Oregon State may be feeling “blue” next Thursday, as the red roses of Pasadena fall from their grasp.

Black Adder, Season I "The Queeen of Spain's Beard":

Percy: You know, they do say that the Infanta's eyes are more beautiful than the famous Stone of Galveston.
Edmund: Mm! ... What?
Percy: The famous Stone of Galveston, My Lord.
Edmund: And what's that, exactly?
Percy: Well, it's a famous blue stone, and it comes from Galveston.
Edmund: I see. And what about it?
Percy: Well, My Lord, the Infanta's eyes are bluer than it, for a start.
Edmund: I see. And have you ever seen this stone?
Percy (nodding): No, not as such, My Lord, but I know a couple of people who have, and they say it's very very blue indeed.
Edmund: And have these people seen the Infanta's eyes?
Percy: No, I shouldn't think so, My Lord.
Edmund: And neither have you, presumably.
Percy: No, My Lord.
Edmund: So, what you're telling me, Percy, is that something you have never seen is slightly less blue than something else you have never seen.
Percy: Yes, My Lord.

Oregon State, a real university involved in real research. The same goes for the University of Oregon. Unlike Portland State which gives out mikey mouse degrees in gender studies and green dreams.

Oh John: those are fighting words. As a faculty member and Department Chair at PSU for 34 years, you are being quite unfair to PSU. I received many research grants while there and many of my colleagues and friends received grants of quite significant size to do real research on real problems. I don't know what your beef is with PSU - I suspect they don't have a football team is the real problem - but do not forget that PSU is now by a sizeable margin the largest University in the state. I got my PhD from UO and so I know its research potential. But it has also been around for more than 100 years, as has OSU. Too bad we won't be around to see PSU when its been around that long. You underestimate the school. They have the same programs at UO and, surprisingly, at OSU. PSU not man enough for you?

I speak only from personal experience. I was obtaining a Master’s Degree in Education. I started the program at PSU. My first class, can’t remember the name anymore unfortunately, a professor gave us the syllabus and stated to get an “A” in this class you must attend every class, participate in buddy-buddy discussions and write a bibliography of 20 articles regarding the subject matter. We were then told that it was not necessary to read the articles, just furnish the bibliography. At six hundred bucks a credit hour that was a real waste of time for me. I went to a different school to get my degree. I could care less whether PSU had a football team or not. I just wanted to get value for my education dollar. Couldn’t find it there.

There's been quite a string of discoveries and research coming out of OSU lately. Some of these things could really make a difference.

We should be proud that a research and engineering school in our backyard is capable of such things. Go Beavs!

Kudos and huzzahs to all at OSU ... but, I thought we kinda knew this already -- the rare earths (which are in very short supply and have become very hot commodities . . . and which mainly come from, you guessed it, China) are what makes current generation solar films/panels blue.

Ah, the obvious name for the color is Oregon Blue.

A "Master’s Degree in Education"? Maybe you should have saved your money, stayed at PSU and gotten one of their "mikey mouse degrees." Hopefully you're not teaching anything connected to English, contemporary American history, film, etc....

John:

You drew that entire conclusion from ONE class in the MAT program at PSU. If I used that criterion in all my own experience, I wouldn't have stayed at UCLA, would have avoided the UO, would not have taken most of the classes I've taken at various other schools for personal interest. I did post-doctoral research at the University of Michigan. Some of the courses there could have made PSU's ed course look positively strenuous.

When I was at UCLA, the times (1960's) required that everyone take a course in either the Psychological Foundations of Education or the Sociological Foundations of Education. Both courses were well-known time wasters and had requirements even less stringent than those you encountered at PSU. The point is that EVERY school has courses like that. The difference is that most people don't condemn an institution on the basis of a sample of ONE course.

Sorry, but I think you came to a poor conclusion on quite incomplete evidence. Too bad you didn't stay around to find out whether the school was/is better than you give it credit for.

Would you, mrfearless47, truly put PSU on the same level as any of the other public universities in major cities on the west coast? Come on, you have Berkeley, UCLA, and Washington. And then you have PSU, Randy Leonard's favorite "oh, don't hurth their feelings" school. I too have had classes at PSU, and have met many a PSU grad. It's a total commuter school one level above PCC.

What have they done lately in ground breaking research. Any diseases cured? Any neat physics going on?

No. I would not put PSU on the level of my alma mater (UCLA), the University of Washington, or UC Berkeley. But I also wouldn't hold UO or OSU in much regard either they. They can't hold a candle to the real Universities I just mentioned. I've been a student at UO. I skated through a PhD based largely on what I learned as an undergrad at a major urban university where half my classes were taught by serious, concerned Nobel Prize winners - only one TA in my entire 4 years there - a school with 35,000 students in 1965 could still be great. Oregon simply doesn't know what a University is, period. That is not a slight of any school. It is simply a reality that emerges from the total lack of state investment in higher education from 1969 to the present. I can't speak for any period before that.

mrf