A few weeks ago I lost my glasses. Even though they aren’t crucial to my eyesight, they do prevent headaches that occur from reading too much without them. If it weren’t for a spare five-year-old pair that falls off my face, I’d be popping pain relievers like candy.

Besides giving an oral argument, taking the Graduate Records Exam (GRE), suffering through multiple exams and essays plus graduate school, job and internship applications, I’m in the stressful process of committing to this pair or that pair of glasses. The added stress of finding glasses is more than I need, considering I already spend much of my time wondering if my GPA is high enough, if my GRE scores will stack up to the next applicant or if my Northeastern degree will have value.

For the next several years, the spectacles I choose will sharpen the images on the computer, whether I’m in grad school or at work, so I need the pair to be perfect.

The stress of buying new glasses isn’t what has me wound up the most. It’s more about the prospect of finishing my undergraduate degree in December.

When I’m applying to selective programs, I wonder if the school name on the university-sanctioned piece of paper I will receive in 2008 is competitive enough.

I’m not trying to break into the investment banking world, where the name on the diploma matters more than an applicant’s qualifications, I just want to know that recruiters will read my resum’eacute; in its entirety, not just until the point where it says Northeastern University.

I am certainly not the only person trying to calculate the worth of a Northeastern diploma. Others are trying to determine the academic weight of the university, including President Joseph Aoun.

In the Oct. 11 issue of The News, Aoun said improving academics will be important to the future of the university.

The university vaulted 54 spots since 2001 to be ranked at 96 in the 2007 U.S. News and World Report college rankings. Since I enrolled as a student in 2003, the administration has never failed to flaunt the current incoming class as the best and the brightest.

Now, instead of climbing the rankings to prove academic credibility, President Aoun announced last week that the plan is to put additional focus on graduate and doctoral programs in order to increase visibility and name recognition.

In an effort to maintain full disclosure, I’m not applying in-house to graduate programs, although my years here prove, to me, that the international affairs and political science departments have fantastic faculty. It’s just that I want to escape the confines of Boston. Mostly, I want to escape the NU Shuffle.

I’m concerned that the new emphasis on fundraising, graduate studies and post-graduate studies will interfere with the quality of an undergraduate degree.

This is not an original argument. In fact, for years editorial columnists have written about the plight of the upperclassmen as Northeastern focused heavily on recruitment instead of matriculated students. Take West Village F, for example: Did honors freshmen really need that building or did the prospective student brochures need new pictures of freshmen housing?

But at least the past initiatives aimed to increase the undergraduate experience in some way. This plan to invigorate the graduate and professional degree programs will have little impact on undergraduate life.

It will however, be another feather in Northeastern’s cap.

Aoun’s plan to make Northeastern a world class research university will pull professors out of the classroom and into labs as the academic priority shifts from undergraduate students to post-graduate ones. Forget wooing high school seniors, admissions will be courting professionals.

Research universities are notorious for having huge undergraduate classes to go along with the oversized name, yet class size is essential to an engaged undergraduate experience. Undergraduates should not be tossed by the wayside to make way for a higher university profile.

There is more than one way to achieve the world class reputation the university seeks. Pumping time and money into job and academic opportunities for students approaching graduation will promote the school just as well as chasing after potential graduate students.

Stop chasing the next generation of Huskies and focus on those currently enrolled. In other words, help the students help the university by opening up recruitment doors and bringing more nationally high profile companies to campus.

With that said, perhaps I shouldn’t be concerned.

I won’t be around to sit in classes where I am one of 100 students. Instead, I’ll be in the work force reaping the said benefits of my alma mater’s increased name recognition. Who cares about the students? It’s all about the image anyway.

– Holly Fletcher can be reached at [email protected]