When I read the students' complains about the lecturers, I wonder, what do the lecturers have to say about the students?

Since this thread is about UTAR in general, I'll just give my two cents as a UTAR graduate.

I attended classes in the PJ campus, FAS.
I was fortunate to be able to secure a parking spot in the campus. I had to pay RM60 every month for three years (the only time i had a 50% discount was during the 3 months break in my first year). I was actively involved in activities, so I had to join the double-parking 'party' in PD from time to time when I needed to pay the DSA a visit.
I do understand the pain of those who had to pay for double parking summonses, but I have witnessed, numerous times, the Faculty office's efforts to warn students when MBPJ visits. Some students even SMS car owners to warn them about the MBPJ.

During my first year, the toilets were always clean, however, the toilets became a nightmare after that. Does the problem lie on the janitors, who gets cursed by students for cleaning the toilets, or does it lie on the students' incapability to use a toilet properly? Did the toilet bowl regurgitate the tissues on the floor? Did empty plastic tissue packets just appear out of nowhere? (I shall stop here before revealing some worse scenarios) Same goes for the rubbish on the floor in the classrooms. Our nation's future leaders. Right.

Students complaine about the computers in the labs. True, there aren't enough to go around, but the main purpose the university prepared these facilities is for students to conduct research for assignments. Friendster and Facebook is not research. So instead of complaining about the lack of computers, why not complain about the people who don't know how to better use their time?

The university designated reading rooms in every faculty, however, hardly anyone reads in there. People have been eating in that room, hang out or sleeping on the tables while waiting for the next class, worse, some people actually play music or videos in the reading room using the laptop and didn't bother to bring a set of headphones. They ARE students who really used the room for assignment discussions, but even those are hardly discreet: some people have difficulty controlling their voice volumes.

The biggest issue students have with the university is the fees. It has hyped over the years. I used to wonder why do I have to pay RM300 annually for 'developmental fees' or why do I have to pay to use library resources when it is so limited. The university has to pay, a lot, for online journal subscriptions which the students were ignorant about. I personally think that the library does not store too many of a certain textbook because publishers keep updating to newer editions and the library will have to buy the new ones once lecturers choose to use newer editions.

Someone mentioned earlier about the management and about having to pay RM300 to change course.
The thing about UTAR is that the authorities are very particular about finances and reputation. The board is pretty controlling, so everything needs to be approved at the board meeting, and because of this, many issues take a long time to resolve. For example, I have to wait for almost 10 months to have my claims for an event I helped organized to be approved. Approve only, ok? God knows how long it will take for the finance department to issue me a check.

As for the charges for course changing, I know the issue is about the management not revealing the 'whole story', but that's the way it is anywhere, a lot of things are too good to be true. The reason behind the RM300 is to put people off from changing courses. Your application takes a lot of time and effort to process because it will not only have to go through the faculty's processing, but there will also be meetings and more processing after that. We still had to pay thousands of ringgit for our industrial attachments. I have applied for the return of my caution money last December and I've yet received it.

Lecturers wise, you get all sorts:strict, 'cincai', people who know their stuff, people who reads monotonously from the slides, lazy ones, freaking hardworking ones. Like many students, I get turned off at lecturers who can't speak proper English, but at least they tried. Most of the students I know can't speak proper English either, I do commend those who take the effort to improve, but many just don't give a damn. No lecturer is perfect, just like no student is perfect.

So yeah, this is a bit of the insight from a UTAR product who graduated from a factory lot