مرحبا يا اصديقاة Hello Friends!
The first thing I shall write about on this blog is American universities. This is because the year I spent in America was as a foreign exchange student studying at the esteemed University of Pennsylvania in the city of Philadelphia. I also took classes at Swarthmore College and Haverford College. Philadelphia is a beautiful city with many beautiful buildings and a great deal of Muslims. My time spent at these universities was very valuable to my education. The classes I studied included English, Biology, Islamic Civilization, and Calculus. Five things that struck me about universities in America were: Impressions of Arabs, Women, Tuition/Elitism, Diversity and Honor Codes.
IMPRESSIONS OF ARABS: I very much enjoyed English, Biology, and Calculus, but I found the course on Islamic Civilization to be very alarming. The perceptions of Muslims by the American people is prejudiced and inaccurate. American students believe that Muslim husbands enjoy to beat their wives, which is not the truth. Does not the prophet Muhammad say that men should be protectors of women? This brings up another thing I found strange about American college.
WOMEN: There were often many more women than men in my classes. If I were a young American woman, I would prefer to attend a women's college where I would be free of competition from male students and more comfortable and safe in an environment with all women. For example, near to the University of Pennsylvania are the colleges Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College. Bryn Mawr is a women's college, yet many women prefer to attend Haverford College, which is co-educational. If I were the administrators of the colleges, I would wish to separate the sexes for the benefit of the males--it must be quite distracting to them to have so many young women in class!
TUITION: Another thing about American universities--they are very very expensive! First, it is very difficult to be accepted. Some are very elitist and only offer the opportunity for education to those who can afford the high price, for example Haverford College tuition costs $50,000 per year! It is no wonder that so few students attend that institution, and must all come from prestigious American families.
DIVERSITY:Something else that upsets me about American universities is the manner in which they boast about their percentage of diverse students. University of Pennsylvania's website lists %42 diversity, and Haverford College lists %31 diversity. This confuses me because the kind of diversity they are referring to is the color of one's skin! This does not in any way reflect diversity of ideas, backgrounds, politics, or religion. In fact, I found colleges like Haverford and Swarthmore to be quite homogenous!! It seems to me that because these percentages of diverse students are so low and because the tuition is so high, the only ones who can attend university in America are rich and white!
HONOR CODES: What's more, I was shocked to find that many American colleges, Haverford for example, operate under an Honor Code. The Haverford students had to pledge allegiance to the Honor Code, yet the codes prescribed there were virtues that all people should live by anyway, and should not need to be written down and ratified. Furthermore, many students did not even seem to follow these guidelines. The exam I took at Haverford was not proctored by professors and students could cheat as they please! The Honor Code is supposed to encourage confrontation between students, but I found it to be quite stifling--students were often so afraid of overstepping the boundaries of the Honor Code that even if they disagreed about something, they kept silent. I discovered that reaching consensus at Haverford was essential to decision-making, yet many went against their beliefs so that consensus could be reached! Does not the prophet Muhammad say that it is blasphemous to reject your own beliefs?
Well, those are my feelings on universities in America. I was glad to have had the experience of studying there, but I was very grateful to return home to Syria at the end of the year. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think!
شكرا Thank you
فريد حسين Farid Hussein
