Academics at Georgia State are amazing. I have yet to have a professor that was terrible and made class unbearable. The professors always try to learn names, and it helps if you actually talk to your professor. Just introduce yourself, the professor will see that you are serious about your schooling. Studying varies among students; some students are more serious about their grades, so that is on a case by case basis. There are always a few students who neglect to come to class on a regular basis; they only come in on test days, and this usually leads to the professor not exactly knowing him or her. Class participation varies. In mandatory classes, it seems that class participation is not as high; this is because students do not really want to be in these classes. The most unique class I took was Gender and Criminal Justice. By far, it is still one of my most favorite classes so far. Dr. Blackwell's persona the first day of class set the tone for the rest of the semester. I'm currently a criminal justice major. The department is really neat. All of the professors have been awesome; they each bring their own pizzazz to class. Our department was recently relocated to a different section of the college departments; Georgia State is broken down into separate colleges that are head over certain majors and departments. We were in the Health and Human Sciences College, but now we are part of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies.
I spend various amounts of time with my professors. There are some that I never see outside of class because I understand the material, but there have been professors that I saw twice a week during the semester because I would get so lost during class, (Yay, philosophy.) I feel like the academic requirements are necessary and helpful. As a student, one has an obligation to know a little bit of everything, and a whole lot of other things. If we don't go through certain classes, we cannot shape our skills to be as useful as possible.
The education here is geared toward getting a job and learning for its own sake. Many of the majors actually require outside learning. The criminal justice department requires that all CJ majors go through an internship their last semester of college. The courses within the college of education require on hand interaction with students of secondary schools and the such to gain experience in becoming a teacher. It really just depends on the field a student is in.