Brock University is a really great school to study at. As a political science student, I say this largely due in part to my amazing department, the professors and the wonderful students that make up the discipline’s body.
Brock has a lot going for it. As a small school, it’s easier to get to know your classmates and professors. Oftentimes, you’ll have multiple classes where you come across the same people.
Because everyone knows everyone, Brock has a culture of camaraderie among students in its departments — at least in political science — as opposed to one of strict competition.
Brock is not conducive to bad sportsmanship, and the culture of learning it has is, in my opinion, more focused on the actual outcome of knowledge production. People are open to sharing ideas and kind critiques while being excited to share niche takes or new information with their peers.
Professors also seem to care about their students. In larger universities, professors often deal with far larger classes with more rotating students. With Brock, you tend to become known to your professors overtime.
This is something daunting, but oddly interesting, especially for students who held terrifying images of the average university professor from the stories told by their parents.
However, support staff are (or perhaps were, before recent cuts) numerous at Brock. My academic advisor, for example, provided me with a lot of invaluable academic and moral support, and we have come to know each other by name.
But all of this is impossible without proper management from Brock’s administration. The actions to cut frontline staff by administration earlier this year are indicative of the same sort of logic that neoliberal leaders have been employing, which has blown up in their faces for the past year.
Brock’s leadership forgets that without providing consumers (students) with an excellent and economical experience, they will simply lose them. PepsiCo. learned this when people stopped buying $7 chips.
Brock’s administration should keep this in mind as well. Brock is not a diploma mill; that was never its appeal. Brock’s appeal is its amazing faculty, well supported students and its economical nature compared to other Ontario universities.
By firing front line staff and cutting back on student-facing services, Brock will make it harder and harder for students to justify spending four years here for their degree.
Now I don’t believe that decisions in higher education should be made using sales logic, but the world we live in demands that everything carries a price tag. So, to Brock administration: next time financial hardship comes your way, remember all the factors that drive student enrollment here.
Brock has been an amazing school to study at for me. What made it amazing was the support I received from my department and the wonderful students who are part of it.
The entire political science department has made my university experience nothing short of wonderful.
To students, don’t let the self-serving practices of an administration whose sole focus is their bottom line take away from the aspects of university that make it more than just a tired diploma mill.
Enshitification is a real phenomenon we suffer from, and it’s one we have to stand firm against, not just as a consumer base, but as a community.