skate

This is something that is driving me nut. What exactly is the difference?
I know or think the education is the same. I know that it was once one institute and broke off to become two i.e. Pomona.

What I don't understand is why is it harder to get into SLO vs PO?
Why does it mention that the courses are more intense, harder, or competative compared to PO.

I have read all this information from thier website, to Newsweek school reviews, and various other places.

So what really separates that school academically from Pomona. I don't get it everything seems to be pretty much the same to me even it says so elsewhere.


Just curious

jayandbutton

first some history. the state legislature planned for three polytechnics, beginning in the center of the state at SLO which launched in 1901. the southern branch began 37 years later at san dimas before moving to pomona in 1949. the third campus never got off the ground in the north due to budgetary constraints.

with an almost four decade head start the first campus obviously was mature before the second had even admitted women, yet amazingly by the 1980s the pomona campus, with strong leadership, had almost caught up with SLO academically--if you believe those ratings scales.

more recently, SLO has surged far ahead, fueled in part by huge streams of private funds while pomona has been in a decade-long tailspin that has dropped pomona from a princeton review best in the west nod and taken it from a top ten USNWR ranking in the late 1980s to a tie for 32d among non-doctoral western universities this year.

the pomona campus claims it will launch a capital campaign, but it is so woefully behind SLO in almost every area and likely never again will be similar other than in name. yes, the types of programs are similar but for the most part that's as far as it goes. that said, engineering and architecture still offer solid degrees at pomona though not as highly ranked as at SLO.

the typical SLO student could have gained admit letters at top tier UCs while that kind of student is a rare exception at pomona. the admission standards are not even close.

lakdod

All I got to say the school need to raise more money to make the education at Pomona better. There is so many changes that needs to be made around the Pomona campus. The school says they are making steps , but they are doing it at a slow pace. You would think living in LA it might be easier to raise money from business and wealthy donors of the school.

jayandbutton

but you can't raise money if you have so much personnel turnover, lakdod. the university just had the provost resign and just before that the admin sr. VP left. then there is the revolving door called the VP for student affairs, not to mention all of the missing (and acting) deans.

when you throw that into the record number of departures of faculty and staff, some two thousand years of experience just in the business college in the past two years and you can see why the university is going backward rather than forward.

sawagner

Just a hypothetical here: What would you all think if Cal Poly and Cal Poly Pomona re-merged into one school? We could share our endowment, campuses, resources, and just be one "Cal Poly" again. I think it would help our name recognition.

jayandbutton

wagner,
how about an analogy.

you're the chancellor at berkeley and you're asked if you don't mind merging your campus into your sister school at riverside.

what would you say?
jb

sawagner

jayandbutton,

First, to compare Cal Poly and Cal Poly Pomona with UC Berkeley and UC Riverside isn't really a fair analogy.

Second, assuming your hypothetical, I would say that's fine. School is school. When I was at Cal Poly, I knew many people who very much so wanted a Cal Poly education but couldn't get one because of the stringent admissions standards. Same for when I was at Harvard. All in all, blocking access to universities based upon some sort of brand or concept of prestige is harmful to our population. The CSU system should be especially concerned with this fact.

jayandbutton

what are you smoking, wagner?

let's just let everyone in everywhere because "school is school."

so when harvard invests almost 400 years to build its brand that's equal to some guy who opens a storefront university tomorrow?

brand equity takes decades, even centuries, to build and from that process comes valuation. it's very humanistic of you to suggest that colleges should let in all comers but not very realistic.

even within the CSU, and UC, there are elites and also rans--not one unit as you suggest. part of what makes a university great is the quality of its student body, and good students typically don't want to go to bad universities. how is the population "harmed" by this? because if i screwed up in high school i should be redeemed by a free pass to princeton?

sawagner

I don't smoke, but thanks for asking.

And yes, school is school. Do you honestly believe that you received an inferior education than me because you went to Cal Poly Pomona and I went to Cal Poly & Harvard? I doubt it.

I think it's important to frame what we are disagreeing on here. I think we agree that the education at any accredited school is largely the same, but we don't share a common ground as to educational branding. Yes? Institutional brand may be important to high school seniors, but in the real world I believe that it means very little. Why do you believe that it is a student body that makes an institution great? I think it's the curriculum, the faculty, the scholarships, etc.

The population is harmed by elitist admissions standards because they result in a denial of education--period. And yes, maybe you should go to Princeton: if you believe that you can learn something there that can benefit society, go for it.

xiaoxue

i don't agree with either one of you. the quality of education is absolutely NOT the same at every accredited school. how can it be?

at places like harvard you are taught by nobel laureates and are surrounded by students who are off the charts intellectually. an average person would have to work long and hard just to survive. at some cal states friends tell me it's easier than high school. can you say that about harvard?

i can even see a distinct difference between the mess i faced at pomona and what is offered at fullerton where i am starting graduate classes. both facilities and faculty are vastly different.

but you say every school is the same quality as anywhere else? maybe you don't smoke dude but you must be trippin' on something bad.....

jayandbutton

first of all, congratulations on your acceptance to cal state fullerton, xiaoxue.
they have a brand new college of business building that is huge and cost $80,000,000 that will deliver facilties we will never see here at pomona.

secondly, i never admitted to agreeing with wagner on anything. you are absolutely right that the quality of education varies greatly from school to school and even from class to class within the same school.

if wagner expects us to believe that the education at harvard is the same as you got at pomona, well, maybe it's not the bong but the bottle.

Keng

It's how much you actually learn from the class IMO

ifoughtthelaw

Here is one significant difference:

Top Public Colleges For Getting Rich

Cal Poly SLO is #3 on the list (Forbes Magazine) only preceded by UC Berkley and University of Virginia; and is ahead of all of the other UCs (but tied with UCLA) and, among others, the University of Michigan. CP Pomona did not make the list.

Use this link:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/07/30/col...pcolleges.html

and then click on “Top Public Colleges For Getting Rich”

Also, Cal Poly SLO raised over $91 Million in gifts just this year alone, and has the largest endowment out of all public master’s degree institutions in the US.

xiaoxue

there are far more differences between san luis and pomona than there are similarities. when i was a high school senior people on the pomona campus made it sound like the two schools really were just branches of each other, and they used the rose float as an example. best i know that's the ONLY thing the two schools do together anymore.

a few old teachers and friends working on campus at pomona tell me horror stories of how bad things have gotten now, only a little more than a year since i graduated and started grad school at fullerton. they say morale is so low on campus that nobody cares about doing anything anymore.

imagine a place where there's only one dean left among the six colleges. and that one guy is a new hire, just arriving in december. and the provost has been gone for more than a year. two of the searches for new deans did not even yield enough applicants. unreal.

imagine a place where students who were surveyed said they weren't getting the hands on classes that pomona brags about in their learn by doing motto.

imagine a place so broke that more than 100 science classes were cancelled until students stormed the president's mansion and almost ruined his fancy tea party.

and i'm told the number of classes taught this summer was cut in half.

91 million bucks in gifts? i doubt pomona can do that in a decade. and the capital campaign they bragged about more than a year ago apparently has been suspended for lack of interest.

but at least there's a new library wing for what little that's worth. when they ask me for alumni donations i tell them i am giving to a real university at fullerton rather than a wannabe that pretends it's another SLO.

jayandbutton

that was an excellent link you posted, law. did everybody notice how california schools totally dominate the listings? we have the best colleges in the nation without a doubt.

it was nice to see san jose state make the list. that's an excellent cal state.

as for pomona, xiaoxue you are dead on. this campus has been on a decade long slide and things just keep going from bad to worse. so many outstanding faculty have left, many earlier than expected, that nobody has an accurate count anymore. there probably have been more than fifty losses in business alone in the past three years, and many of those were among the best teachers in the entire university.

it wasn't always this way. back in the late 1980s and early 1990s the pomona campus, like its northern sister with a similar name, was ranked in the top ten among USNWR best western universities. last year we slid all the way down to a tie for 32d from an all time high of 7th--that's probably the deepest drop of any school in the nation.

and we've been pulled from the princeton review best in west list too while san bernardino was added to the list. that's really grim, isn't it?

Admin

Lot of college bounds chose Cal Poly SLO architecture/engineering program over other highly ranked universities (USC, Berkeley, etc.) because of the state university tuition and their renowned education. It is equivalent if not better than many private universities too. No one is surprised to see Cal Poly SLO exceeding Cal Poly Pomona in many ways.

Cal Poly Pomona is still a great school. Anyone can succeed and excel at Pomona.

__________________
SLOPomona Cal Poly Forums

xiaoxue

let me see...the school nosedives from 7th to 32d according to you, jay. but that's a sign of greatness?

but in fact, cal poly pomona was ranked 3d as late as 2002 according to the US News rankings then. i still have the data. but hey, good news, as the latest 2008 rankings show a tie for 31st, up one from last year!

except for the fact that a school ahead, APU, has been moved from a regional to a national university on the strength of its many doctoral programs that cal poly doesn't have, so pomona gets bumped up by default.

so then you say these rankings and lists don't matter. what happens on campus does. is that why my teachers didn't even have erasers in their classrooms but just dirty rags? is that why students had no seats so had to sit on the floor? is that why students had to riot in front of the president's home because there were no classes for them? is that why the athletic facilities are so old that nobody uses them anymore? is that why so many faculty have left campus?

must be because there was just too much greatness.

here's a tip. truly great schools don't say they are. because they don't need to.

bottom line: good people can achieve greatness anywhere, even in spite of their mediocre surroundings.

orangecounty58

sorry to see the rankings fall so far. when i graduated about 5 years ago the Electrical Engineering department started to implement entrance exams once again. the instructors were tired of allowing students who did not belong in the program into the program. this wasn't the schools fault, but rather the fault of the university. the university started to allow students, regardless of gpa, into any school they wanted. needless to say their was a high dropout rate in the EE department and the engineering school as a whole. Things looked good after a year or two, but seems as though things have snowballed at the school. Problems of money were huge in the EE department. When i was looking at various schools, CPP was building the new engineering building. It was labeled as the new "Electrical Engineering" building. Well, the other departments ended up taking the building. Most donations that come in, such as a $1million dollar gift to the EE department was swooped up by the college of engineering by the dean of engineering. As of graduation, the EE department was the only program in the school of engineering generating revenue for the school. Instead of buying equipment that would replace equipment from the 60's and 70's, money would instead go into large workshops which require substantial money to operate. This type of behavior kills the drive of instructors to seek donations from companies. One professor in particular has/had a position with the US Congress and told me he would not ask for money due to the unethical behavior of the dean (which looks like the former dean). The only other school which was larger (by declaration) was the school of business. The school offers a real solid education and has a couple of hybrid degrees not offered at most schools. I would imagine the business school being the most lucrative program due to the low cost involved to operate the school and large enrollment. One can get a "great" solid education at CPP, throw in the cost and one really can not complain too much. The management of the school has needed an overhaul for a long time. Somewhere individuals became more concerned about a paycheck and suiting their own personal agenda. Management has been terrible and there needs to be a great campaign to market the school and allow for money to improve the schools generating revenue.

orangecounty58

i had a friend/classmate at cpp who also went to slo. he said the following regarding differences between the campuses:

A) students are greatly involved in school activities and school government. not to be involved would make you a very odd person.
B) Agriculture dominated the campus
C) Not much around to do, so most people were into what was happening on campus
D) the electrical engineering department at slo was geared more towards Hardware whilst software had a bigger footprint at Pomona. which is evident in the development of the Computer Engineering degree.
E) the campus at SLO was night and day much nicer to look at
F) did not feel one school was more difficult then the other

letter "F" might be most important from a scholastic stand point, but one can not make light of how campus involvement affects the quality of education

i went to cpp because of the student attitude, 98% of the students are always willing to help out the student to the right or left of them. this is not the case at most private schools (that i visited and was accepted to) and many uc systems. i was shown the campus by people i met just walking around campus. we need a counsel of former students running the school, not some outsider there to make a dollar and go on to the next gig.

xiaoxue

OC58,
i'm a cal poly pomona alum, too, in business. now i'm completing an MBA in the OC at cal state fullerton. so i have direct experience to observe two cal states.

all along, i thought the engineering college at pomona was mecca. your insights say otherwise which is startling on the one hand but not surprising at all on the other, as it appears the entire university has gone into the crapper due to mismanagement and sheer apathy.

now, some direct comparisons in business:

fullerton, brand new 90 million dollar named and endowed state of the art building.
pomona, matchbox building some fifty years old, with not enough chairs for students. new building talked about for decades, still nothing started.

fullerton, has been accredited in both business and accounting for decades.
pomona, no accounting accreditation, may not make business reaccreditation because not enough qualified faculty.

fullerton, one of the largest MBA programs in the west with most programs.
pomona, MBA one third of its former size, lost all overseas programs due to apathy.

fullerton, has a dynamic dean on station for many years.
pomona, has the same interim dean it had before the real dean was fired for incompetence.

fullerton, am told only one professor left to take a job elsewhere in past five years.
pomona, am told that more than seventy faculty and staff have left in past three years alone, most not due to retirements.

other posters have called me out for lack of loyalty. that's a two way street, folks. when the university shows no care or respect for its students it deserves nothing back in return.

anybody there when the students stormed the president's mansion in protest for cancelling more than a hundred classes last fall? the sign of a great university, yes?

somebody prove me wrong. the truth hurts when it's your school that sucks.