[QUOTE=Rich Bogad;137575]Guess what! MONEY is real important. Without those students, Maritime would be in a world of financial hurt, just like it was before they admitted non-regiment.
It is not “pointless” for a kid to study engineering and take a job unrelated to shipping after graduation. It is not “pointless” for a kid to major in one of the business areas and then take a job with a broker, or freight forwarder, etc.
Considering their importance, it would be nice if Maritime treated the non regiment students with more respect, rather than mostly ignoring them.[/QUOTE]
That’s not relevant. Of course many cadets graduated on time over the years. And the school has a distinct problem. It offers a great education that results in great jobs BUT can’t attract the smart kids. And those who do go to Maritime, especially lately, claim to have a shitty experience. Even the older guys on this forum virtually give up when it comes to improving the educational and social experience. They say going to Maritime is SUPPOSED to suck. You should EXPECT no social life or dating. You should just hide from or put up with regiment because hiding will make you a better man. In reality, many great cadets with a lot of industry potential get pushed out of the school. I’ve met a lot of low GPA retreads (5 year guys) since graduation and they appear to do at least as well as the guys who finished quicker with higher GPA’s.
The country is full of fantastic students at Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Stony Brook etc… Who take 15 credits a semester and would run circles around most Maritime grads when it comes to maturity and intelligence. Sure it’s cool to jam it 164 credits in 4 years… Maybe it’s even cooler to jam it all down in 3 years for some… But for me, looking back, and looking ahead,… Life is too short. I admire more balance. Let the young men and women have a better overall experience in preparation for their careers.
We all get so hung up on our own arrogance sometimes. I look at my son enjoying Cal Maritime, living a balanced lifestyle… Not a single complaint yet about it… And I sometimes wish he was enduring the fear and discomfort that I did. Then I step back and realize … “why”?
[QUOTE=Rich Bogad;137498]SUNY Maritime graduation was last Friday.
According to the school announcement, about 220 students graduated. Maritime has a student body of about 1800. That means that just less than one-eighth actually graduated. Something is very wrong when that few graduate in a given year.[/QUOTE]
That really doesn’t mean anything, and its not a 1/8th graduation rate because you’re counting all classes. You’d have to compare the size of that specific class as they entered as freshmen to their graduating class size in order to get the rate of how many successfully did it on time. Some years back my graduating class was about 40% the size of my MUG class; most had dropped out, with others on the “5 year plan”. A 40% graduation rate didn’t really seem to surprise anyone at the time, all considering.
“That really doesn’t mean anything, and its not a 1/8th graduation rate because you’re counting all classes. You’d have to compare the size of that specific class as they entered as freshmen to their graduating class size in order to get the rate of how many successfully did it on time. Some years back my graduating class was about 40% the size of my MUG class; most had dropped out, with others on the “5 year plan”. A 40% graduation rate didn’t really seem to surprise anyone at the time, all considering.”
Plus there are multiple graduation ceremonies-- January, May, August-- and some kids chose not to participate, for whatever reason. So the school probably conferred closer to 350 degrees in a given academic year, not 220.