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Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical university: opinions, facts etc.
I am going to Alabama A&M University soon. I’d like to know your opinion on this university, any facts and useful information which I can’t find on the Internet.
When it comes to A&M I think alot depends on the course of study you intend to follow. Their agriculture department is excellent, their education department is lacking. Their engineering degree will not get you a top notch position outside of Huntsville.
A&M is on the outskirts of of north Huntsville. If you don't have a car, you will have to catch a ride, take the city bus, or bike/walk to other parts of H'ville, especially the shopping and social scene. There have been a couple of gun incidents in recent months that were kept quiet and out of the news.
Alot of the dorms at A&M are very old. While I have not personally experienced them, I have had friends who talked about how A&M promotes their great housing, then you move in and find that the air conditioning doesn't work all the time and other problems are continous. They do have some newer apartments across the street from the main campus that look nice from the street. They have a beautiful new recreation, health, wellness building, also across from the main campus.
Also, several people have stated that the on campus food is relatively good. There is a resturant called Mama Annie's, a McDonalds, a Wahavo (serves food) and a Chevron (serves food) with a laundromat all within walk/biking distance. I think maybe a Churches Chicken (if it is still open) and there are signs out that a Donut Shop in opening in the strip center acoss from campus.
Lastly, A&M is currently under investigation by SACS and is rumored to be in danger of losing their accrediation. There are several articles on Al.com about the investigation. They barely have enough doctoral profs to keep their doctoral program and every time a prof leaves they drag professors out of retirement until they can hire someone to fill the requirement.
Good Luck, welcome to Huntsville. I hope you made a campus visit before you made this decision.
Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news but I'm not going to sugar coat it considering college has such a bearing on the rest of your life. A degree from A&M as it is know locally is not worth much more than the ink and paper it took to make the diploma for most of their programs. If they lose their accreditation, their degree will be worthless. The engineering department is not up to par and won't get you much of a job if any at all with the current economic situation.
Their administration is an absolute mess and has been for years. There has been scandal after scandal involving the administration for decades. There has been embezzlement, improper use of funds, and plenty of other scandals.
If I were you and you have a reason for moving to Huntsville, I would choose UAH instead. UAH has an excellent science and engineering department and is a research school. It is also a difficult school, far more difficult than A&M and therefore the degree is more highly regarded. A&M and UAH had some sort of student exchange program at one time where selected students received tuition grants or scholarships or something of that sort. I can't remember all the details but you may want to look into that and see if that is still a possibility.
Another option would be to go to Calhoun Community College for your first two years and then transfer to UAH to finish your degree. Anything would be better than getting your degree from A&M.
I don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings if they went to A&M but the facts are the facts and I think the OP deserves to hear the truth considering it is his future at stake.
I will second the comments about the facilities with this caveat. There are some new buildings that are nice. The old buildings while very pretty on the outside can be in very bad shape inside, but at the same time the students and faculty are sheltered somewhat as the worst floors simply sit locked and unused until the funds become available to fix them up.
I have known folks who have gone to A&M in education, and they had no more problems than anyone else getting a job in their field. This was in the rural counties of north Alabama though so in Huntsville itself it may be different.
It is a shame that Alabama tries to run multiple small and medium sized public universities in Huntsville and Montgomery instead of just funding one large university in each of these cities.
As far as the accreditation goes I think you should be relatively fine even if A&M were to lose it as long as you keep your grades up. You can always transfer and point to a record showing you can do college level work which is more than most people have when they get accepted into college. The people who will really be hurt are recent graduates who have not had the chance to get much job experience, but on the other hand I don't know how much employers keep up with school accreditation either. If I was an employer who'd hired A&M grads before who were good workers then I wouldn't care if the school was accreditted or not when considering a new hire.
As far as the accreditation goes I think you should be relatively fine even if A&M were to lose it as long as you keep your grades up. You can always transfer and point to a record showing you can do college level work which is more than most people have when they get accepted into college. The people who will really be hurt are recent graduates who have not had the chance to get much job experience, but on the other hand I don't know how much employers keep up with school accreditation either. If I was an employer who'd hired A&M grads before who were good workers then I wouldn't care if the school was accreditted or not when considering a new hire.
You should care when picking a school and accreditation DOES matter. Many employers, when college transcripts or diploma matters, will not accept either from a college that is not accredited, or is accredited by a less than credible organization. For instance, many private schools claim accreditation by multiple entities, but many of them can be had for simply sending in an application fee or joining an organization...in other words, it isn't worth the paper it is written on. So, in effect you don't have a diploma, and certainly what many would consider a "real" diploma.
Finally, there isn't a college that amounts to any thing that will accept credits from an un-accredited institution of higher learning, because as they see it there are no standards and no mechanisms in place to ensure quality and adherence to standards...thus in their eyes they cannot know nor measure whether or not a student has achieved a sufficient proficiency thus justifying either admission to say, a grad program or to count credits toward a degree.
If A & M loses their accreditation, I wouldn't in any way, shape or form consider them.
I've only attended some grad courses there at night in the past and found the quality spotty. Some profs were good, others very lazy and uncaring.
I'm a student at A&M! A&M is a good school. It's better than what people say it is. PLEASE don't feed into the negativity! People are ALWAYS going to talk about and down an HBCU. The engineering program is great and is ABET accredited. The only thing that is haunting A&M is the accredidation issues. People think that UA and Auburn are the only good schools in the state, but A&M is good in its own little way. For the person who says that you can't get a position outside of Huntsvile as an engineer is so ignorant because I'm in the engineering program, and there are ots of kids that have gotten jobs outside of the state. Never judge a book by its cover unless you've read it. I've read it, and A&M is a really good book that has issues just like any other college. Guess what? A&M is the only school in North Alabama that offers a master degree in social work, and the WHITE teachers go there to receive their masters as well. Don't be fooled by ignorance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Before I get to A&M, here's my cynical thoughts about college degrees in general. Wherever you choose to go and whatever you choose to do, make sure you have clear goals and a strong sense of direction before you drop the first dime. Take every opportunity to network, intern, volunteer, etc in your field of your choice. Book knowledge will only take you so far. In my humble opinion, most college degrees are watered down and the return on investment is minimal, especially with the skyrocketing cost of higher education. There are way too many young adults with college degrees who can't find jobs and end up defaulting on student loans. I finally paid off all of my student loans this year for my BA and MEd. I use neither directly, although I did work in education for a few years. But now I am perfectly happy working as an area manager/sales rep for a beer distribution company, a job that doesn't necessarily even require a college degree (but it doesn't hurt) and is not even in the ballpark of what I expected to be doing with my life. But again, I'm happy and the pay is at least better than the education field. I am learning that fewer and fewer employers outside of academia itself are worried about college degrees anymore. Now I did enjoy the college experience and all, but I'm not sure what I gained with that "experience" equaled the thousands of dollars of debt I took on to get it.
All that being said, I would have to say as a mostly lifer in the Huntsville area, the general perception of A&M is not entirely positive. I once heard a supervisor of mine at a previous job say while evaluating an A&M grad for employment, "Man, you gotta keep your windows rolled up when you drive past A&M. Someone might throw a college degree in your lap." Obviously, I don't believe it's that bad. But it just goes to show the perception that is out there and I think it has very little to do with it being an HBCU. There are some very highly regarded HBCUs out there like Morehouse and Spelman. I think much of A&M's less than stellar reputation is due to the many administrative scandals that have occurred there in recent years. However, there are many highly successful alumni of A&M in the area. They are who I'd probably reach out to for advice on various programs.
I am learning that fewer and fewer employers outside of academia itself are worried about college degrees anymore.
I am with dirt grinder on this one. Where are you learning that? From what I have seen and experienced over the last 15 years there has been a larger movement towards more and more jobs requiring college degrees. I know of several employers that now require degrees for lower level data entry and human resources work that used to require no degree at all and on top of that, they only pay around $10 to $12 an hour starting out. Imagine that, going to college all those years to get a degree and start out at that pay. It seems insane but that is the direction the job market is headed. As we move forward it will be almost an absolute necessity to have a degree for even an mediocre job.
Back to the topic of A&M, what some do not realize is that if they do in fact lose their accreditation; they will lose funding along with not qualifying for pell grants and federal student loans. That will most likely be the end of A&M if it comes to that point.
I know someone who was going to UAH and struggling. She heard about the exchange program they had at the time with A&M and said, "What the heck, I will give it a shot." She went to A&M, told us how easy it was compared to UAH. She made all A's and B's at A&M and cruised right through and received her bachelors degree. You might say that's great but it took her over 2 1/2 years to find a job and this was back about 10 years ago when the economy was booming and all you had to do was say "I need a job." She finally ended up finding a job in another state and had to move away simply because nobody in Northern Alabama or Southern Tennessee would even give her an interview.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alabama!
I'm a student at A&M! A&M is a good school. It's better than what people say it is. PLEASE don't feed into the negativity! People are ALWAYS going to talk about and down an HBCU. The engineering program is great and is ABET accredited. The only thing that is haunting A&M is the accredidation issues. People think that UA and Auburn are the only good schools in the state, but A&M is good in its own little way. For the person who says that you can't get a position outside of Huntsvile as an engineer is so ignorant because I'm in the engineering program, and there are ots of kids that have gotten jobs outside of the state. Never judge a book by its cover unless you've read it. I've read it, and A&M is a really good book that has issues just like any other college. Guess what? A&M is the only school in North Alabama that offers a master degree in social work, and the WHITE teachers go there to receive their masters as well. Don't be fooled by ignorance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nobody has brought up race and quite frankly nobody, including myself cares about the race of anyone who attends A&M. We are talking about college students and the quality of their education; not having a race debate. I had to look up what the acronym "HBCU" even was because I had no idea. Could we please stay focused on the quality of the education being received by the students instead of playing the race card. Most of us here at City-Data are well educated and are far past the days of the race card being raised any time someone has an opinion that might hurt someone's feelings.
Moderator cut: snip
Last edited by Keeper; 06-30-2011 at 01:42 PM..
Reason: off topic/we don't care if you can spell
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