Miami Dade College — Local services in Miami

There's a long introduction before commenting about MDC, and this story is going to be a web page on my personal site as well. Because of a crisis where we were living outside the USA, I had to suddenly repatriate to the US and bring my family with me. My daughter was graduating from high school that year, and had prepped for universities outside the US, a different preparation than for those intending to go to US universities (the preparation is mainly about the SAT). She scored poorly in the Reading & Writing SAT, blew away the Math part. The SAT is not a fair assessment of even US high school students' abilities (and the ETS knows it, which is why it is revising the test). Anyway, only 2 of 11 universities with highly to decently rated biomedical engineering undergrad programs accepted her, and probably because they were the only two to treat her as an international student (she's a US citizen who never went to a US school) and demand the TOEFL score. One of them was University of Miami (the Cane school) for Spring admission and other was Univ of Illinois Chicago for fall admission. She opted for Miami, thinking that studying on the tropical beaches was going to be "boss." Of course, it is anything but. To keep her busy in Fall semester, I set her up at MDC to get physics with calculus, general chemistry, and college level--NO, NOT remedial!---English composition. She finished with 4.00 GPA and a congratulations from the college president for making the dean's list. Of course, they thanked her by taking away her $2800 Pell grant and making us pay the $5200 full out-of-state tuition, claiming she was not a degree-seeking student, which was pure BS: she was not a degree-seeking student at MDC, but her program was entirely degree-seeking. Aside from the snootiness of the financial aid officers, there was the chemistry professor who disadvantaged one set of students against another by saying that they could come to take the midterm and final exams 30 minutes before the lecture hour started, apparently written in such a way as to be possibly too hard or lengthy to take. As my daughter had English comp lecture the hour before, how could she cut English lecture early to take the chem exam? In all my years earning a Ph.D. in molecular biology and biochemistry as well as working at a research & teaching university with professors as teachers and colleagues, I have never seen a lecture instructor operate in such an unprofessional way. I got a clue as to just how lame MDC was when the head of the physics & chemistry department at the Kendall campus, where my daughter attended classes, left his post to work as a physics teacher probably in a prep (high) school academy, which probably pays much better and has an administration that is not administered by some dolt named Heather. As I said, I will have more to say about MDC...

Miami Dade College is proof that you don’t need elite branding to provide a solid, respectable, and real education. At MDC, students earn their success through effort, not ego. The faculty work hard to teach, mentor, and build up students who genuinely want to learn and grow. There’s no academic theater, no favoritism-based advancement—just real-world preparation, affordable education, and a campus culture grounded in reality.

Meanwhile, the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine has turned its degrees—especially the MD and PhD—into symbols of inflated prestige with hollow substance. It operates less like an academic institution and more like a closed-loop praise system. Students are too often advanced not on capability, but on how well they play the internal game. The culture thrives on flattery, not feedback. Faculty-driven favoritism creates an environment where networking and loyalty often outweigh skill, integrity, or actual academic achievement.

What’s worse? The degrees coming out of UM Miller are rapidly losing credibility. Many PhD grads struggle to demonstrate independent research ability. MD grads too often carry evaluations and honors that reflect faculty bias more than clinical excellence. It’s a reputation built on curated optics, not consistent quality.

In contrast, Miami Dade College produces students who actually know what they’re doing—without the ego, the theatrics, or the institutional inflation. MDC students work for their credentials. UM Miller students often position themselves for theirs.

Bottom line? If you want an education that means something in the real world, where success is earned, Miami Dade College is the better bet. If you're looking for a title, a polished CV, and a culture of yes-men faculty propping you up—UM Miller has your degree ready, no...

I took unaccredited Spanish classes (level's 1 & 2). For the price the experience wasn't terrible but I will not be continuing at MDC. My main issues are:

1.) the incompetent administrative office. They told me that I owed money for registering for a accredited class and refused to acknowledge that I was not taking an accredited class and would not allow me to sign up for unaccredited Spanish 2 until I paid them an additional $$ (for registering for accredited classes). However the joke is on them, because at the end of Spanish 1 they refunded me my money, minus the amount they charge for registering for accredited classes and "dropped" me from Spanish 1 (this was literally on the last day of classes). So I got to take Spanish 1 for less and apply the difference to Spanish 2, making both classes cost less.

2.) My Spanish teacher. At first everything was okay. She was funny and did a decent job at teaching; and from what I heard from other students that transferred into our class she was by far the best Spanish teacher MDC had to offer. But as she became more comfortable with the students she turned class into her stand up comedy hour, joking about the student (some of which was downright racists towards our Asian students, I was shocked), mocking the students, demanding that students buy her coffee/food at McDonalds then becoming indignant on days that no one did. It got so bad that I stopped going to class because I could not stand her anymore. She became so rude and aggressive, then harassed students for giving her bad reviews to the admin.

3.) The pace of the class. I felt that Spanish 1 & 2 could have been taught simply as Spanish 1, but in an effort to make more $ it was divided. I have not taken classes past Spanish 1 & 2 for these reasons and am currently...