketing department) generally refers to admission by invitation into the American Assoc. of Universities. There are 61 univ. in the AAU, incl. UT and A&M. Not to say Tier One isn't a noble ambition for UH; it's just a long ways off. UH needs to stop misleading potential applicants. It borders on deception, IMO.
i saw a definition of Tier One somewhere. too lazy to find it now, but i think it was being recognized as exceptional somehow by US News, carnegie, and one other place. we have carnegie. we aren't tier one.
furthermore, the fact that no one seems to really know what tier one means just shows how well trained everyone has become in using it as a synonym for 'good.'
can't we just we're a 'good' university? why do you think everyone is saying tier one? my guess is because the school is all about growth – like a business – and tier one means getting bigger.
Carnegie used to rank schools into tiers, but they officially do not anymore. I think that was the designation UH originally was aiming for back when they were first planning this out. Since then we have just used it to mean whatever we wanted it to mean. For example, now they're saying that you need 25% of the students living on campus to be ranked Tier One.
People used to use it to colloquially mean the top 50 or so national research universities in US News. I am pretty sure US News used to actually rank the schools into tiers but according to the poster above they do not do that anymore.
Very interesting discussion. Have any of you guys tried emailing Renu Khator about this? 🙂
i'm not that naive. when a powerful person says something is good it takes more than a couple of students to change their mind, no matter what evidence they might have.