Commercialized Education

I wonder if anyone else encountered anything like this in school.

I just signed up for an online course at the local school. I payed the tuition for the course, bought the book for the course, then went to log in and was greeted with this friendly message:

EXCUSE me? So I have to pay the tuition for the course, buy the book, then PAY TO LOG IN? HUH? The book contains no access code - it must be purchased seperately.

To top it all off, I opened the text book and the first thing that fell out at my feet was a big advertisement for BusinessWeek magazine at a "Special Student Rate!!".... yea.. whatever.

I'm thinking that the commercialization of education is probably NOT a good thing, and this has convinced me that this will be my LAST semester at this school. The other kick in the pants was when one of the profs let slip that the school accepted money and software from Microsoft in exchange for a 90% Microsoft environment both in the software the school uses and the software the school teaches - there's one Unix class, very basic, and it's non-credit. The C++ class has been cancelled three semesters in a row because less than ten people signed up (first time it cxcld I don't know how many were in it, the second time there were 7, the 3rd time 6). Same for Java except it had slightly better numbers. The brand new .NET class garnered only 4 people and they still let it proceed.

Capitalism at its finest I suppose....

Anyone have any suggestions on a good school on the Central East Coast?

Penn State

Chicken Farmer School!

One of my co-workers majored in the agro science of poultry at Penn State (although my father also got his BS in political science there).

MIT.... but my grades aren't good enough (I'm not a very studious student.. I like doing things on my own and that's usually not the case at Uni) and the cash isn't there... they have one seriously ugly web site though.

Yeah, there's lots of Ag at PSU, but they also have a huge engineering dept (hell, they even have their own nuclear reactor). There is more equipment and majors on the main campus than you can imagine.

They even tried to be a law school, but either the state or the ABA wouldn't let them.