Manager
Joined: 27 Aug 2005
Posts: 246
Location: Montreal, Canada
[#permalink]
05 Sep 2005, 08:00
I did my undergrad at John Molson.
As an honest opinion: the business school itself is very good. They also offer MSc programs in specific areas (e.g. marketing) which have been very popular. The undergrad experience was very good: small class sizes, excellent profs, real meaningful assignments, lots of group work.
However (and unfortunately, there's a however), Concordia's name has been tarnished greatly by a series of events on campus mainly relating to campus politics. Some of you may have heard of the Netanyahu riots, when there were massive riots that forced the shutdown of a speech by former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. This was just the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak; campus tensions had been at a boiling point for years prior to that. I know, because those were the years I was on campus.
I got involved with student groups looking to fight these things, and soon after I graduated, they successfully elected a moderate student union, which has been re-elected each year since. Things have calmed down and improved an awful lot since then. But there's no telling what will happen in the future. Even the "moderate" political slate is somewhere to the left of Che, which you may agree or disagree with but which tends to make employers wary.
Basically, Concordia has lost a lot of credibility with employers, many of whom cancelled their job fair appearances and on-campus recruiting after events (such as the student union publishing a report lashing out accusations at many of them). The employment situation in Quebec isn't ideal to begin with, especially in English. But between Concordia and McGill, most of the companies recruit at McGill.
Bottom line: the Concordia John Molson degree itself is a positive experience if you ignore campus politics (easy to do as a grad student). But if you're looking for a university that offers top employment opportunities and has a good reputation in the business community post-graduation, you might want to be a bit wary.
Not to bash my alma mater. But people ought to be aware when they're making an investment.