SUNY Empire State College – Old Westbury

Magnificent campus full of greenery! An amazing program for people who need flexible study options. Kind staff and everyone seems to enjoy what the do.

Beautiful campus. Probably the best landscape of any campus in NY. Very diverse. I like that. Friendly atmosphere. And they are almost complete with all the new construction. The buildings are do much nicer. A nice school to attend.

Me: «I’d like to see the course syllabus for a B.A. in manufacturing.»
ESU: «We don’t have any sort of courses»
When you go to an institution of higher learning, you would expect some sort of structured curriculum that you would need to follow to obtain a degree — right?
Well not at Empire State University! The whole angle of this State run college is to promote the whole «go back and get your degree» for those who want a degree we never got or were too lazy to finish college the first time around.
There is pretty much no set structure, no curriculum, no classes and no real learning– not too shabby I guess for a certain segment of the population but the reason I went there was to get something out of it.
A «class» works something like this: you meet your mentor, that is, you meet after 200 attempts to find a convenient time for said mentor to make themselves available.
Then you discuss what degree you want to finish /​accomplish.
Your very first assignment, and you get credit for this, is to fill out a whole pile of paperwork documenting your life, schools attended, work experience etc. You have no choice, you have to do this and waste a so-​called semester.
This basically lets you scam your way out of taking more credits. The bonus here is if you can B.S. your way through a subject — you get credit! Doesn’t have to be in the actual field you are taking, just any olé subject you happen to know. Basket weaving something you know about? Credit! How to cut and hang drywall? Credit! Fix those pesky weeds on your lawn? Credit! Closet voyeur with a neighbor fetish? Credit!
Then apparently some «expert» reviews your essay and grants you credits…
Next: since there are no classes and no courses, you and the «mentor» decide what you want to study next — it can be anything of course — so long as it can be remotely applied to the overall degree, you can go get a book, write a report and get more credits. You are given a set amount of time to finish– I think 12 weeks. So, 12 weeks later and you spent 11 of them at the local watering hole? Call the mentor and get 12 more weeks! Huzzah!
What a waste of money– you can theoretically get your degree which of course is a great thing, but really, will you be prepared to get out there and get a job in that field and be effective? Unlikely.
The whole thing is poorly run in my opinion.