Near East University Faculty Of Economics And Administrative Sciences Department Of: Fill & Download for Free

April, 2018The short answer … banned from sustainable employment in Japanese academia.Just some thoughts on the matter, some more random than others …Generally speaking, Japanese institutions, especially colleges, are run according to a strict hierarchy, the structure of which doesn’t seem to be closely correlated with merit, and like all institutions, tend to depend on opaque, rule-driven behavior, rather than the empathy-driven morality of learning / nurturing communities.Forget that baloney about Japanese culture excelling at group work. The Far Eastern virtues of ‘harmony and traditions’ are not so different from the Western counterpart of ‘individuality and freedom’ … just buzzwords for ruling elites to herd the majority into a superficial compliance to authority … ‘authoritarianism’ being the operating word. They might have been ideals in small communities, but as larger numbers of people tend to do, displace those communities with hierarchies, replace empathy with cognitive constructs of tradition, law, or algorithms … all of which may give lip service to community values, but are thinly veiled justifications for the hierarchical power structure we social primates are so fond of.The biggest difference is the tool of choice by which the ruling elite control the disposable human capital beneath them … and the oxymoronic titles of these two books alone should be enough too spell it out:1 — For the West, Chomsky and Herman’s Manufacturing Consent2 — For the East, Edited by Vlastos, Invented Traditions of Modern JapanSchools, corporations, religions, governments, think-tanks, and even some NPOs — in either the Far East or the West, are not democratically run. When was the last time you, the typical Quora reader, were elected to the board of directors on earned merit alone?For those who haven’t seen this movie about the dysfunctions of ‘corporations’, I hope you take a peak, and just imagine similar dysfunctions to all groups, since the dawn of civilization, larger than local communities.Large populations of we herding primates are organized into hierarchies, and those at the top are largely there through the privilege of inheritance, or the dark triad behaviors of self-entitlement.As pointed out in the documentary, through morally questionable legal gymnastics, corporations have been granted ‘personhood’. But when when the social dynamics of a collective entity are compared with a relatively normal single individual, the collective lacks a collective moral autonomy that individuals are expected to aspire to mature.The collective ticks off the traits of a narcissist and psychopath. The priority of the corporate collective is legally constrained to profiting the shareholders, not the stakeholders … a zero sum game that is won by externalizing losses to competitors, the infrastructure, and/or the environment.This cuts deeper into human nature than capitalism or socialism. It is the social dynamics of in-gropus and out-groups, populations of scale, and hierarchies. The narratives barely holding the cultural conceits holding a corporate nation-state’s public education, history, and news together barely maintain the cohesive narratives of our cultural conceits. Though new in the West, as far as I can see from chats with educated native Japanese, the Far Eastern hierarchies do not even have a word for Collective Narcissism, yet it is the in-group water these fish swim.Again, forget that baloney about Japanese culture excelling at group work. The culture is obsessed with competition and ranking that would make an American blush. Any collaboration between schools, companies, or institutions in general, if done at all, tends to be secretive, and antithetical to the narratives and conceits which hold the lower ranking members of the group together.For the big picture … I would agree with the documentary, and go a bit further, in saying that homo sapiens, is by nature, most optimally a social primate that hopefully matures into a responsible member of a community … thus ALL institutions (corporate, government, religious, educational, etc.) eventually undergo mission drift / mission creep into corruption and eventual failure. With our current technological capacity lacking both an equivalent moral capacity and unlimited natural resources, I can’t help but to expect our sins to catch up with us in a catastrophic malthusian meltdown. The task of the morally autonomous human should be to prolong that day of reckoning, altruistically if necessary.My poster boy for mission creep / mission drift is Harvard University. With the world’s largest endowment of around 40 billion dollars, it is by far the world’s wealthiest university, and has more disposable cash than some countries. Yet America’s oldest school was founded by a clergyman, John Harvard, with the intent on instructing future clergy in ‘god’s ways’. Alumni and former Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, when justifying to the collective slap on the wrist by the Obama administration for bankers grabbing such obscenely high salaries and stock options in a land of increasing poverty, answered with a line from prosperity theology that likes of Jim Baker or Donald Trump would appreciate … that bankers do gods work (as if nurses and teachers do not). Journalist Matt Taiibi, in his famous Rolling Stone magazine article, The Great American Bubble Machine, began with a bang …“The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.”Back to a more parochial social landscape, In either my native American culture, or Japan, if the boss says ‘black is white’, you either ignore the cognitive dissonance and respond in the affirmative like a machine-man should, or you are out. Corporate or private, I’d say Japanese institutions are about as ‘democratic’ (community-driven) as American institutions … which is not very much.What is particularly frustrating about ‘educational’ institutes is the blatant hypocrisy of the gap between professed values (empowering the individual to reach their full potential, and building compassionate, critically-thinking, problem-solving communities — who are also able and willing to hold authority accountable) and actual goals (identifying ‘talent’ through standardized testing, funneling that talent into institutions of appropriate power and prestige — and therefore further enhancing the power and prestige of the identifying / funneling ‘educational’ institute, thus moving up the ladder of ‘being more selective’ (exclusive) than competing institutes, and therefore more powerful) … a damned zero-sum game of winning at the expense of others.There are too many examples of how this plays out over time by looking at the feeding-funneling ground of U.S. Ivy Leagues. Just look at dog-eat-dog, self entitlement of the dark-triad driven individual who is moving between educational and for profit institutions, and clambering to climb to the top of either … ‘Really Graceful’ does an excellent job here.What ‘Really Graceful’ says about the Education system is mirrored by Japan’s, and I dare say the systems in China and most of the Corporate Capitalist world.Although hierarchies may be the default organization of social primates when they exceed small communities, Japanese institutions are notorious for one’s status based on the old boy’s network, gender, ethnicity, or simply age.Hundreds of years of mission creep have reduced the original Confucian meritocratic ideals of institutions to a kabuki-show-cover for concentrations of power decided by families, connections, and blind ambition. That being said, as the political situation in my native U.S. is demonstrating through my example of Harvard above, these kind of social dynamics may be par for the course, world wide.For a good example of the corruptive dynamics of ‘mssion creep’ or Mission Drift’ … just look at the breeding ground of high flying Wall Street CEO’s, Harvard University. Alumni and former Goldman Sachs CEO ”Blankfein Says He's Just Doing 'God's Work' … and being a Harvard University graduate, that makes sense. After all, the school’s founding charter in 1636 stated clearly "To be plainly instructed and consider well that the main end of your life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ." But with with the U.S. having the world’s largest prison population (many such prisons for profit, not rehabilitation), an opioid epidemic fueled by Big Pharma, Washington Post owner and richest man in the world Jeff Bezos … timing the pee breaks of his minimum wage workers, unprecedented levels of homelessness, and so on, and so on … a few of us might be excused for meekly asking whether Harvard and Yale have Drifted from their Original Mission.One writer I’ve come to trust is Matt Taibi, whose first paragraph in his ‘Rolling Stone’ article The Great American Bubble Machine is now a cultural meme the ruling elite would just as soon ban from public school OR college text books … “The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.”Blankfein was right. He is doing god’s work. Only his god’s name is Mammon.What has this got to do with me being banned from higher education in Japan? Please bear with me.Here, Matt talks about a phenomenon of that ‘gray zone’ between private companies and the governent, in this case, profiteering off the sub-prime loan crisis.This kind of gray zone is a common tradition in Japan. It is called ‘ama kudarai’ … descent from heaven … describing how well paid national government workers retire early to an even better paid private sector. Mission drift with a golden parachute.In other words, Japanese institutions are not known for their leadership. They tend to be led by symbolic ‘managers’ who have only a passing acquaintance with the cultural conceit of meritocracy.Japan has a ruling aristocracy. Some are in that lofty stratosphere by ancestral tradition, others by dint of dark-triad behavior, and there is a ‘fuzzy logic’ around the edges, but it is no less real than the labyrinthine titles of British royalty.And like America and Great Britain, the current model of economics has little to do with educational ideals … and schools, as institutions, are not run by meritocratic ideals, or even educational ideals. Schools tend to be run like most other neo-liberal businesses … depending on zero-sum games and economies of scale to outsource losses rather than absorb them.When I was younger, I mistakenly put teachers on a pedestal, and aspired to a profession as either a teacher or writer. But I am a slow learner, and it took a while to find that teachers are neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ as people. There is as much quality, or lack of, as can be found in any institutionalized counterpart in the arts or sports or any profession. In idolizing teachers, and therefore schools, I had made the fundamental attribution error, and indulged in that error for much too long.Schools, as institutions, are no different from banks.Scholars, academics, and administrators are not saints.Hell, even saints are not saints.But there is even less acknowledgement of quality in Japan’s educational institutions than in American counterparts.Unlike some schools in the U.S., no matter how moving, or how consistent, or how effective a teacher may be, there is little acknowledgement of that by peers in Japan. You will not see a ‘Teacher of the Year’ award in most Japanese schools … nor any equivalence of ‘The Great Courses’ series so popular in the U.S. — here crammed into one of my book cases, about $10,000 invested in what many Japanese schools see as worthless … or as a marketing gimmick at best.When my school was in the process of moving from Hino, West Tokyo, to the more upscale and trendy Shibuya of downtown Tokyo, I verified that books were seen by the school’s administration as mere shop-window accessories. It was less than a year since the Great Tohoku Earthquake had left a wake of devastated communities north of Tokyo, but rather than donate books to those communities and schools from my own school’s library, I watched in ‘shock and awwww’ as volumes of Shakespeare, Dickens, Hawthorne, Plato, Russell, and thousands of books in Japanese, were unceremoniously fed into a garbage truck, shredding and compressing those works into easily disposable trash. Standing there alone, watching the process, I felt like I had been sucker punched in the gut.As for quality teaching, you will not even get a pat on the back by administration or colleagues for doing a good job. It is taken for granted that anyone who is a ‘sensei’ is above reproach, and not held accountable for quality, other than as a ‘managerial’ stick-or-carrot tool to get rid of trouble-makers or outsource costs.In Japan, even more than most countries, innovators are trouble-makers for those most comfortably nestled in entitled positions of authority. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out about the U.S. economic/political system, the rigidly authoritarian, centralized power structures of Japanese institutions tend to be self interested rather than goal oriented, and that ‘self’ is not even the whole institution, but rather those most comfortably nested at the top.The problem with this kind of social dynamic, though, might be summed up best with best-selling author and anthropologist Jared Diamond’s final lines about the failed Norse colony in Greenland about 500 years ago …‘Thus, Norse society’s structure created a conflict between the short-term interests of those in power, and the long-term interests of the society as a whole. Much of what the chiefs and clergy valued proved eventually harmful to the society. Yet the society’s values were at the root of its strengths as well as of its weaknesses. The Greenland Norse did succeed in creating a unique form of European society, and in surviving for 450 years as Europe’s most remote outpost. We modern Americans should not be too quick to brand them as failures, when their society survived in Greenland for longer than our English-speaking society has survived so far in North America. Ultimately, though, the chiefs found themselves without followers. The last right that they obtained for themselves was the privilege of being the last to starve.’Diamond, Jared. Collapse (p. 276). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.I’ve thought of the psychology of classroom dynamics as one metaphor for the group dynamics involved. Whereas small learning communities can be relatively egalitarian and empathy-driven, larger groups (probably Dunbar’s number or more) tend to depend on rule-driven moralities. But when empathy for the individual becomes irrelevant, rules become niche opportunities for ‘dark triad’ personality types, fake news or bread and circuses for the whimsical play of pareidolia, and blind spots for those suffering from prosopagnosia.Despite being well below Dunbar’s number, I could not find an education ‘community’ at my school. Only a gang of kyuryo dorobo (salary-thieves), desperately trying to look gentrified under the cover of ‘institutionalization’.Over the course of 36 years teaching in Japanese colleges, and at least 15 as a tenured Associate Professor, in weekly department meetings, or monthly academic assemblies, I have never, NEVER, heard or taken part in a discussion about educational values or goals.Never.Schools appear to be basically business opportunities for people who are not normally business oriented. Schools have become more conservative gate-keepers to the ‘real world’ of business which, at the very least, is ideologically constrained and driven by the market. Though petty politics seem to be part and parcel of the nature of homo sapiens, where businesses can not afford the luxury of racism, schools can.Culturally and institutionally embedded racism, gender discrimination, and age descrimination are among the many tools used to enforce conformity to an authoritarian hierarchy.I can’t attribute this exclusively to Japanese schools though. Former colleagues, co-workers, and doctoral cohort members at an American university in Japan have not been of any help other than a ‘gambatte’ here and a ‘I hear you’ there. And while working at least a dozen years at Temple University Japan, an American school, I’ve seen enough pettiness and bullying to realize it is the nature of the beast.Meh … maybe I’m just an ass. Just barely getting by with a little help from my friends, mostly Japanese.And another reason I can’t play the racist card so easily is because it is not just foreigners who are suffering. By chance (or is there really any chance?), today’s lead story on one of my news feeds, a translated subsidiary of Japan’s most widely read newspaper, The Yomiuri Shimbun.In a country like Finland, education has been the most popular career choice among college students.But most of Japan’s ‘best and brightest’ (as I suspect America’s) choose the financial sector. It is a VERY competitive country, and foreigners are not the only ‘losers’ in a zero-sum game.Among the other easy pickings of opportunists include the elderly (several times a week, an educational short is shown on NHK television about how the elderly can avoid getting scammed), the working poor (1/6 of families containing school children according to the government’s own statistics, minorities among Japanese - news reports of police officers sent down to Okinawa and using ethnic slurs against the Ryukyu people, anti-discrimination laws protecting the Ainu being passed only as recently as the 1990’s, and the huge gender gap. Even high school students have to form a labor union to fight predatory part-time companies.Of course there is nothing preventing the marginalized from being just as driven by opportunistic instincts — the same as the ‘winners’.The really dangerous gap, not just in Japan, but in most large scale industrial societies, is between our own altruistic tendencies and our opportunistic tendencies. But as a Taoist saying goes, the more laws governing the people, the more evil the people become. Hierarchies and rule-driven morality end up making more problems than they solve … making more niches for Dark triad personality types to hide and pounce.But back to that lead story about work ambitions of college students. Notice the Winter Olympics medal standings beside the lead article?I would much rather have seen a photo of the moment when Nao Kodaira wrapped her arms around the stressed-out Lee Sang-hwa. If I could find myself ‘loving’ a nation-state (and that is a big ‘if’), that would be the Japan I could learn to love, but I suspect Kodaira’s touching gesture came despite Japan’s educational system, not because of it.And back to the short reason for MY ban … everything that could have gone wrong in the scenario behind 12 Angry Men … with myself playing the part of the immigrant juror.Update: Wednesday, Feb.28, I just received the following from Quora admin:Your answer to What are you banned from? Why? is getting views. Answers with good credentials get more views and help readers. Update your credential.So I guess that means I should be updating a resume to fit this answer? (sighing) I presumed that part of my answer included enough of those qualifications so I would not slip into a vulgar display of self-promotion, but will comply with Quora’s suggestion, though it may be just a bot doing its algorithmically determined job.At the risk of later repetition in my answers, to get my ‘qualifications’ out of the way, here is the short version of my resume. Feel free to skip ahead to read my answer … or not.1 - For about 36 consecutive years, over half my life, I have been both a trainer, facilitator, and educator in Japan. I DO make a distinction between the three, and if you would like to know why, Wiki is a great place to start.Although I first started teaching at conversation schools, most of that time has been teaching in colleges and universities including Waseda, Tokyo University of the Arts, Nippon University (Nichidai), Komazawa University, Musashi University, and the list goes on. I have turned down a part-time job offer from Keio University. Those of you familiar with Japanese Universities will recognize a few Japanese ‘Ivy League’ names on my short list.2 - I had been a full-time, tenured Professor at Jissen Women's Educational Institute, having reached the rank of ‘Associate Professor', when I chose to resign under protest from what I considered racist-tinged behavior on the part of my ‘colleagues’ and administration. At the very least, they were guilty of harassment as a breach of Japanese Labor Law. Nearly three years later, and I am still looking for work that provides at least enough income to pay the rent, but find it odd I can’t even find part-time work in English skills oriented academia, and in the world’s most heavily populated Metropolitan area. Will leave it to the reader to do the math.2 - I have also taught classes, as a volunteer, from private kindergartens たまだいらようちえん to corporate in-house technical high schools Hino Motors which are not under the auspices of highly centralized MEXT (The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology).3 - I have taught at public high schools sakushin-gakuin-high-schoolに関するnabinnoのはてなブックマーク and have given presentations as a volunteer at various public elementary schools and Jr. High Schools in the Hino City area.4 - Though not a particularly outstanding student, I have an undergraduate degree in biology with a concentration in Marine sciences, a Master’s Degree in Education, T.E.S.O.L., and matriculated into, though did not finish, a Doctoral program in Education at Temple University Japan where I also taught liberal arts, biology labs, and speaking / writing skills in the undergraduate program for over 10 years — Temple University, Japan Campus.5 - I have published original research regarding Education in Japan (though mostly in in-house academic journals that are not peer-reviewed), and have given several academic presentations in Japan, Korea, and the U.S. regarding that research, one of which was an award winning poster session.6 - All textbooks used in Japanese public schools (elementary through High Schools) must pass through a MEXT textbook committee associated with each subject. From 2006 until 2011, I was one of maybe 3 native speakers of English in Japan on the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology English Textbook committee. I resigned only because I became too busy and stressed-out with the duties associated with a tenured position in a dysfunctional college.7 - Even though I resigned from the MEXT textbook committee, I am on the mailing list of P.A.L.E. (Professionalism and Administration in Language Education), a special interest group within J.A.L.T. (Japan Association of Language Teachers). Though mostly merely a lurker, it is through the sporadic newsletters that I am somewhat familiar with the diminishing and precarious status of non-native Japanese language instructors.8 - From the news, and my sporadic volunteer activities with a labor union, I have increasingly become aware of the precarious nature of employment for all teachers in Japan, regardless of nationality or ethnicity. I have been to Tokyo District court a few times as member of that union supporting other marginalized teachers.9 - Other peripheral volunteer activities have included workshops with the mental health care out-patients via the Hino City Government — as well as English communication classes for the office staff, supporting a loose coalition of local activists supporting the severely handicapped (pic updated Monday May 7, 2018) …several trips to rural Cambodia supporting teachers and students, frequent trips and support for a roving soup kitchen supporting the homeless (Steve Martin (Steven Martin)'s answer to Is it true that in Japan there are no beggars?), and 13 years as a volunteer judge/advisor for Japanese University E.S.S. (English Speaking Society) All Japan English Speech Contests at schools such as Tokyo University 3 times), Waseda, Keio, Sophia, Soka Daigakku, Hosei University, Takasaki City University, and my own former place of employment, Jissen Women’s College.Now that that my qualifications are out of the way, on to the answer.For the longer explanation:The context ... I was the only full-time, non-Japanese, tenured professor (Associate Professor of English) in an English Communication Department of a Japanese Junior College ... Jissen Women's Junior College .The ban(s) ...1 — Banned by The English Communication Department from conducting community outreach work or volunteer activities — even with other departments at the same school, or with students in my own classes — without permission from my Department's Japanese 'colleagues'.To be clear about community outreach activities, (and repeating my qualifications listed previously), this was not in affiliation with any particular religious or political institution … I was on the board of directors of the Hino City government NPO TOKYO International Communication Committee, a volunteer English teacher at a local Kindergarten, たまだいらようちえん, volunteered as a communication facilitator for mental health care outpatients, work with a traveling soup kitchen supporting the homeless in Shinjuku … Soup no Kai, held community/student workshops with Junior Chamber International Japan, helped out with a local circle supporting the severely handicapped, took 4 trips at my own expense to rural Cambodia to work with teachers and students, volunteered as an in-house technical high school English teacher for Hino Motors, and volunteered (refusing to accept monetary honorariums) as a speech contest judge for All Japan Intercollegiate Speech Contests sponsored by the highest ranked schools in Japan … Tokyo University, Waseda, Keio, and Sophia, among others.I take volunteerism as a natural extension of an educator’s pedagogic toolbox — not just as some information to pass down to the students from the Ministry of Education, but as the obligation of an educator to facilitate, and act as a role model.I was a member of an English Communication Department. But other than the traditional top-down, sage-on-stage, one-way ‘communicating’ all too common in higher education, all too clearly, I saw my own limits as a collaborative facilitator. I was teaching college students, mostly young women.My gaps were many … gender, age and pop culture awareness (older than their parents), national culture (raised in the U.S.), and individual differences (I like fishing and playing guitar). To communicate those values central to a liberal arts education, I had no choice but to try and connect my students with those I consider worthy role models in the Japanese community.After all education should be a community, not an institution … right? At least some individuals within the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology — for which I also worked as one of maybe three or four textbook proofreaders in the whole country at any single time — seems to agree. And the Ministry has also tried time and again to instill those same behavior patterns among teachers, mostly to no avail.The response by my Japanese colleagues was that such community outreach activities were irrelevant to my duties as an employee of the department and full time faculty member of the school, to exclude me from any real decision making processes, and to insist that my priority is restricted to the role of a native-speaking English informant and support for the ‘real’ teachers … presumably full-time, ethnic Japanese department members.The department chairman insisted that the Dean of the entire University was ‘wrong’ in insuring me that I had equal rights and responsibilities as other tenured Japanese faculty members. Even after repeated requests to have the Dean and the Department chairman meet to decide my status as stated in my tenured contract … they mutually refused to meet and formally decide my status. Convenient tactics on their part. Ha. The oldest trick in the book … divide and conquer.I refused to follow this ban on volunteerism on at least 8 grounds:I was told by the Dean that I was an 'equal' member of the Department, though I had no 'equal' part in making such department ’rules' ... and had no 'equal' right to question them.Japanese colleagues were not bound by the same 'rules'. Some are more 'equal' than others.Such 'rules' were contrary to the institution's stated ideals as stated on its glossy, catch-copy homepage ... University Ideology.Such 'rules' are particularly contrary to the need for volunteer work still necessary for dealing with the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami , not to mention covering those current social problems the government and infrastructure of Japan can not deal with ... the homeless (despite a seemingly contradictory problem of a decreasing and aging population), high rates of work induced suicide and mental health care problems, insufficient support for the aged, terminally ill, severely handicapped, and orphans, and a growing digital divide and wealth gap resulting in the hollowing out of the middle class and growing numbers of working poor — the government's own statistics state that 1/6 of Japanese children are at the poverty level or below.Such 'rules' are contrary to educational goals and obligations as expressed by MEXT:Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the highest level of authority regarding education in Japan.Such 'rules' are contrary to Japan's signing of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations).Such 'rules' are contrary to the common sense of any adult capable and willing to foster the personal growth of young people, and contrary to any socially mature adult's sense of obligation to help nurture a sustainable local community.Such ‘rules’ compelled me to ‘obey department colleagues’. Say what? How can ‘obey colleagues’ NOT be an oxymoron? Even as the only tenured ‘Associate’ Professor with a graduate degree in T.E.S.O.L., by what academic virtue did my department ‘colleagues’ presume to have the right to tell me how to teach, which language to use, and when to use it? For any other academically credentialed professors reading this … how would you feel about ‘colleagues’ outside of your own academic discipline who presume to micro-manage your classes?I was a slow learner. It took several years to figure out what ‘communication’ means when being directed to this non-Japanese member of the department. I will spell it out for you in a Japanese language lesson which I call ‘The 5 M’s’ approach to managing foreign teachers (though it is equally applied to other Japanese of lower rank within institutions).1 - Meilei - to give orders2 - Marunage - to pass the buck3 - Mukanshin - to completely ignore4 - Madogiwazoku - to marginalize someone to a seat by the window5 - Murahachibu - to completely cast out of the communityWhy ... ?Officially — 'Volunteer activities are not part of our program this year.' (As explained by two successive Department Chairmen) and you, as a foreign instructor, do not have equal rights of tenure as Japanese colleagues.Officially — ‘You do have all the equal rights and responsibilities of Japanese colleagues. (As explained by the Dean of the University).More likely — I was the only full-time, non-Japanese, tenured professor in an English Communication Department of a Japanese Junior College ... Jissen Women's Junior College — managerially problematic because the willfully contradictory status was designed only to make me compliant to orders, without any of the rights of tenure or educational obligation to the students.——————————————2 — Banned, subsequently, by the Board of Directors from:receiving any classes the following academic yeartaking my scheduled research sabbaticalWhy ... ?Officially — for refusing to sign a document prepared especially for me, demanding that I follow above stated Department 'rules' regarding community outreach activities and volunteer work.More likely — I was the only full-time, non-Japanese, tenured professor in an English Communication Department of a Japanese Junior College ... Jissen Women's Junior College.The ‘dead silence’ detail …Upon being called into a conference with the Dean and Assistant Dean and presented with the document, I was told to either sign it, or forfeit my impending 1 year research sabbatical to Cambodia. I pointed out that if I signed that document, I would be forfeiting my right and my obligation to help my own seminar student prepare for the upcoming Tokyo Jr. College English Speech Contest.Even before my ten years of tenure at the school, as a part-timer, I had been asked, and accepted, the role of volunteering to be the coach of each year’s contestant. My full-time colleagues appeared to not have either the interest, temperament, skills, or educational priorities to do so, and so I stepped up to the plate.After about 12 years or so of doing this, I petitioned to have my speech coaching ‘volunteer’ duties re-designated as one of my committee responsibilities, since volunteerism was no longer officially part of their program … and as counterparts at other schools also have their duties counted as ‘work duties’, not volunteerism.My request was granted, but being as opportunistic as they were, authority was immediately handed over to a Japanese colleague heading a new ‘Kyoiku-inkai’ (Education Committee), which I was not invited to join.During the time I had been doing this as a volunteer, I was also a member ot the Tokyo Jr. College Speech Contest Committee, and so I had the benefit of receiving communication about the contest directly at the committee meetings, and was able to have nearly a year to prepare multiple students (in the name of equal opportunity) for the contest … and all of that editing, re-writing, and bringing out the best of the student took that whole year.But now my duties had become ‘official’, and subject to receiving information on my colleague’s definition of ‘a need to know’ basis. This meant that I would now have to ask permission from my Japanese superior to ‘volunteer’, and it was only under his auspices, and at his convenience, and on his terms that I was allowed to do the same work I previously did on my own free will. All of the same responsibility, but with an added layer of bureaucratic hierarchy insuring I would not have the right to receive the direct and timely information necessary to do my job. My colleagues saw this as an opportunity to further marginalize me and concentrate institutional power into their hands.I no longer was given the courtesy of information about the speech contest until a month or two prior to the contest … as the new Education Committee did not consider it a priority to inform me of the theme or schedule of the speech contest in a timely manner. Neither making my job easier, nor bringing out the best in students was the priority of my colleagues. Putting an uppity foreigner in his place was.But back to the conference with the Dean and his demand that I sign a letter compelling me following orders from my colleagues.‘In the school’s 120 year history, has any other faculty member been asked to sign such a letter prior to taking a research sabbatical?’ I asked.‘No’ was the curt reply.The paper laid on the desk in front of me, waiting to be signed. I looked at the Dean and reminded them that as this forbids me from volunteering …. and I was specifically told by my colleagues, I no longer had the right to help even my own seminar student with the upcoming speech contest. I told them that I would sign the document … if one of the two sitting before me promised to step up and help that student prepare for the speech contest.‘Would either of you agree to take my place and help that student’, I asked?Silence.I have a digital recording of that meeting, and that’s all you can hear — a deafening silence.I refused to sign the document.I said that my obligation was to the student(s) … not to blindly following orders deliberately designed to marginalize me from performing my duties as an educator. Not by coincidence, ‘witholding information from an employee which is necessary to complete their work obligations’ is against Japanese labor law.The student came to me for help. As no one else was either able or willing, I did so. A lot. Something for details of another Quora answer later. But for the sake of context, I will say this. She wrote and spoke about being a victim of the Great Tohoku earthquake, and the real meaning of family and friends.Though we had spent a good 50 hours or more, editing, revising, recording, and analyzing videos of her practice … on the moment of her performance, the memories of a crumbled hill-top house, watching in horror as the tsunami engulfed the harbor below, and the desperate attempts to bypass the deadlocked transportation grid … all came out in a torrent of tears. But she kept her cool, and she kept her pace so as to not exceed the time limit.Half of the audience, myself included, were in tears … the judges were flummoxed.This was just supposed to be a display of English skills, not a real speech. They couldn’t just throw the meticulously detailed point sheet for judging out the window. But they couldn’t ignore the real thing, transcending typically rote memorized performances.They compromised by awarding her 2nd place in the contest.The school’s administration promptly used her result as a photo op for marketing purposes.Though her speech was about her finding the meaning of ‘family’ and ‘friends’, about the community that defines the social primate, it was made perfectly clear that I was not part of that ‘education’ community.Shortly after the speech contest and photo-op, I was notified that for disobeying department orders and for not signing the document compelling me to do so, that I had forfeited my upcoming research sabbatical and would be relieved of all teaching duties the following year.That’s when I began seeing a psychiatrist, got put on anti-depressents to hold down suicidal thoughts, and exercised my right to a medical leave of absence.The results ...After receiving notice that I would be given no classes nor allowed to take a research sabbatical, I secured a lawyer, joined a union, and took a medical leave of absence for harassment induced mental stress (and subsequently, hip-joint replacement surgery).In the ensuing two years, despite several meetings, my labor union could reach no agreement with the school, and my lawyer advised me that even though I would likely win a legal suit against the school, the Japanese judicial system is weighted in favor of institutions, and my victory would likely be a long and costly, pyrrhic victory. In the Japanese legal system, if it is ‘individual vs. institutional entity’ … the individual is pretty much ‘guilty, unless proven otherwise.’ I later realized, if one follows a strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of language determining what we see … that this village mentality might be correlated with the fact that the Japanese words for ‘individual’ (koujin) and ‘citizen’ (shakaijin) are only a couple of hundred years old … and presumably the rights and obligations of the two.Thinking I would just put it all behind me and find work elsewhere, I resigned a ‘tenured’ position … in protest … against institutionally sanctioned harassment, a breach of Japanese Labor Law, and a general disregard for human dignity and human rights as befitting an institution of higher learning.Now, five years since resigning, I have reached the age of 64, for some mysterious reason, I have not been able to find even a single class of part-time college work in one of the largest metropolitan areas on the planet. After having lived over half my life in Japan as a college teacher, I have been unemployed for three years now.I am still on a nightly dose of anti-depressent and sleeping pill, and still see a psychiatrist once a month for my prescription.I keep busy with community out-reach, volunteer activities, one of which is Soup no Kai, a roving soup kitchen supporting the homeless. In 2017, this NPO received the ‘Social Contributions Award from the Tokyo City Metropolitan government. Steve Martin (Steven Martin)'s answer to Is it true that in Japan there are no beggars?I continue helping out with speech contests. Though I am no longer employed, I still consider myself an educator, and my honor and duty to help young students when I can … and as my policy for about 10 years now, as a volunteer. In 2017, I was a finals judge for the Soka Daigakku (Soka University) E.S.S. (English Speaking Society) All Japan English Speech Contest. The Ikeda Cup - 創価大学 英語研究会SEAIn early 2018, I was again invited to be a preliminary judge for an All Japan English Speech Contest held by the English Speaking Society (E.S.S.) of Japan’s highest ranking university, The University of Tokyo. Between meetings and e-mail with the student organizers, pouring over 81 speech scripts and videos, and writing remarks for each of them while judging … I must have spent about a hundred hours on the project.東京大学ESS杯争奪英語弁論大会 (The English Oratorical Contest at The UT) The contest was relatively successful, and the E.S.S. president has agreed to donate my judge’s fee to helping the Rohingya Muslim refugee crisis. I was pleased with his decision. But now that the contest has finished, the student organizer of the event has refused to answer my e-mails of inquiry regarding the status of that promise. I will think long and hard about future volunteer activities with college English Speaking Society events.(EDIT … about a year later, 2019, I have indeed exchanged letters, and was invited again to a judge, again accepted, and again … kicking myself in the head wondering if my time was well spent. Now have written over 150,000 words of comments for the 51 speech contest applicants … but only 3 of the 10 finalists, and 2 other applicants were interested in reading those observations and suggestions.)Again, I questioned the VERY sloppy judging criteria chosen by the student speech contest committee. I pointed out that the criteria does not reflect how public speaking skills are learned or taught, does not reflect salient features of effective public speaking, and does not reflect the highest ideals of a public speech or a communication community. Two years ago, the head of the committee begged me to NOT compare his goals to his predecessor (who gave a speech about the importance of good posture for ‘success’), but this year, the committee strongly insisted that the highest priority of the contest is connected to neither educational nor social problem solving goals, but to follow the will of their seniors. Yep, Tokyo University students, the future top managers of Japan Inc. are just doing a role-play practice of Invented Traditions while exchanging name cards to form their elite, oligarchic, and self-serving social networks.For those interested, you will see some very good speeches in the recent past by copy-pasting the kanji for Tokyo University’s Todaihai — ‘東大杯’ — into YouTube. You might notice that this tradition seems to have come to an end as of this year, 2019. I would like to think I had something to do with ending this corrupt and invented tradition. Here is an example of a great speech. She was the last winner of what may be the last Tokyo University All Japan English Speech Contest, and though I had some good chats with Sara about her speech, on-line and at the contest, I haven’t seen or heard from her since. I fear that her alma mater, Keio University, and intended graduate school, Stanford, may be following the same path of Mission Drift as Harvard and Yale.Meanwhile, I occasionally check the glossy home pages peddling ‘education’ in Japan, back at my former school, I see there is no longer a full-time, non-Japanese, native-speaking faculty member in the English Communication Department.I spend a lot of time reading and watching Youtube videos … mostly documentaries (love David Butler on physics), TED, and so on.As for Quora, I find myself writing fewer answers, but reading much more, and chatting one-on-one in comments or messaging.And when I tire of words, I pick up my guitar and practice bossa rhythms and jazz arpeggios … planning to play for no one but myself. Just therapy.Reflections on the big picture …Japanese institutions are somewhat overlapping in-groups, but traditionally place a priority on compliance to a collectively assumed authoritarianism.Communities are small enough to keep an empathy-driven morality. But like other large, hierarchical groups following authoritarian priorities, morality here tends to be provisional, parochial, and situational. Institutional culture takes priority over individual moral autonomy. Institutional morality tends to be driven by rule and ritual, not empathy. To further explain:Oxford anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar has a very interesting theory correlating the size of the human pre-frontal cortex with the number of people we can effectively work with as a group. For the sake of brevity, I’ll define that as the number of people we can recognize by face, name, and individual characteristics and temperaments including unique skills, interests, traumas, and hopes. His studies indicate somewhere between 150 and 250 people as the optimal size for groups … and I would infer that this number of recognizing each other as individuals correlates with morality being driven by neural pathways associated with empathy. Cross cultural studies seem to replicate his results.By implication, once we exceed Dunbar's number, groups necessarily form hierarchies, which in turn are held together by a combination of provisional rules, traditions, and force … not empathy. As Hannah Arendt chronicalled in the Eichmann war crimes trials, this excuses the cog-in-the machine-human from moral responsibility or autonomy with a simple ‘just following orders’.And as the post-war behaviorist experiments of Solomon Asch, Stanley Milgram, and later, Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment showed, the average American was just as likely as the average Nazi prison camp guard to allow institutional authority to override empathy.I would say a lot, if not most of our cognitive dissonance, isolation, and marginalization in large scale populations, from corporate states to nation-states, is the gap between empathy driven morality and rule-imposed morality. A cultural defining historic event of Japan, the Forty-seven rōnin, hinges on this conflict of values. But I would argue that this is a conflict in human nature everywhere, and just as contradictory in what my fellow Americans will say in their pledge of allegiance, and what Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, or William Blum reveals about what goes on behind the curtains.Representatives of institutions have no qualms about lying, deception, stalling, any machiavellian tactic … all rationalized as necessary on behalf of the group, but more likely just subconscious, opportunistic behavior. Dark triad behavior. Again, this is not unique to Japan. Just look at the recent U.S. presidential election as one example.Marginalized individuals have little recourse against blatant institutional disregard of law. Institutions are cynically all too knowledgeable that the legal system is weighted in their favor … one lie at a time, one stall after another, can draw out any legal challenges for years — long enough for those responsible for malfeasance to have retired or transferred to another branch or committee deep within the institution.Even small institutions have their ‘deep state’. And the cost to the institution? Financially, a minimal loss, and at most, only a brief moment in the public forum before all is buried under bread and circuses. For example, compare your memories of the Pyongyang Winter Olympics (or any world wide sporting event) and the case of Matsuri Takahashi. Case closed.More results, the BIGGER picture ...While Japan is the 3rd or 4th largest economy in the world, its Universities are ranked somewhere around 70th place. While acknowledging that 'rankings' are to be taken with a grain of salt, where there is smoke, there is fire.I would say that the priority of compliancy over the critical attitude towards authorities fostered by the liberal arts, drops Japan even further. At least a few other professionals both inside Japan Humanities under attack | The Japan Times ... and outside Japan, seem to agree Japan Dumbs Down Its Universities.According to the Hofstede Index, Japan - Geert Hofstede, management of higher education in Japan is what drops it down to such abysmally embarrassing levels. But I would also say that management is inextricably tied to a culture of deference to authority.With the ruling LDP's enfranchising of 18 year olds with the right to vote this year, BUT the new State's Secrets Law, change to the Peace-Time Constitution allowing 'pro-active, military defense', and a neo-lib climate that taxes basic food items for the growing numbers of working poor while giving tax breaks to the corporations ... this empowerment of youth may simply be a token of 'rights' that will soon have to be repaid as an 'obligation' to serve in a ramped-up military.Scary times ahead.Still, trying to do my small part for the marginalized in Japan ... most recently helped out with a mobile soup kitchen for the homeless in Tokyo ... Steve Martin | Facebook ... but of course, whether we are talking about the homeless, the high suicide rate, the falling demographics, or the falling business standards in Japan (Season of Scandal Hits Japan With Company Confession Flurry), or enough fissile plutonium stored in Japan alone to make 1,300 nuclear warheads ... are NOT a concern for Japanese 'Institutes of Higher Learning' ... which begs the question, what, exactly are their concerns? Despite the glossy homepages, my guess is that they are either simply for-profit businesses, or quasi-governmental meat grinders churning out a literate but compliant (no questions please) workforce.As for me, I take my cue from a former Dean of Helsinki University I once heard at a forum at Tokyo University. "The purpose of the 21st century university should be to solve 21st century pr0blems."My problems are not restricted to marginalization and dehumanization of based along ethnic lines. By the government’s own statistics, 1/6 of Japanese children live at the poverty level or below, (and though now somewhat dated info) the single greatest cause of death in the work force between the most productive ages of 20 and 44 is suicide … Suicide in Japan … and these are examples taken from Japanese citizenry themselves.The purpose of public education should be, though perhaps never was, socialization … raising collaborative, critical thinking problem solvers who are morally responsible to the community. But once past primary school, education, devolves mostly into a process of standardized testing and sorting … gate-keeping as a means of institutionalizing individuals. Disposable human capital. Standardization, institutionalization, and compliance are the highest priorities.This leads to another theme altogether in my writings on Quora … how naive scientific reductionism is becoming the new religion, and how it may be a terminal one at that.Standardization and institutionalization is far easier than fostering positive fundamental changes among the struggling youth. It is far easier to just give lip service to educational ideals rather than getting down and into the mud of the meaning of learning. It is far easier to go through the motions of teaching while actually serving as merely another functionary bureaucrat, a gatekeeper who uses standardized tests to identify the ‘talented’ … and pass them along to the next appropriate academic, professional, business, or political institution.Anyone familiar with Chomsky’s understanding of pro-social anarchism … ?Or even better (or worse) … the first 3 paragraphs of his 2010 Chapel Hill speech will do.Human intelligence and the environmentthe problem with Japan Inc., indeed, all humanity, I sum up as this:Empathy-driven communities are conflated with rule and ritual-driven institutions, and institutions are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Individuals, regardless of injustices suffered from those institutions, are considered guilty until proven innocent. ‘Education’ has long since been conflated with ‘propaganda’, and neither the sanctity of the maturation process of the social primate, nor the necessity of empathy-driven communities for sustainability is respected by the ruling powers that be.The failed idealist in me tends to agree with Stephen Hawking … Stephen Hawking: Greed And Stupidity Are What Will End The Human Race.And the pessimist in me, with J. Robert Oppenheimer …Lesson learned ...Yokoso (welcome to) Japan!A nice place to visit.—————————————————————————————————————Update, Wed. Dec. 14th, 2016Informed by Quora that this post will be sent to 1000 readers, I thought I would give an update. A couple of years have passed, and now 61, I am still unemployed, living off of borrowed money from Japanese friends, and the Hello Work unemployment system in the land of Hello Kitty … I have maybe 5 months left to pay the rent. Starting to sell off things through Yahoo auction.But looking at the homeless I still work with, the systematic bullying of school children evacuated from the Fukushima meltdown, the continuing pace of corporate-driven suicides of Japan Inc., and the bigger world picture — Trump and his cabinet of deplorables, Brexit, growing right-wing extremism in Europe, the tragedy of Aleppo, the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya muslims in ‘democratic’ Burma — I should be grateful for still having a handful of friends, and for now … a roof over my head and food in the fridge. Outside of that, I am finding it harder to justify my continued existence.If nothing else, as a permanent outsider depending on a small community of culturally and ethnically different friends, I can empathize further with the minorities I attempted to help through my volunteer activities, and those minorities I will never have an opportunity to help. But how far can empathy carry me when I will no longer be able to pay my own rent?Hmm … just found the 6th ‘M’.My life as the Mandelbrot set unfolding — a microcosm of the forever-war between the authoritative right hand of man, and the would-be progressive hand on his left. Cognitive dissonance — built into our genes, we bi-polar apes. Meh … maybe this is just a fancy way of saying ‘what goes around, comes around.’ Karma, baby.Update … April 27, 2017I have about a month go left for unemployment insurance, still no sign of work. But it appears I am not the only one falling victim to the ‘Education Scams’ of Japan Inc. …Cautionary tale: Bern on how no protections against harassment in Japan’s universities targets NJ regardless of Japan savviness and skill level

The University of Helsinki is located in Helsinki, the capital city of Finland.Finland is located in Northern Europe. Europe is the northwestern part of the big landmass called Eurasia; the rest of the landmass is Asia. Eurasia is the landmass that is located both west AND east of the continent of North America, and, as it happens, the USA. Just in case some ‘Muricans wonder.The official name of the university is Helsingin yliopisto in Finnish, Helsingfors universitet in Swedish. In Latin, the name is Universitas Helsingiensis. The university was founded in 1640 by Queen Christina of Sweden as Kungliga Akademin i Åbo (the Royal Academy in Åbo, Regia Academia Aboensis (Lat.), Kuninkaallinen Turun akatemia (Fin.)) on the base of the Åbo Cathedral School (Katedralskolan i Åbo, founded c. 1276) and was originally located in the city of Turku (Åbo in Swedish) in the southern part of what now is Finland. At the time, Finland was the eastern half of the Swedish empire and Turku was the main city in the area, at the time the third lasgets city in the Swedish Empire.When Finland was ceded to Russia as the result of the Finnish War in 1809, and became an autonomous Grand Duchy Finland in the Russian Empire, the university was renamed the Imperial Academy in Turku (Kejserliga Akademien i Åbo, Keisarillinen Turun akatemia).The capital was moved in 1812 from Turku to Helsinki which was closer to the imperial capital of St. Petersburg. When Turku was devastated by the Great Fire of Turku in 1827, the university was also moved in 1828 to Helsinki. At the same time the university was renamed the Imperial Alexander University in Finland (Kejserliga Alexanders Universitetet i Finland, Keisarillinen Aleksanterin-Yliopisto Suomessa) in honour of the late benefactor of the university, Emperor Alexander I of Russia.When Finland became independent republic in 1917, the university was again renamed as the University of Helsinki (Helsingfors universitet, Helsingin yliopisto) in 1919.The University of Helsinki has four main campuses: The City Center Campus, the Kumpula Campus, the Meilahti Campus and the Viikki Campus. Originally, the entire university was located in the very centre of Helsinki, but due to the rapid growth of the university since the 1930s, premises have been built and acquired in other areas.The City Centre Campus has a central location and reflects the architectural style of this part of the city.The university buildings in the city center house the Faculties of Theology, Law, Arts, Behavioural Sciences, and Social Sciences, plus administrative functions. Most of the buildings on the campus have a major architectural significance ranging from the dominating Neo-Classical, through the Jugendstil, to 20th century Modernism.The City Centre Campus, extending around the historical centre of Helsinki, Senate Square, and Kruununhaka city district, is the administrative heart of the University of Helsinki and has the largest concentration of faculties in Helsinki.After the Great Fire of Turku in 1827, Emperor Nicholas I ordered the Royal Academy of Turku be moved to the new capital city of the Grand Duchy of Finland, Helsinki, where the Imperial Alexander University in Finland began to operate the next year. Helsinki was to become Finland's window to the world; a European city to which the university belonged as an integral part. Carl Ludvig Engel, architect, was given the assignment of designing an Empire-style main building next to Senate Square, facing the Imperial Senate. The main building was completed in 1832. Thanks to the lessons learnt from the fire of Turku, the library was built separate from other premises. The library and several faculty buildings in the campus were also designed by Engel.The main building as well as other buildings of the campus were badly damaged during the Soviet bombings in World War II but rebuilt after the war.The plan concerning the concentration of university facilities dating back to the 1980s, aimed to achieve a closer unity between facilities.The City Centre Campus does not stand out from the rest of the urban environment but is a part of the city, in line with the old university tradition. The university facilities still form a functional and coherent whole, consisting not only of historically valuable buildings, but also of facilities for 20,000 students and 3,000 teachers and other staff.At or near the City Center Campus are also located the National Library of Finland, the Helsinki University Main Library, the Helsinki University Museum, and the Finnish Museum of Natural History, which is a research institution under the University of Helsinki; in regard to locations and buildings, the museum is divided into three: the Natural History Museum (Zoological Museum), the Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum, and the Kumpula Botanic Garden.The Kumpula Campus, housing the Faculty of Science, is located four kilometers north from the centre of Helsinki near tram lines 6 and 8. The campus houses the Departments of Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Statistics, Computer Science, and Geosciences and Geography.The university departments were located in Kumpula for the first time in 1978 when the City of Helsinki leased the area for the university. A planning competition for the city plan for the area was held a year earlier. In the 1980s, the Accelerator Laboratory of the Department of Physics was quarried into Kumpula rock and the construction of Kumpula Botanical Garden began in 1987. It was not, however, until the 1990s when the construction work proper began, transforming the area into a significant campus.The Chemicum, the building housing the Department of Chemistry and VERIFIN (Finnish Institute for Verification of the Chemical Weapons Convention), and the Physicum, which provides facilities for physics, geology and geography are located on Kumpula campus surrounding a square named after the Finnish Nobel prize winner, A. I. Virtanen. Kumpula Campus Library is also located in the Physicum. The Kumpula Sports Centre is planned for the recreational use of both university staff and students and citizens of Helsinki alike. Completed in 2004, the Exactum provides facilities for seismology, computer science and mathematical subjects, as well as administrative services.The campus comprises two main parts: the Botanical Garden, surrounding the old building stock of Kumpula manor and the modern new building stock located a couple of hundred metres north of the manor. The greenness of the area makes the dynamic campus stand out as a unique, distinctive complex. The campus offers study and research facilities for 6,000 students and 1,000 teachers. The Finnish Meteorological Institute moved to the area in 2005. That building is known as Dynamicum.The Meilahti Campus, with the Faculty of Medicine, is a part of the Meilahti Hospital District on the edge of the city centre. Just a few kilometres from the City Centre Campus, the Meilahti area has been transformed into a cradle of top research on medicine, 'Medilahti'. Established in the 1930s, the Women's Clinic was accompanied by Finland's leading hospital, Helsinki University Central Hospital (HUCH) in 1966. The same year saw the completion of facilities for theoretical subject departments on Haartmaninkatu street. The building is now being renovated and extended. The latest completed facilities in the campus include the National Library of Health Sciences Terkko and the research and teaching centre Biomedicum, which accommodates 1,200 researchers.The Ruskeasuo premises, including the Department of Dentistry, Institute for Oral Health, Department of Public Health and Department of Forensic Medicine, also belong to the Meilahti campus. The Meilahti and Ruskeasuo areas form a close-knit complex providing a meeting place for medical education, international top-level research and nursing. The campus is a workplace for 2,000 students and 1,500 teachers.Thanks to the years-long project to combine the teaching facilities of the Faculty of Medicine, Meilahti is now a functional unity of medicine and health care. The atmosphere in the campus inspires people in their studies, research and international co-operation.Although the Meilahti campus is intertwined with the rest of Meilahti district, it succeeds in forming a clear-cut campus area with its hospital-type building stock.The Viikki Campus is located in the semi-suburban greenspace of the Viikki area, some 8 kilometres north-east of the city centre. It houses the Faculties of Agriculture and Forestry, Biosciences, Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy. It is an important concentration in the field of biosciences, even by European standards. Indeed, it is often called the bioscience campus or the "green campus".In addition to biosciences, the campus is home to a wide range of other life science researchers and students in such fields as environmental science, veterinary medicine, food research and economics. Numerous international research groups also work on the Viikki Campus. The Viikki Campus is the location of four faculties, two independent institutes and the Viikki Science Library.Veterinary Teaching Hospital, Finland’s only veterinary hospital for all animal species and a top-level unit in veterinary care operates under the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. Appointments can be made from anywhere in Finland. The Small Animal Hospital and Equine Hospital operate in Viikki, Helsinki, and the Saari Clinic in Mäntsälä.Viikki research farm provides a modern farm infrastructure to serve as a platform for research and education purposes of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry. The farm is a part of the HiLIFE infrastructures. The farm administrates 155 hectares of arable land and a research dairy barn with 60 dairy cows. Main part of the arable area is used conventionally for feed production for the dairy cattle; grass silage and pasture is grown roughly on half of the fields, and the rest of the area is used for feed grain and protein crop (e.g. faba bean) production, as well as for test plots for plant science and other life sciences research.The Viikki Campus also attracts an increasing number of businesses to the Helsinki Business and Science Park. The Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute and the Finnish Food Safety Authority, Evira, have also moved to Viikki and negotiations are under way to relocate MTT Agrifood Research Finland to Viikki to complement the Department of Economics and Management.The Viikki Campus unites a multidisciplinary science community of more than 6,500 students and 1,600 teachers, a residential area emphasising ecological values and the natural surroundings, including recreational areas and nature reserves, and forms a unique whole. The campus also has the Viikinlahti conservation area, which is particularly popular among bird watchers.In addition to the four main campuses in Helsinki, there are several smaller campuses or units that are located outside of Helsinki.The Ruralia Institute operates under the auspices of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry of the University of Helsinki, and has units in the rural townships of Mikkeli, in the Southern Savonia region in Eastern Finland, and Seinäjoki, in the Southern Ostrobothnia region in Western Finland. The institute’s focus areas are local development, sustainable food chains and new bioeconomy.The Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station operating also under the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, is a historical forestry station that has become a center of international multidisciplinary research. Current topics cover many aspects of Earth system ranging from the depths of soil to atmospheric processes. The station is located in the middle of state-owned forests and peatlands in Korkeakoski, Juupajoki rural town, approximately one hour north-east drive from the city of Tampere, and hosts year-round facilities for field work, education and meetings.Kilpisjärvi Biological Station by the shore of the Lake Kilpisjärvi in municipality of Enontekiö, in the northernmost Lapland, is nestled on the flanks of the Saana Fell and next to the Malla Fell Strict Nature Reserve, and offers an exceptional setting for natural science and local culture research in Northern Finland. Researchers and students from Finland and around the world make their way to the northernmost unit of the University of Helsinki to study the fluctuation of lemming populations, the winter wildlife of the fells or the cultural history of Lappish villages.Lammi Biological Station is a research station located in Lammi, in the rural township of Hämeenlinna in the Tavastia Proper region in the lake district of southern Finland. The station offers facilities for ecological and aquatic research and education.Tvärminne Zoological Station is a marine station located at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland in Hanko in the eastern Nyland region in southern Finland. It serves as a centre for a large variety of high quality biological research, carries out environmental monitoring, and offers facilities for field courses and seminars.The station an over a century long history of scientific research, with emphasis on the brackish waters of the Gulf of Finland. The station was established in 1902 and thus provides good background data for studying long-term environmental change. In addition, it is situated in a nature reserve, where only research and teaching activities are allowed.Värriö Subarctic Research Station was founded in 1967 and belongs to the Institute for Atmospheric Research at the University of Helsinki. It is located about 120 km north from the Arctic Circle close to the northern timberline in the Värriö Strict Nature Reserve in Salla in eastern Finnish Lapland or – as the slogan of Salla municipality puts it – in the middle of nowhere. The nearest railway stations are in Kemijärvi and Rovaniemi. Distance to the capital of the Lapland region, Rovaniemi, is about 268 km.The station has collected exceptionally long data series on environmental factors, which reflect the changes in subarctic forests and fell ecosystems over decades. The studies in Värriö are multi- and interdisciplinary. The current research focuses e.g. on the productivity of the subarctic ecosystems, the effects of forest fires and reindeer herding as well as multiple atmospheric processes in the northern hemisphere. The station hosts the SMEAR I measurement station representing in internationally leading scientific research. Every year tens of students from Finland and elsewhere attend courses on e.g. northern forestry or geology at the Värriö Research Station.Vaasa Unit of Legal Studies is a bilingual program of legal study in Vaasa that has been maintained by the Faculty of Law at University of Helsinki since 1991. The students are able to take the Bachelor of Laws degree in Vaasa. In addition, starting from autumn 2010, the students may also take the Master of Laws degree in its entirety in Vaasa. The instruction in Vaasa, which is located in the bilingual region of Ostrobothnia on the west coast of Finland, is to equal proportions given in Finnish and Swedish. Also research on Law is conducted. The focus of the research varies according to which researchers are active at the unit.Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT is a joint research institute of Aalto University and the University of Helsinki for basic and applied research on information technology. It operates in two locations: in the Kumpula Campus in Helsinki, and in the Aalto University Campus in Otaniemi, Espoo.Taita Research Station is located in Wundanyi, Taita Taveta County in southeastern Kenya. The multidisciplinary research station was established by the University of Helsinki in 2011. The research focus is on geography and sustainability science, geosciences and atmospheric,biological and environmental sciences including studies on land change, botany and biodiversity, climate change, water resources, development and livelihoods. The varying topography, landscapes and agro-ecological zones together with biodiversity-rich natural environment and socioeconomic change in the Taita Hills and surrounding semi-arid areas provide unique research questions and great opportunities to both students and scientists.The Helsinki University also has two teacher training schools, the Helsinki Normal Lyceum or Norssi which operates near the Helsinki city center at Ratakatu, and the Viikki Teacher Training School in Viikki Campus.Teacher education at the University of Helsinki always includes teaching practice. Teaching practice is the responsibility of the University's Faculty of Educational Sciences, and it is organised by its two affiliated teacher training schools, the Helsinki Normal Lyceum and the Viikki Teacher Training School, as well as an extensive network of kindergartens, schools and other institutions in the field. The teaching practice included in the Swedish-speaking teacher education programmes is completed in our partner schools. The academic mission of the teacher training schools is to organise the teaching practice included in the University's teacher education in a teacher training school, to supervise this teaching practice and to develop it further.And finally The Swedish School of Social Science (Svenska social- och kommunalhögskolan, Soc&kom in short) is an autonomous unit within the University of Helsinki. The language of instruction and administration is Swedish. The Swedish School of Social Science is today the largest Swedish unit at the bilingual University of Helsinki, and is one of the units for higher education in the language of Swedish in Finland.Their research profile combines Nordic welfare with research in ethnic relations and communication. They have a wide variety of activities in the area of social sciences and interdisciplinary approaches to education and research.The school offers education in several fields of social science: Journalism, Social Work and Social Policy, Political Science, Social Psychology, Sociology and Legal Studies. Together with the Faculty of Social Sciences the School is responsible for the education of Swedish speaking social workers in Finland.

★★★Edit:The answer is almost a half and two years old, when I was in my third year. A lot of things must have surely changed by then and therefore I urge you to check with those studying there to get a knack of what exactly isngoing on.Also, please understand that barring the IITs, there are few quality alternatives in general available to us. However, consider the quality of individual departments and the merot of the faculty rather than the reputation of the college to which you apply.DCE as a college has ceased to exist and though there isn't a lot that has changed, there is a lot that has, and it will therefore depend on what parameters you value your education by that you will be able to grasp the quality (or the lack thereof) of DTU.Of course the review to a large extent will depend on the branch to which a kid belongs (due to variations in faculty, work load, facilities, etc.) but I'll try to be objective here.I'll write the review from the point of view of what a prospective undergrad student should be aware of.Major changes DTU v/s DCEThe biggest change has been the intake. In general the amount of kids per branch has risen directly and the number of branches have also been mindlessly increased. The fees has now become almost threefold as compared to what used to be for the enrolment year 2K9. The uptake is that for a higher price you are essentially receiving an inferior education because the resources haven't matched the increase in available seats.The examination laws have seen improvements and have become more friendly though not very proactive and still very regressive. e.g. The back clearance procedure is still the same whereby no additional back exams are conducted during summer or winter breaks but all back candidates are tendered the subject papers being given to those attempting a course for the first time, i.e. if you receive a back in subject A in 3rd semester, you can only attempt that paper in the next odd semester with your juniors.it is now possible for former students as well as current to fully repeat a course including attending classes and reattempting both the internals and the finals by paying a per subject fee.Edit: Through unconfirmed sources I have heard that the schedule of back papers has been made slightly more student friendly, in that backs in odd semesters are conducted in the even semester.The lab resources have become drastically limited per person, accommodation on the campus has become extremely limited due to higher intake without infrastructural addition.New faculty added is generally of a much inferior quality as compared to the earlier ones, and the difference is often stark, though this is highly dependent on your branch. The mass exodus of earlier faculty and HODs after the DCE->DTU saga has left the faculty threadbare in general.The college now conducts increased master's programmes as well as courses in MBA for engineering grads.The number of subjects imposed on a student (there are practically no electives, more on that later) has increased and the syllabi in each course has generally increased. This increase however, is of a very facetious nature as the course is still largely outdated and redundant.The emphasis on practical learning has dropped further with any worthwhile undergraduate research happening on the back of a student's extreme willingness, eagerness and networking skills wrt the faculty. Research work at faculty level has increased in amount after mandatory research requirements though the quality has not risen appreciably.Master's programmes have certainly seen more placements. I'll talk about placements in detail in a later section.The degree awarded has been changed from BE to BTech.2. Quality of educationThis is a very important aspect because one of the many ostensible reasons given for changing DCE to DTU had been to 'improve the quality of education.'However, from the major changes section you can glean that the overall quality of education has come down.The current trend is that the non-core soft branches, i.e. Computer Science, IT, Math & Computing (an underhand trick to increase intake in computing really, M & C requires highly specialised faculty and facilities which are currently not up to the mark) Software engineering are genrally okay, BUT FOR ONE REASON ONLY: these branches require minimal input in terms of infra.Recently, many respected industrial experts refused to hire students of automobile engineering for lack of proper training facilities for these students and an undefined structure in the syllabus of the branch. The college's nifty solution: Change the name of the branch to mechanical, VOILA!Generally, you'll have a tough time becoming a skilled engineer in core fields, i.e. in Electrical, Mechanical, Production and Civil because the college does not have adequate infrastructure. You'll have to be highly self motivated as most of your collegial studies will be totally theoretical with any practical knowledge gain predicated on:1. working for a project under a knowledgeable faculty.2. arranging for industrial trainings yourself (some HODs and faculty might help with it)3. By joining a respectable technical team (one where Le Pabbu-the VC does not interfere directly)There are some excellent professors in all departments though and if you are one of those people who can handle the very real Indian administrative bureaucracy culture that exists in this college, then you can even get a few things done for yourself. After all, there are indeed a few good things available here:1. Biodiesel Lab: the central facility for biodiesel in the northern region2. Dspace3. Power Electronics lab4. Robotics labThe worst possible thing that can happen in core branches however is the constant meddling the syllabus and lack of individual choice, growth and electives (more on that later.) I personally saw the syllabus of electrical engineering changed at the beginning of 3rd,4th,5th and 6th semester in order to create visible differences between Electrical Engg. and Electrical & Electronics Engg.There is little to no emphasis on practical and technological training and more on just attending lectures in order to clear examinations: What I am trying to say here is that the education scenario here is much the same as in any good public school - it is frankly a school and not a university.Branch wise break-up:1. Mechanical Engineering: good faculty, average infra facilities, coursework okay, amount of effort needed is reasonable2. Electrical Engineering: A handful of the faculty is exceptional, most are way below average, severe mismanagement of teaching resources (though that will hopefully change with the appointment of Professor Madhusudan as the HOD).A lot of hardwork required due to: Large syllabus and weird faculty tantrums. Little to no infrastructure availability. The LIC and power electronics faculty and facilties are good. (with the bespectacled lab guy there the most helpful and resourceful person I ever met). I have often used these labs and was never refused for equipment.Most of the time will be spent in rote learning and hand-written assginments. The emphasis on genuine creativity is very very low and this is true for all branches.The syllabus is as yet vaguely defined.3. Electrical & Electronics Engineering:Same as above, except for a few more electronics side subjects. Once again, the emphasis is on rote learning and clearing exams and you won't really become much of an engineer until you fight on your own.4. Electronics & Communication:Subject matter is good, but once again the emphasis is on rote learning. To be really good you'll have to be self motivated. The ECE department however does avail its students various external opportunities to learn.Light workload, the examinations are relatively easy. Good branch if you intend to pursue masters outside india.5. Soft branches (Software, IT, Computers Science):Light workload, easy examsThe syllabus is generally well defined and relevant to industry.As with any other non-IIT college, you'll have to be self motivated if you think of yourself as a person beyond a coding or a non-tech job, i.e. if you really think of yourself as a highly motivated individual willing to push the boundaries, you'll receive little help from your coursework.6. Civil EngineeringLight coursework, easy exams, good placements (although I hear conflicting stories about Civil placements, but industrial requirement is certainly there).No drafting courses in any of the semesters (except the first year where everyone has a mandatory manual drafting course)Teaching in civil is often erratic, a lot of it is off the industrial requirements. The HOD is a very learned man.7. Automobile Engineering:Totally hazardous choice, the branch is currently in total limbo.8. Production Engineering:The conditions are pretty similar to mechanical.NOTE: IF QUALITY OF EDUCATION AND LEARNING WITH EMPHASIS ON REAL ENGINEERING IS WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR, DON'T ENROL IN A CORE BRANCH IN DTU.9. Engineering Physics:It is actually a fun branch with a very diverse coursework - one good enough to obviate the need for electives. Around 70% of the course work is congruent with electronics and communication so it is a good alternative for those who would like to pursue electronics but don't make the cut-off for ECE (damn this weird system of branch first, talent later).10. Bio-Tech Engineering:Highly theoretical in how it is being run at DTU. But you'll get good grades so if you want to pursue master's from outside I'd say go for it. Plus the current industrial requirement for BioTech grads is good so that works out too. Don't expect too much innovation though, unless you are willing to go above and beyond the rest of your peers.11. Polymer and Chemical Technology:Light coursework, easy but lengthy exams. LOTS OF TIME TO PURSUE YOUR INTERESTS! Very theoretical, rote and exam oriented in how it is taught here. Faculty is adequate, the enrolment is generally low so faculty student ratio is better than the dismal ratio all over the college - this means you get to have more lively discussions with the faculty if the faculty is not a snob and not very egotistic.12. Environmental EngineeringVery similar to civil in terms of quality of teaching and learning. Coursework is generally light but very theoretical. The faculty is below average, but it is easy to score with a reasonable amount of effort.13. Mathematics & Computing:Introduced only in 2012 so can't say much. Rumour is that it would be hard to justify the obtuse teacher:student ratio if seats in CS were increased so this is a dummy branch just for that.Coursework and Electives:After the formation of DTU, there was a major shuffle in the coursework. Essentially, old subjects were merged, a sixth subject was added in each of the the first four semesters (DCE had five in the first six, four in the seventh and three in the eighth) with reallocation happening on the fly if the current third years of a branch groaned under the load. So essentially, this restructuring was an exercise in gobbledygook which only caused pain and discomfort for most students. Why?1. Increased workload: Think about it, college is a time for independent development yet your time is being scuttled with added workload. The worst part is that a lot of it is only theory and no real substance. So all you end up doing is mugging for one extra paper.2. What difference did it make: What you normally would have studied in fourth year, you are now studying in the third and so forth. This is good right? You get to learn more stuff in the fourth year, right? Nope, sorry. What happens is that without addition of good quality faculty, increased branches and subjects results in lower quality of pedagogy. So you end up - mugging for a paper!3. Subjects are still changed on the fly. So you're never really sure what you'll end up studying.Electives: Most good institutes have electives starting from the second year itself. DTU, like DCE, follows the pattern of offering electives only in the fourth year. This works for some and not for others, so suit yourself.There are two kinds of electives: open and common, one of each.Under open elective, you can select any available subject (however, if most of your classmates select other electives and your elective doesn't have enough students, you'll have to change your elective, period)Under common elective, the entire class decides on one elective. Tyranny by majority, anyone?It still won't matter however as due to scheduling problems and other such irks, they'll offer you the first available faculty member and you'll be reading the topic he/she teaches.3. ExaminationExaminations are conducted twice every semester: mid semesters and end semesters. The exam papers are totally what you would expect from a school: theoretical in nature with questions that would ask you to define and explain stuff rather than questions that will make you think for yourself and help you become better at your job. Rote learning rules, any kind of deviation from expected answers is frowned upon. The emphasis is on printing down what you remember from the book and lectures, and not HOW AND WHY.The funny part is students end up complaining if a paper asks for applied concepts. I suppose that happens when you are not used to using your knowledge at an abstract rather than regurgitation level.The back and improvement rules are pretty wobbly so avoid these pitfalls at all costs (refer to part 1)4. PlacementThis college is a pawn shop. You come here, grind your stuff for about three years in order to get placed at a good company. This is what the college has come to be and this is what most students coming here expect to get; or rather want from their lives.The institute can hardly be called a place for learning with most people's dreams ending at getting a job that pays well and not really being about a good education that will add value to and enrich their lives.However, the college has good placement statistics, please refer to: Delhi Technological University - Delhi College of Engineering - Opps! for more.Like all things known in mass media, statistics are prone to lies and omissions.Edit: Placement is a highly economic phenomenon. If the demand is there, hiring will take place.5. FacultyFaculty is a real enigma. A lot of the members of the faculty are a diabolical bunch: Highly egotistic, lacking in knowledge yet very critical of genuine student enquiry, They all love ass kissers.Most of the newer faculty, hired over the past 5 years, is total crap.Even a lot of good faculty members are very stolid in their world view. They are like grumpy people unwilling to adopt to the changes in the modern world around them, unwilling to accept the openness and speed of change of the modern world - both in terms of technology and sociological mindsets.There are indeed, however, a few gem of faculties. You should thoroughly research the members of the faculties of the branch you intend to pursue, by finding more about them on the internet. In EE,/EEE from the top of my head: Prof. Madhusudan, Prof. Pragati Kumar, Prof. Vishal Verma.6. Campus and Location,The campus is Beatific and well maintained. The streets are nice, the road drainage system is quite good. The architecture is majestic, especially if seen from an aerial view. The floor space index is however abysmally low. All buildings have no more than 4 floors. It beats me as to why buildings are not built keeping future need for room and space in mind.The entire campus is replete with greens and there are lots of parks which lend themselves beautifully to the utility and structure of the campus.The open air amphitheatre is delectable, look here:​​The library and knowledge park are one of the few saving graces of an otherwise decadent education scenario.The library is well stocked and new useful books are added at regular intervals. If one gets out of the rut of following just the suggested course-books and goes forth to explore, there are myriads of good books to be found on every technical topic. The non-technical section, though not very vast, has some books that are rare to find now.Knowledge Park is essentially a collection of offices, a conference table and computers connected to a very high speed internet connection. The accessibility is however, low, with access to B.Tech students granted on patronizing or on being members of a college project team.Hostels:Hostel buildings are well, hostel buildings. Only one hostel boasts of a power backup (though power cuts are very rare). They are modest, to say the least. The shared bathrooms can be a pain, especially in boys hostel where most people have no sense/regard for cleanliness and hygiene. A lot of rooms have seepage, peeling plasters and other such 'normal' problems Incidentally, the hostel authorities treat you like scum (most of the time) and the hostel administration think that hostel residents are supposed to be referred to as 'inmates' (technically an inmate is someone jailed at a well... prison, medical ward,etc.) The girls' residential quarters have a curfew time of 9PM while the boys' residential quarters have no such restrictions. All male students, however have to be inside the college premises by 11PM, officially. All hostels have an ethernet based internet connection which acts as any normal LAN. The college however acts as big brother and denies access to anything useful if it remotely violates the outdated sense of immoral modesty. So most sites like Youtube, social networks and even linux software portals are blocked (though any decent proxy would get around that). The speeds are decent and overall the network is good.UPDATE: The new OIC of Hostel Office is a royal B****D. Everything with him is an ego issue. An abysmal pain! (Dr. Pushpendra Singh, I think all you need is a shaved anus and a willingness to put out to get a PhD at DTU.)The institution provides decent preliminary medical care.The gymnasium facilities are the deplorable. The sports facilities are nothing to write about either. There is a field, two outdoor basketball courts, an ill maintained football field and a 'cemented' thingy called the 'lawn tennis court'.All residential areas have badminton courts with proper turfs. A few hostels have ping-pong tables. There is a sports complex facility which however remains forever locked (like it's some treasure that must be saved from filthy little humans) so I don't know what's in there though I suspect it's a pool that fallen prey to disuse. A new sports building (more like a single floor large room) was recently built for indoor sports facilities, but it remains mostly locked except during the annual sports meet. (It has an indoor basketball court, table tennis, etc.)UPDATE:the old sports complex building i suspected of housing a swimming pool had none. It has been renovated and made into a gymnasium. It has odd timings, even then always opening late and closing early, with utter disregard for utility to students. It is not even big enough to accommodate the rush it saw when I was still at DTU.The new indoor sports facility had started to see more footfall in the evening.Food: The mess food isn't a grand affair. It's better than what your parents had if they lived in a government hostel but you'd be amiss to expect anything above edible and an occasional delight or two. It's still better than a lot of government hostels, from what I have heard.Canteen: The college has very many canteens: The central cafeteria: or the Mech Canteen, Nescafe, Mic-Mac and a stall in the Electrical block.The canteen food is decent. The prices have been notoriously increased over the last two years, with something now costing double than what they used to. Okay, some of it is justified under 'inflation' but a lot of is just barefaced profiteering. e.g. If the cost of cooking a plate of dosa goes up by Rs.2, the prices are nonchalantly increased by Rs. 5.The surroundings: The surroundings are turgid. There's a stationery and books store (Future Point: it is a monopoly, and therefore the store commands higher prices than your Nai Sarak, Daryaganj and Ber Sarai), a few pop and mom stores, juice store, fruit vendor and two recharge shops smack in front of the gate. The college is located on the posterior of Rohini sector 17. Essentially it is located in a semi-urban deluge. All boys' hostel have somehow come to be located near a source of noise (read: temples that will blare their megaphones for 72 hours straight starting from the night of your exams), especially the Aryabhatt or T1 hostel cluster. Sector 17 Rohini is abut the college and it has all the shops you are going to need for all kinds of needs. The more adventurous type can venture to the malls located on the inner ring road near the Rithala Metro Station. There are lots of eateries in and around sector 16 and 17. The localities are choc-full of students living as renters, with local dwellers being a blend of West Delhi and East Delhi kind. The people, though not as stocked, well dressed and good looking as south Delhi folks, are usually genial and friendly and much more helpful. The bus connectivity is decent, and the nearest metro station Rithala is 3.5km or ten rupees away. An extension to the yellow line (which ends at Jehangirpuri) is being built which will connect people directly to the yellow line which incidentally, is currently 6km or 70 rupees away(by auto, 10 by bus if you will board one).7. AvenuesOwing to its popularity and a combination of other positive factors, the college does attract a lot of talent, though the institution does mostly squat to nourish and engender it.The biggest strength of the institution, undoubtedly are its students. Some of the students here are individuals with a heightened sense of being and do actually make a difference to the world around them. It is ironic then, that the administrative department treats students like scum.The college has very many technical and non-technical societies (more on that later) to choose from.There is a decent confluence of like-minded people who can easily start something of their own if they are up for it.There is about decent exposure to the current and the latest happenings in engineering and technology; though one must be discerning enough to know which ones are worth one's time. Some really good opportunities will sneak up from under you if you aren't paying attention but then that's true of everything in life.8. Extra Curriculars and SocietiesThe college has lot to offer in terms of the very many technical societies and non-technical interest one can pursue, but this is all on paper. The ground reality however, is that most societies are like treasures in a dump. Even if joining one works out for you, you'd still be in a dump. This is something very personal to one's behaviour and belief in organised crime so this is rather irreverent.On the sports front, the college is genial, and that is saying a lot. Team sports can be a pain as getting into any team involves a substantial factor of who you know.The college has the usual mix of non-technical organisations like MUN,AISEC, etc. This is again a very personal choice as to what you'd rather be a part of.All I can say is there is an appreciable quantity of things to do.There is however, one thing I'd like to add: Most fourth years students would recommend against becoming a paid member of any society and I must say they are right. There are no extra benefits that you'll avail as every journal, conference, activity, etc offered is equally accessible for everyone and a rupee or two you'd save as a member for workshops would be far lower than the amount you'll eventually save by not paying for society memberships.Refer here: http://www.dce.edu/web/Sections/Life/culturalsocieties.php9. Interdisciplinary Studies: Non existent, frowned upon by most faculty members (this little devil is seen during student projects where you'll admonished for doing something absolutely brilliant in electronics if you are say, a polymer student).10. Management:The level of management control is high and the administration is (like i have said before) despotic. Babu culture is highly prevalent. Social engineers (those with good inter personal skills) can overcome this problem with their glib behaviour. There are a lot of arbitrary 'official' charges. e.g. You'll be charged a Rs. 200 'fine' for asking for a bona fide certificate.Someone did not allegedly say that DTU is the most corrupt university in North India.11. Students' Union activitiesThe process of students' union formation was changed after the severance from the Delhi University.The allotment of the top students union position: The President, The Vice President, The Secretary and the Treasurer is allegedly rigged with candidates unsuitable according to 'he who must not be named' removed through one technicality or the other. The past two students' union have resulted in catastrophe, seen most visibly in the sports meet (called ARENA) and the cultural festival (Engi-fest, now know as the Engi-farce).12. Culture And Crowd:In my personal opinion, the crowd factor saw a drastic dip with my batch, reached an all time low in 2K11, shot up somewhat in 2k12 and has generally eased out to a permanent lower level than before, though not by more than say 10%.You'll find all kinds of people here: Dumb people doing crazy stuff, excitable people, good looking people, not so good looking proles,etc etc.The biggest minus point of the crowd factor, however, is the cloistered and bigoted mindset of a lot of people here. The quality of communication skills that people possess has seen an unprecedented hit. A lot of people getting enrolled here have a very eerie set of beliefs which includes: misogyny fanatic religious allegiance, narrowed view of the world around, etc.Having said that, the college is after all in Delhi and if you look out, you'll find birds of your own clique. So if you're a plain old rich snob or a social enthusiast, you'll find your peers eventually.To show for culture, the college has a cultural fest called the Engifest followed by annual technical festivals of various societies. Please read about culture here:DCE ComplimentsDCE ConfessionsH3_October_2011.pdf13. Research and Technological Advancement:Faculty level research has picked up in the last two years.The most interesting development work is undertaken by the various project teams in college. A lot of times however, this is just hype, as I have said before.The college has an uncanny habit of resting on past laurels and discarding (or even totally junking) old developed works once they have served their purpose of getting enough publicity for the college and 'he who must not be named.'All said and done, the college does perform useful research and more opportunities are available for under-grads now than before, especially those willing to partner a faculty member in a project.Some notable college teams are: Team UAS DTU, Team Motus, Team AUV.14. Miscellaneous: Opportunity & Equity, Quality of Life, Non-Technical Outreach,Contribution to SocietyIn terms of opportunity, it's really up to the student to stand up for his rights. Other students would rather ridicule and dissuade you than help you if standing up to the authority (for wrongdoings) for your ideals is what you'd rather do. Like I said, this is practically a school and not a college.THe jugaad system and chalta hai stuff works just fine in DTU, with people being able to sneak into project teams - without putting in an ounce of work - through contacts (don't want to name any names here).Quality of life will be fairly good. I mean you would be living in Delhi, with all the myriad opportunities the metropolis provides. The hostel charges are nominal (at least they used to be for my batch), and if you don't indulge in very many things requiring extra effort, life would still be nice.Non-technical outreach, I think, is limited to the students' entrepreneurial spirit. Some students would tell you that societies like SIFE (students in Free Enterprise) really work for non-technical outreach but it is a farce. Don't take my word for it though, do your own research.A lot of people work for social upliftment in groups. e.g. The Yes+ cult of DTU. Though they can be very obnoxious, and they are sneaky liars (they say they lie for a good cause, well...) they still do a lot to help others around them. Many of these volunteers help nearby dwellers and children of orphanages, you get the drift, they are voluntary social workers - swayamsevak.UPDATE: I have had my fair share of run-ins with THE ADMINISTRATION. From my personal experience I can tell you it is a royal pillar-to-post hand in ass race. But I must talk about the VC.The VC, in bullets then:He will generally act on personal e-mails sent to him.He has a very sadistic way of solving some problems.He will definitely talk your ear off with his noble dealings and great achievements.If done tactfully, a lot of personal level student problems can be sorted with his help.If you want to kiss ass, he's your go to guy, intermediate input, max output.Don't mess with him unless he's your family friend, you're from the Congress parivar, you got the dough (catch the drift)FINAL VERDICT - WHY YOU SHOULD BE HERE/WHY YOU SHOULDN'T BE HEREAlthough the review i believe is exhaustive, I may have missed out a few things, so i suppose to clarify them as the case may be.Having said that, my Final Verdict is:Hind sight is like a hangover after a night of binge drinking - it may teach you to pace yourself for the future, but it's still a headache.Selecting which college to go to is a decision that will bear on your life for a long time after you have received your degree and said adios to your alma mater. Far too many of us select colleges on the word-of-mouth without doing any actual research as to how suitable the place we'll be going to is for our growth and aspirations.Yes, a lot of you won't get into the IITs BITS (All the campuses - they have better facilities and better teacher:student ratio for god's sake!) and for better or for worse, your numskull won't come round the fact that engineering isn't the only vocation on earth. Hell, more than half the engineer grads don't even end up doing engineering stuff in their jobs. So you should know exactly what are good reasons and what are bad reasons to come to DTU:WHY YOU SHOULD BE HERE:If you don't mind living like a school kid, and just mugging for exams and getting through things works for you so long as there is a placement at the end of the tunnelIf all you want is a career/job in computing and have got through to the soft branches (CS/IT/Software)If your parents are loaded and you just want an education in DelhiIf there's no place better that you can go to.If you are hell bent on staying in Delhi and won't go to NSIT or IIIT or NIT-Delhi.If you plan for a master's and are from non-core branchesIf you like to kiss assIf you get a top 2K rank and think you'll slog day and night like a school kid because you want a job.If you don't know what else to doIf you suffer from a chronic case of brain damageIf you are like that uncool kid who thinks it's cool to be in DTU.If you want to chill in hot hot Delhi.If you want to do an MBA eventually.If you are Chuck Norris.If you are a sadomasochist.If all you got through to is IP University.WHY YOU SHOULDN'T BE HERE:If you want a real education, and if you want to learn. DO a BSc. from DU, would work out better.If you want to be in a core branch and want to work hands on without having to beg for everything. ALso if you want good infrastructure for core engineering.If you can't stand nepotismIf you have a boyfriend/girlfriend hereIf you want to take IAS/IES/GATE coaching in Delhi. You can do that everywhere else, respect yourself.If you want to do an MBA eventually.If you're smart.If you don't like the Indian Babu culture.If you've never been here and someone else told you about DCE. It's not DCE any more! Do your research!If your parents think this is a cool college.If you can think beyond the trapdoor of placements.As always, this is my opinion as an active student here. This is a review, and not to be taken as a be all and end all advice. You should do your own research, see things for yourself and decide for yourself. Being from EE myself, i can't be totally fair to other branches so you should have a chat with someone who's here before coming here.Useful links:What practically feasible changes would you like to see in DCE/DTU?What are some of the worst viva experiences in DCE?Who are some of the better professors in DCE?Who is the worst professor in DCE?EDITS:The useful links were added later.I had mentioned about the Power Electronics and Analog electronics lab earlier, refer Chank's comment below. I have made changes regarding that.I have also corrected a few grammatical errors.I have marked other edits as 'UPDATE'.