The University of California - Santa Cruz

Date: Sep 05 2015
Major: Anthropology (This Major's Salary over time)
This school is red tape hell.

If you ever have any kind of issue of any sort you are in for a full time job getting through the thick bureaucracy to get it sorted out - whether that be housing, insurance, scheduling, tuition charges (mistakes), part time status, .. the departments all have so many policies and standards that the other departments have no idea what is going on with the others - yet everything they do is connected to another department.

The Registrar will tell you to do one thing that will have dire consequences with your academics, unknowingly setting you up for failure due to a deadline with your college, etc - stuff like that.

I would say that I have spent 5 times more time and effort with this University's policies and red tape than I have on actual academic work.

To make it worse, staff (not prof.s) are incredibly frustrated, rude and seem to think they can just treat students like annoying rodents.

There is extremely high theft on campus and throughout the city of Santa Cruz below, so you are bound to also lose some valuables. If you don't have a car, good luck. The metro system is not always the best at night.

Do not ever try to live off of campus because the city is over populated with rent inflated beyond belief.

The University also changes the due date for housing charges each month, so if you do not have a large saving account to automatically pay out of (ahem! middle class) you are likely to end up paying late charges in addition to the inflated University housing rates as well.

Parking is over over over priced!!

Also they have set a ton of zones with various times you can/cannot park in so that the likelihood of getting a parking ticket is high.

Tickets are now $50.

In short, don't bother with this place.

There is a great education to be had, but too much time and effort is spent dealing with the frustration of being here.