University of Houston-Downtown Rankings by Salary Score

What an awful school. While I enjoyed most of my professors and feel like I was able to learn a lot from them, the administrative side of the university is extremely lacking. My entire time there was extremely stressful because I had NO IDEA what I was doing and neither did most of the staff. At my orientation after transferring I was given a printed out degree plan with classes sectioned off into chunks based on year and semester. This was a great tool that helped me choose the classes I wanted to take, HOWEVER,... Read More the plan they gave me did NOT align with the classes I actually needed for my degree. Somehow in the 2.5 years I was there something changed and I was never notified. I was constantly "missing" classes and no one seemed to know if I actually needed them or not. Random classes required prerequisites that were not required for my degree and when I spoke to advisors they were never sure what I needed or not. Every time I spoke to an advisor, they would print out my degree plan and just say "here you go" even if I wasn't even there to discuss that. One advisor TOLD ME I was a music major and wouldn't listen to me when I said my focus was art. Some of my meetings were 5 minutes long because advisors would tell me they didn't know how to do something so I should email the department head instead. I felt bad bombarding her with my issues that the advisors should be able to handle but luckily in most cases she actually did help me. When it was time for me to graduate I spoke with an advisor to double check I had all my classes accounted for and he told me I was good to go! He then directed me to the grad audit and that lady (very rudely) told me I was missing ONE hidden class so I would not be allowed to finish. Luckily I was able to enroll late into the class I needed but it made no sense that not a single advisor I spoke to noticed this class. My last semester was just packed with classes I never knew I needed because they were hidden or not discusses with me. The school physically is decent, but their organization leaves much to be desired. It is impossible to find information you need for things. You can check their website all day but there is nothing out there. They seem to only like discussing things through a million emails. When it was time for me to attend commencement they wouldn't post the information about it ANYWHERE. The only thing they had on the website was the time, date, and location. No info on parking, student instructions, dress code, guest limit, alternate ways to watch, nothing. In order to find out this information students had to attend a 1 hour orientation or watch the video of that orientation. They said they would update their social media with info and they never did. I had to write out the info myself to share with family and friends because they couldn't find it themselves anywhere!!!! The commencement itself was an absolute mess. I have been to several by now of my own and of friends and I can confidently say UHD has no idea what they were doing. Students didn't know when to sit or stand. Students and staff spent the whole ceremony on their phones. Speakers spent more time talking about themselves and their accomplishments than about the graduation. Then at the end they just let us all leave at the exact same time causing a swarming mess of students. Everyone was squeezing to get into the stands to find their family and we had to walk packed like sardines to get out. No big deal usually but keep in mind COVID is still a big issue and most people there were not wearing masks. I'm sitting here a few days later and I'm currently getting sick. This school could be great. It is a great location and most of the professors are amazing. It needs SO much work though. The people running the school are extremely unorganized and underprepared for their positions. Advisors should be taught to do their jobs and know what things to look for in a degree plan, especially for the college they work for. They can't just shove everything onto the department head. Their excuse for not updating the website is that it's "too hard and time consuming" so maybe they should actually hire some people to spend some time on it keeping things updated. Their events need better planning and overall they just need to be much more professional. Every new semester at that school made me extremely stressed because there was always some sort of issue I had to spend ages figuring out on my own. Enroll at your own risk.