Why UWM sucks

You know, I never harbored any illusions that I'd be one of those parents with the bumper sticker on my Volvo that read, "My kid and my money go to Harvard." Nope. For one, I don't have a Volvo. Also, I can't afford a state school for my kid, let alone an ivy league school, despite what the FAFSA people say. I did, however, hope that I could be proud of my kid and his chosen school.

When I was scouting out colleges, back in the 80s, my criteria were pretty simple: I wanted to learn languages, and the weirder, the better. I applied to, and was accepted by, five of them (I can only remember two, so don't even ask). My mom then expressed the preference that I stay in town for college (and my mom is a saint, cuz I sure wouldn't have wanted to spend another couple of years with teenage me). That narrowed my choices to Marquette and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The general consensus at that time was that Marquette was a pretty good school, but expensive and private (and religious, don't get me started) and that UWM sucked. Marquette offered both Spanish, of which I'd taken 3 years in high school, and Russian, which I really wanted to learn. I didn't even look at UWM, because it sucked.

Now, had I known what I'd wanted to do, and how hard I'd fall for Russian (language, literature and people), I would have applied to UWM, which claimed it had a Russian major. But I stayed at Marquette, because my teacher was spectacular. She held classes for just me and my best friend in our last year there, just the three of us in her office four days a week, because we loved it, we were good at it and we worked hard. The department wouldn't grant us a waiver to officially minor in Russian (and creating a major was completely out of the question), but we took all they offered and then took a little bit more.

So later on I had my boys and both Big Boy and little boy have Russian names and they both attended a high school where they could learn Russian, too. Big Boy really took to it and caught the bug as bad as I ever had it. So instead of encouraging him to do something practical, I helped him look for colleges where he could major in Russian. The places he got into and could afford amounted to one: UWM. I figured, hell, it's been 20 years, and my impetuous youthful impressions must have been mistaken.

Nope. It really does suck.

I'm going to brag about my Big Boy for awhile, you can just skip this paragraph if you're not related or are prone to narcoleptcy. He took all four years of Russian in high school, and got either A or A+ each semester. He competed in the Olympiada every year and got either a gold or silver medal each year. In his junior year, he was the best high school Russian language student in the state. His senior year, he missed the top spot (and the free trip to Russia) by a fraction of a point. He took the International Baccalaureate higher level exam in Russian and scored a 5. He also took the Advanced Placement test for Russian (it's in development and isn't an official test yet).

So coming in to UWM, he emailed the head of the department during the summer. No response. He had to go to Milwaukee for placement exams in English and math, but Wisconsin doesn't have a placement test for Russian (though it has them for German, French and Spanish). The only classes they offered last semester were first semester and third semester Russian. Big Boy had the prerequisites for third year Russian (4 years of high school Russian), and had a high score on the IB HL test. Indeed, if he'd taken that much German, French or Spanish and the IB HL test, he'd be in the 3rd year class and upon completion with a B or better, would get 14 retroactive credits. That's an entire semester of credit, or a little over $4,000.00 to you and me.

Well, there was an awful lot of back & forth between Big Boy and the department head (we'll call him Joe). Joe gave the boy a test (perhaps the 4th semester final? I don't remember what it was), which the boy completed in 20 minutes or so. Joe decided that the boy should take 3rd semester because UWM wasn't offering 3rd year in the Fall of 2007, but Joe agreed that the boy would be in 4th semester or 3rd year if UWM had been offering it. In retrospect, it seems that Joe was looking forward to a dull semester with unmotivated language students and wanted someone in the class who could actually communicate in the target language. Big Boy and a girl native speaker were apparently the only ones who knew what was going on all last semester. I got a little concerned when Big Boy told me that the book we'd be buying was the one he used as a Junior.

I did a little research and found the above-linked website and a little policy statement from the Board of Regents. "Board of Regent policy requires all University of Wisconsin System campuses to award college credit for scores of 4,5,6, or 7 on higher level (HL) IB examinations." Well, isn't that special. I emailed the Board of Regents. I got an answer from them the next day, and they forwarded my email to the director of enrollment services, and somehow an assistant dean (we'll call him Chuck) got involved, too. Well, Chuck apparently talked to Joe, and then left a nice voicemail for me saying that everything would be fine and Big Boy would be getting his 14 retroactive credits as long as he got a B- or better in the 3rd semester class. Alrighty then. No more worries.

Fast forward to last week. Big Boy asks about his retro credit. Joe sends an email that says this:

Just to clarify, [Big Boy] is asking about the 6 credits he is supposed to get for the Intl Baccalaureate test -- in addition to the 8 retrocredits for 101 and 102 -- for a total of 14 credits earned. As we left it this past fall, my understanding is that Enrollment Services was waiting on documentation of [Big Boy's] IB test scores and would post the 6 IB credits to [Big Boy's] transcript as soon as they get it. We're still waiting on that, I guess.

Chuck writes back with this:

Unfortunately, we cannot award IB credits in this situation. The IB credits are awarded for courses beyond which you placed and for which you do not receive credit (that is, if you place in, say, English 102 we can award IB credits for English 101). In this case, because [Big Boy] successfully completed 3rd-semester Russian, he is already receiving (retro)credit for first- and second-semester Russian. The IB work allowed him to place in 3rd semester, so it was extremely helpful in that regard. But we cannot give an additional 6 credits, since he is already receiving credit for the courses that the IB work allowed him to move past.
I hope the logic is clear.

Ummm, actually, no. His four years of high school Russian should have allowed him to be placed into 3rd year college Russian, and that had nothing to do with IB. Chuck doesn't get it, but I do.

UWM sucks.