10 years too early - a look at JHU 2006 vs 1996

Ah, back from another trip to The Johns Hopkins University where three of us MSFTers represented our fine company at the Job Fair and at a ~2.5 hour long information session. Since graduating in 2000, I’ve been back there every year except for 2003 and 2004 - sometimes multiple times per year.

It’s really amazing how much has changed in the last 6 years. Over half a dozen buildings that didn’t exist when I was there are now complete or on the way to being completed. In contrast, during the 4 years I was there, only 1 new building opened! The neighborhood has change dramatically as well. Today I walked down St. Paul street, just one block over from Hopkins, and this is what I saw:

Wow! A Starbucks will be opening soon!

Full Stop.

That’s right. It’s the tail end of 2006 and the nearest Starbucks to JHU is 2.9 miles away. Now, Starbucks isn’t exactly the height of civilization, but… do you know of any other Top 15 universities that doesn’t have a Starbucks in a .5 mile radius, if not on-campus? it’s just an example of how far Hopkins, the nation’s first research university has needed to come.

Those who know me well, know that I’ve never expressed fondness for my 4 years at Hopkins. Things were pretty bad when I was a student there. When I came to visit after being accepted, a student had just shot another student - shocking the school. When I enrolled, too many students had been accepted which led to doubling/tripling rooms meant for 1 or 2 (with no corresponding price adjustment!) I wasn’t exactly sheltered having spent a lot of time in the not so great early 90’s NYC, but even then the violent crime rate in Baltimore was easily double - and it showed: my suitemate was mugged in front of a University-owned property, I heard a grad student get assaulted with a brick outside my window by a mugger, and a friend of a friend was robbed by a pack of 13 year olds. (If you have HBO, be sure to see this episode of The Wire. It may seem exaggerated to you, but it is real.)

And that was just off-campus. On campus, I remember having a brand new math professor apologize because the “marks” (he was Canadian) on the midterms were too high, and that this would have to be compensated for later on. There were undergraduate TA’s who were simultaneously enrolled in the class they were TAing. My upper-level database class had 200 students (normally 40 - thanks .com boom) and final projects couldn’t be completed in one semester because the server load took down the server nightly. My roommate had a professor who scheduled a final at the same as another class’, and told him “I guess you’ll have to make a choice.” And finally, I remember that one of the on-campus cafeterias was shut down by the City’s Health Department after an anonymous tip from an employee about massive health violations, which the University denied, proved true - 18 violations!

Apparently, I’m wasn’t alone - the problems was so serious that the University set up a commission in 2003 which published a 65+ page report about the situation. Here’s a select quote published in the June 2003 issue of The Johns Hopkins Magazine about why this came to be in an article entitled Not-So-Great Expectations:

One in two freshmen arrive at Johns Hopkins expecting to have an unsatisfactory student experience. And too many actually do, according to a report recently issued by an influential university commission.

…

Says Cunico, “There are a lot of people who will ask you, ‘If you could do it all again, would you pick Hopkins?’ And I would say, ‘No, but I know why I came and I picked up a lot of good lessons at this institution.”

That answer troubles Hopkins administrators and faculty. . For several years, they’ve been hearing similar sentiments from alarming numbers of undergraduates who have come to believe that Hopkins doesn’t care enough about the quality of their undergraduate experience. Students complain that they can spend four years at Homewood and never know a professor well enough to procure a meaningful letter of recommendation. They say that you hear all about the cherished seminar system, but if you’re an engineering or science major you’ll spend your time in large, impersonal lecture classes. That you will look in vain for a sense of student community, of school spirit. That you’ll talk to friends at other schools who seem to be having a much better time than you are, and console yourself that a degree from Hopkins will open doors, provided you find some useful advice on where those doors might be.

Unfortunately those doors aren’t always so great… from the same article:

As winter gives way to spring, J. may be thinking not about graduate or medical school but about employment. Undergraduates surveyed by CUE complained about the level of Hopkins career counseling. Cunico says his own experience was not good: “You go to the career center, and they say, ‘Unless you want to be a lawyer, a doctor, or a banker, we don’t have much for you.’ That’s unbelievably frustrating.” The few job fairs that he attended didn’t provide much. “I walked through and there wasn’t anything for me. I don’t want to join the Peace Corps, I don’t want to join the Army, and I’m not an engineer, so it’s pointless to talk to Lockheed Martin.”

This is one of the reasons why I’m very proud that Microsoft continues to hold job fairs at Hopkins - and one of the reasons why I really nagged Microsoft when they stopped a few years ago! It’s to give students hope that they can get careers in places other than biotech companies, banks, and 3-letter agencies (though the CIA does tend to give our neat pins.) The number of Computer Science students has really dropped since I graduated - and I’d like to see it rise again.

In any case, the last 6 years have been amazing at Hopkins. The campus, especially with the addition of Charles Commons, is so much nicer, safer, and… well… more collegiate-feeling than it was when I was there. No more “Death lane“, no more shady row houses, no more dimly lit areas, no more having to worry about being hit by a car on campus. When I made a joke about how I was surprised that no one stole all the pens during the raffle sign up so that others couldn’t win - someone actually said “It’s not cutthroat like that anymore.” Wow.

Oh, and today I ate at a cafeteria - it looks like they followed through on the Commission’s recommendation #33:

33. Improve food quality and service at Homewood so that it can effectively function as an essential element in community building.

They even take credit cards… nice!My first year of Hopkins was also President Bill Brody’s. To the right is a picture of Wendy and Bill from Move-in day in 1999. Since graduating, I’ve come to understand how committed he was/is to improving the undergraduate experience.

Congratulations Dr. Brody on 10 years at Hopkins, and the accomplishments that you and your staff have achieved. I have no doubt there’s still room for improvement (will NEB ever have a real name?) - but this is definitely the Hopkins I would have wanted to attend. Good work!

P.S. Sorry I called you the “slum lord of Hopkins” over e-mail in 1999. The 2 weeks of intermittent hot-water outages really got on my nerves - especially since I knew what the inside scoop was on how it happened.