I go there now. I was a philosophy major, but I am in the midst of switching to English. Their philosophy program is pretty weak. There's a superfluous methodological divide in academia when it comes to philosophy along the lines of analytic and continental styles. Suffice to say, if a school favors one at the expense of the other they will end up hiring those professors who fall into one camp or the other and, as a result, the programs will be lacking. Rutgers is strictly analytic, so if you want to read post-modernism, deconstructuralism, structuralism, etc, you have to go into a different department. If you want even to have a class on Wittgenstein, the renowned ANALYTIC philosopher, you have to wait until maybe, just maybe, they'll offer it while you're there. They don't have a class on one of the most influential thinkers of their own methodology. That should tell you quite a bit. Also, they boast about being well rated for philosophy, but the organization that does the rating is stacked with analytic philosophers, and so is Rutgers, so it makes sense for them to farewell. It's the same as a guy named Jeffry "Jeff" Jefferson entering and winning the Best Name contest, which is judged by guys named Jeff. They brag about it. I expect more from philosophers, but maybe I shouldn't.
All the classes I've had have been pretty big. I took a philosophy class in the upper 400's and there were at least 40 people in it. Rutgers is a research institution; it's been my experience and that of many others that most of the faculty is there to do research first and teach second.
I hear they waste a lot of money on sports at the expense of academia. My history prof was telling the class how the school had cut off phone service for the department in the last 2 weeks of the term and then someone had mentioned how they were phasing out water fountains in one of the main libraries.
If someone is willing to pay such a large sum to attend Rutgers out-of-state, why not check out a different school?
