Student review [#23339] for Computer Science
at Carleton University

Starting university is something many of us have dreamt about since high school or even middle school. Think about all that you thought it would be…Meeting new people, getting involved in clubs, learning about different cultures and making the most of your early adulthood. I too had many expectations, but the thing with expectations is that they may sometimes be far from reality. My experience at Carleton University already had a bad start to begin with, with COVID-19 plaguing the world and resulting in remote learning. Imagine the insane “college experience” that you can get sitting in your room all day watching lectures. This, however, was not the university’s fault as they had simply adapted to the situation at the time but I believe how they’ve dealt with it has kind of cut them short. Is it really worth it to spend thousands of dollars, with an increasing tuition rate, on recorded classes and almost no relationship with your lecturers? Paying the same university fee, if not even higher, for remote classes and mere online quizzes to test your ability? Many students rely on their parents to fund their studies, so is this really the type of education they should be investing in for their child? When getting to the lecturers, I have mixed reviews… Some of them have been extremely helpful, despite only being able to communicate with them via email, but others make students feel inferior and you’re often intimidated from raising your concerns in class. Now this might just be the case for me, but judging from online teacher reviews, it seems not to be. I don’t think I have ever seen a university’s social media pages (mainly Instagram), flooded with comments from frustrated and disheartened students who are genuinely unsatisfied with the experience they are getting and trying to reach out to the university as much as they can. Sadly, these students are met with no response for the university which leads us to question whether we are simply ATMs for this big “corporate” institution that only sees us as cash cows. One of the only things that separates a university from merely being a “purchased degree” is the care and support that they provide to students, but are we actually getting any? Or are we having to hold on as much as we can, just so that we make it through. I don’t know about you, but that’s not the university experience I signed up for.