I am a big supporter of Missouri S&T and that is why I feel compelled to write this article. In my years at Missouri S&T, I have started to notice and hear about things that seem like they could be easily fixed. On top of this, many of you may have read the article written and published this past spring by the school's newspaper called, "Faculty and Administration Work to Solve Tough Issues on Campus". Because of this article, my own observations, and various events around the state that affect us indirectly, I will be discussing the top three things I think MST should do in order to bump itself up even higher in the college rankings.

1. Raise Admission Standards, Lower the Difficulty of Freshmen Classes

You will hear it the day you step on campus and you will hear it the day you leave the campus; "The freshmen classes are meant to weed out the un-dedicated from the dedicated. This practice needs to stop immediately. While the freshmen classes are naturally difficult, they should not be so difficult that our graduation rate is so ridiculously low. To give you some statistics, our freshmen satisfaction rate is 84%. While this seems like a promising number, you have to remember that a lot of our freshmen don't actually start in the extremely difficult classes. To break it down even further, our four year graduation (the rate of students that take four years to graduate) is 23%. On top of all this, our graduation rate is 63%.

My hypothesis as to why these numbers are the way they are, is because our admissions standards are so low. MST's own website even says that a student who is in the top half of their high school class and has a 24 ACT will likely be admitted. Do a little more digging on our school's website and you will see scholarship money starts at 4.0 GPA in high school and a 24 ACT. We've been ranked with MIT, Georgia Tech, Purdue, Cal Tech, etc. Most of these schools have higher admission requirements. It's time to get with the times, stop providing false hope to these freshmen, and say, "Sorry, our school is hard, you won't make it, and we're not going to make you spend the time and money here to figure that out."

2. MST Dictates What Rolla Does, Not the Other Way Around

According to the most recent census (2013) and our own enrollment figures, the student body, faculty, and staff are 10,354. The population of Rolla is 19,831. Roughly a 2:1 ratio. For comparison, Mizzou has 50,000 person campus in a town of 115,000 and MO State has a 25,000 person campus in a town of 164,000. So as you can see, we are a fairly large population for the size of town that we are in. Now, allegedly, and I do mean allegedly, the main reason MST has a campus infrastructure problem is because the city of Rolla blocks a lot of the proposals presented by MST.

To give you some ideas about how bad our infrastructure is, as referenced in the first link, almost all of our campus buildings were designed and rated for a student body of 5000. We are currently a student body of 8889. On top of this, we have already surpassed our 2020 enrollment projection, and our numbers are only expected to rise. Some other infrastructure problems include, icy sidewalks, lack of parking (without getting a ticket), and over-crowded dorms and dining halls.

This brings me to my proposal. MST is part of the UM system which is the official Missouri government funded college system of Missouri. All of MST's money comes from tuition and supplemented by the Missouri government. We should have the Missouri Congress introduce legislation that allows MST to bypass ordinances and restrictions of the Rolla city government and eminent domain parts of Rolla that the state government and administration deems are for the betterment of the campus and MST.

3. Standardize Grading and Increase the Quality and Quantity of Faculty

I would venture a guess and say that every student on campus has been exposed to 3+ styles of grading whether it be the curve, gap grading, etc. Enough is enough. Here is my proposal on how to grade.

Take the class averages of the last two years, average those together, find out what ratio you need to multiply that average by to get the class average up to 100%. We will call this ratio The Degree of Difficulty of the class. Then each student's final grade is multiplied by this ratio and that would be their new final grade. This would allow students to more accurately determine their course load, as well as, standardize across the board the way we evaluate the students. Think about it. Assuming you are taking six courses, each three credit hours. That is 18 credit hours which, at MST, seems like a lot. However, if you add up the degrees of difficulty and it comes out to be a six, then you know that your 18 credit hour semester is actually going to be a breeze.

However, no grading policy is going to matter if you have bad teachers. It's no secret that we have a very diverse faculty and there are many rumors about departments having major disagreements within, because of a clash of cultures. On top of this, I have had many teachers I can't understand. I personally recommend the administration start looking at places to cut some funding and instead, invest in sending teachers to conferences about how to be better teachers as well as making sure the teachers can speak fluently in the language that their students speak.