Berkeley complete privatization = stronger undergrad (serious conversation)

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<p>I tried to explain this in my last post but I guess I failed. Graduate students aren’t actually funded by being GSIs! They are indirectly funded by being GSIs. What does this mean? This means that if they weren’t the section teacher, then the school would have to hire someone to be that section teacher. By being the section teacher, the school no longer has to spend money to hire someone else. This is the “funding” you’re talking about.</p>

<p>Let’s put this into numbers. Maybe that’ll help.
Let’s say Berkeley has 40 students $200, and the need to hire 2 section leader. They use that $200 to fund 2 graduate student but stipulate that the graduate students must be GSIs. </p>

<p>Now let’s say only 20 students existed and the school has the same amount of money. They can still hire the 2 graduate students, but now only one needs to be a GSI. The other can focus completely on his research.</p>

<p>Now you’re right in that if Berkeley cuts down its undergrad population, then the government will give it less money, but that’s not the point! What you were arguing about is that if students disappear, then sections will disappear, which means less funding for graduate students, which is false!</p>

<p>@Sakky, have you ever bothered to email Berkeley representatives with your questions? I wonder how’d they reply</p>

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<p>And, again, I wonder why there has never been any public outcry to implement and maintain large graduate enrollment. Only undergrad. </p>

<p>As an example, let’s say that one of the Berkeley engineering PhD programs were to cut its enrollment in half or more. Let’s face it - nobody would protest. There would be no public outcry. The politicos in Sacramento would not order Berkeley to admit more engineering PhD students. Heck, nobody would even really care.</p>

<p>Lest you think that was a purely hypothetical point: that is exactly what happened to the old Mining Engineering/Earth-Resources Engineering graduate program. Berkeley used to run one of the largest graduate mining engineering programs in the country, and indeed the College of Engineering was first founded partly as a mining school, with the original name being the “Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College”. Nowadays, the remnants of the program are a forgotten stepchild in the Civil & Environmental Engineering program and there are few (now perhaps zero) mining engineering grad students in the program, despite the fact that the US is a world mining power and will be for decades to come, having some of the largest mineral resources and most powerful mining companies in the world. Heck, you can still see remnants of Berkeley’s old mining engineering days on campus: the Hearst Memorial Mining Building, abutting the Hearst Mining Circle. Few other disciplines actually have their names adorning any of Berkeley’s campus infrastructure. </p>

<p>Yet, for all practical purposes, the graduate mining engineering program has been killed, and nobody cares. But when undergrad enrollment cuts are mooted, somehow that’s a problem. I wonder why?</p>

<p>Undergraduate program = masses + teens/parents
Graduate programs = adults, independant, elite, focused</p>

<p>There would be public outcry because you’re shrinking the portion of the school that most people associate with the “masses” (ie, the common idea that most high school students should go to college). Graduate programs have to do with a more elite portion of society. You rarely hear people say “you need to attend grad school”, when compared to the ubiquitous “you need to go to college”.</p>

<p>@sakky caltanner refutation was pretty succinct. your logic is flawed. Just because berkeley’s undergradate and graduate program are both part of the same school, that doesn’t mean they’re treated equally. </p>

<p>most of berkeley’s undergraduate program is focused on Californian undergraduate students who want to try to get a high-quality undergraduate education for a small amount of money compared to the high tuitions of private institutions. For the middle class, berkeley may be the best option in terms of academics and affordibility. </p>

<p>In graduate programs however, students (generally) receive funding independently of what their parent’s incomes are, and hence the quality of the program isn’t limited to a students ability to pay, but rather a student’s own academic abilities. Not to mention that again, most people don’t go to grad school, and it was never expressed that the graduate programs in berkeley also had an obligation to californians like they do in their undergraduate programs. This may change in the future, but currently it is not the case.</p>

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<p>But the university wouldn’t have the same amount of money. That’s the point.</p>

<p>If there’s fewer undergrads coming in, there’s less tuition dollars <em>and</em> less state funding, because a large part of the state funding formula is based on the number of enrolled full-time equivalent students. (To find FTES, add the total number of units taken at the university and divide by 12.)</p>

<p>Current state funding levels for the UC system are at $23,000 per FTES. So if UC Berkeley decided to cut its undergraduate enrollment by even 5,000 FTES, it would, at minimum, lose $115 million in state funding, along with an essentially matching amount of student fees.</p>

<p>You’re talking about a quarter-billion-dollar budget hit. Good luck finding spare change for new research assistantships.</p>

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<p>Actually, my logic is entirely sound, and caltanner, far from refuting my point, actually demonstrated the paradox that I have been illustrating all along. To wit:</p>

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<p>Strictly speaking, that’s incorrect. The vast majority of Berkeley undergrads are at least age 18, and hence are (technically) adults. </p>

<p>Secondly, we’re talking about Berkeley here, which is clearly an elite institution, or at least wants to be. The argument about ‘eliteness’ might hold at a community college or other low-end public school. But this is Berkeley we’re talking about. The vast vast majority of people who want to study at Berkeley, even for undergrad, can never even dream of getting in. Let’s face it, if you were just an average high school student (or an average community college student if we’re talking about transfer admissions), you’re not getting into Berkeley. Most Californians were average students in high school. </p>

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<p>Again, this logic is flawed. People do say: “you need to go to college”. But I’ve never heard anybody say “you specifically need to go to Berkeley for college”. </p>

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<p>But that’s the point: all of these factors were endogenously determined choice variables. Berkeley could have decided that its graduate programs were not going to serve an elite portion of society, but rather would be open widely to everybody (or at least every Californian) who wants to go. Berkeley could have decided to provide zero or only highly limited funding to those graduate students, hence forcing most of them to receive funding from elsewhere, most likely their parents. {Heck, right now, I suspect that a substantial number of Berkeley’s Law students are receiving some support from their parents; Berkeley could have run the other graduate programs similarly.} Berkeley could have implemented an obligation for its graduate programs to predominantly serve Californians.</p>

<p>But they did none of that. Hence, every one of the differences between Berkeley’s graduate and undergraduate programs that have been listed are differences of Berkeley’s own choice. None of it was determined externally. </p>

<p>What that means is that there was no inherent reason why Berkeley’s grad programs had to be run differently from the undergrad program. Everything that was done was a choice.</p>

<p>What that also means is that there is no need to be defeatist. There is no need to concede that Berkeley’s undergrad program must always be inferior to its graduate programs, for it doesn’t always have to be this way. Things can change. Berkeley could choose to improve its undergrad program to be on par with its grad program, or perhaps even better. </p>

<p>Of course, it could also choose not to do so. But either way, Berkeley has to own the choices it makes.</p>

<p>@sakky one thing you’re not considering is one of the reason’s berkeley’s considered an elite institution is for the resources that it has for it’s undergraduate students. These resources include it’s graduate students, many of whom wouldn’t be going to berkeley if it didn’t provide the funding that it does. This in turn would provide lower-quality grad students for the undergrads and as a result would give them a substantially weaker education.</p>

<p>few grad students would go to berkeley even if it was #1 in its program and offered no money if stanford was #2 and offered like $20,000 in funding. In real life, no one cares about one difference in ranking between the top ranked programs, so it would be completely illogical for two people if they were accepted to the same program at different schools to choose the one that provides no funding. I know a guy that wanted to do graduate work at michigan but because they didn’t provide him with any money chose to go to UCLA. This isn’t to say that no one would go to berkeley, but i’d doubt that the top-tier students would, which would probably affect the quality of the program.</p>

<p>at the end of the day, your argument that berkeley could decrease the quality of it’s graduate program while increasing the quality of its graduate program is self-defeating.</p>

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<p>You missed my point. I’m not talking about facts (I guess I shouldn’t have used an equal sign?), I’m only explaining public sentiment. Most people who are applying to college are teenagers, and along with them, parents. On the other hand, very few teenagers apply to grad school, and thus, parents are (usually) less involved. The concerns of getting into “college” gets tons of media coverage, especially for worried parents. Grad school is more “optional” in the minds of many, and thus (obviously) less mandatory and more elite.</p>

<p>It’s all fallacy, really. College should not be considered mandatory for everyone, and even if it was, there are many great undergraduate programs, both selective and non selective. In the future, Berkeley should be reserved for the absolute best. Unfortunately, as I’m trying to explain, public sentiment and “the culture of what undergraduate education should be” will probably prevent increased selectivity.</p>

<p>But you must understand, I hope I’m wrong.</p>

<p>sakky, while you argue “the choice” has been made by UC Berkeley, I say it is the public that has indirectly made such a decision. Or at least, the UC Regents think so haha.</p>

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<p>Are you sure about that? People actually choose to go to Berkeley for undergrad because of the strength of its graduate students? Why exactly would that be the case? </p>

<p>The only reasonable explanation I can see is that graduate students would be if graduate students were teaching undergraduate courses. But that would then immediately beg the question of why graduate students, and not faculty, are teaching undergrads. </p>

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<p>Exactly - the graduate program would clearly decline in quality. But why would that necessarily have to impact the undergraduate program? See below. </p>

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<p>Uh, how so? Dartmouth and Brown seem to be running excellent undergraduate programs along with relatively weak grad programs. Princeton, while having quite strong graduate programs, prioritizes its undergrad program above all others. {I know that’s hard for Berkeley students to fathom: a Bizarro World where the graduate students are actually subordinated to the undergraduates.} I’m surely not aware of any serious incentive for undergrads to attend those schools because of the strength of their graduate students. </p>

<p>If those schools can do that, why can’t Berkeley? Do those schools know something that Berkeley doesn’t know? If so, maybe Berkeley should hire away some administrators from those schools to teach their secrets.</p>

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<p>I agree that getting into college attract tremendous media attention. But the key word there is ‘college’. College may indeed be seen as mandatory in today’s economy. </p>

<p>But we’re not talking about just any ‘college’. We’re talking specifically about Berkeley. Berkeley is not just any college, rather, it’s supposed to be one of the very best. And that is not mandatory, but optional. You might argue that people need to go to college, but nobody needs to go to Berkeley specifically. People can go to the CalStates, or the lower UC’s. Parents who demand access to education are perfectly free to send their children there. </p>

<p>I would therefore argue that attending Berkeley for undergrad is just as optional as attending grad school. Which again begs the question of why reducing Berkeley undergrad admissions would invoke a political reaction that reducing grad admissions does not. </p>

<p>And frankly, we’ve all internalized the fact that nobody has the “right” to attend Berkeley for undergrad. The overwhelming majority of California high school students are not allowed to study at Berkeley for undergrad. Berkeley admits only 25% of its applicants, all of whom are UC-eligible, to say nothing about the vast majority of high school students who are not UC eligible and hence can’t even apply at all. Yet parents seem perfectly willing to accept that. I am not aware of any outcry for Berkeley to become an open-admissions school. We accept the fact that a Berkeley undergraduate education is not only not mandatory, but is available to only a small minority of students. </p>

<p>So would it really be that controversial to shrink that minority? That minority is already small to begin with.</p>

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<p>all of the above schools you mentioned are ivy league schools which are currently not affected by any budget cuts. They are also all private institutions, which all have significantly smaller undergraduate populations than any public school. Not to mention that their endowments are much higher, as are their resources, at least financial ones, for undergraduate students.</p>

<p>i see the point you’re trying to make, but it’s not really fair to compare some of the most well funded, resourceful schools in the U.S. to arguably the most reknown public one, simply because at their foundations, they’re completely different types of institutions.</p>

<p>graduate students take some of the load off of the professor. They need to have large amounts of knowledge in the subjects that they specialize in, and need to be able to adapt quickly to the ones that don’t. If the students that could do this were denied merely because they lacked california residency, undergraduate students would be dealing with less qualified TAs, resulting in an overall lower quality education. </p>

<p>This isn’t to say that california students don’t have what it takes to compete in graduate program, but many in graduate programs come from all over the U.S. and the world. In certain ivy league institutions this may not be a problem where the student-faculty ratio is maybe like 7:1, as opposed to a public like UCLA where the ratio is 30:1</p>

<p>Again, absent a complete reworking of the UC funding system (which will happen approximately never), shrinking UC Berkeley’s undergraduate enrollment would substantially shrink the school’s budget. The school’s economies of scale would be reduced, and the almost-certain result would be significant retrenchment in terms of academic programs.</p>

<p>^Yes shrinking the undergrad enrollment will shrink the budget, but it also shrinks the costs. You don’t know that the amount of Berkeley spends on each student is < the amount of money it gets from tuition + government money.</p>

<p>It has to be. Otherwise the university would be running a deficit every year, which it cannot do, by law. (Unlike the U.S. Treasury, state governments are not allowed to just print more money.)</p>

<p>Once again, we’re talking about at least a $250 million reduction in revenue. You do understand that means the university would have to cut its spending by $250 million, right? There’s no way to cut that much money from the budget without dramatic retrenchment in programs, salaries, staffing, etc.</p>

<p>(This isn’t Bushonomics, where you can cut revenue and increase spending through the “magic” of endless borrowing.)</p>

<p>^</p>

<p>adding further to polarscribe’s post, the whole UC system’s budget was cut by 600million dollars, and even with just that, all of the schools needed to completely restructure their budgets so they they’d be able to deal with their dramatic loss in funding. </p>

<p>the budget’s since been restored by half of what it originally lost, but it’s still struggling to try to make up for their lack of funding. losing 250m in funding would completely decimate berkeley’s budget. </p>

<p>This isn’t to say that it isn’t impossible for berkeley to take measures to become more self-sustainable (heard that Michigan did something similar a while back) but it would have to continue making the changes it’s making now. </p>

<p>Freshman California admits to berkeley where around 73% this fall, whereas they’re normally around 90% i expect it to go down to maybe the mid 60s or lower. They’ll probably try to appeal more to international students as well to get that extra revenue from out of state tuition.</p>

<p>overall it’ll be interesting to see what berkeley and the rest of the UCs do to structure their budget.</p>

<p>/rant</p>

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Okay, I think I understand what you’re saying now.</p>

<p>If I get $100 from the government and $100 from tuition, than the student can’t possibly cost more than $200. Otherwise I’d be in deficit!</p>

<p>But wait, elite private schools are known to spend more money on each student than it gets from tuition. Yet they’re not in deficit. In fact, they’re rolling in the dough.
Yeah, yeah, it’s because they have such a large endowment. Everyone knows that. But wait, there’s more. The professors bring in tons of research money in the form of grants. </p>

<p>My point is that there are more variables than just tuition (and in a public school’s case, state funding) and student costs.</p>

<p>Berkeley certainly like any elite private school gets tons of research money and also has an endowment (though definitely not as large per student).</p>

<p>So no, you don’t know that the amount of money Berkeley spends on each student is < the amount of state funding it gets per student + tuition fees.</p>

<p>And this leads to a larger point. Why does Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, etc have such large endowments? </p>

<p>It’s probably because of 2 reasons.</p>

<p>1) Elite private graduates make more money per person when compared to Berkeley.
2) Elite private graduates are more likely to donate to their college precisely because it is elite. It’s tough to get in, and so most people that go there want to go there. Only a small percent of Stanford admits looked at Stanford as their last choice while many Berkeley admits looked at Berkeley as a safety school. </p>

<p>So by making Berkeley smaller and more selective, its US News rank will rise causing it to join the elite colleges. It already has the academic power, all it needs is selectivity.
When Berkeley becomes elite, its students are going to be making more money when they graduate (because it was harder to get in from high school) and its students are more likely to donate back to Cal.</p>

<p>Berkeley will have more money per undergrad.</p>

<p>[List</a> of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment - Wikipedia”>List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>Most of those colleges have a tiny undergrad population in comparison to Berkeley.</p>

<p>Now, I’m not supporting privatization or cutting down berkeley’s undergrad population, but I am arguing that a smaller undergrad = more money per student</p>

<p>UC Berkeley’s endowment will never be as big as a private university’s, because it enrolls a very large number of people who aren’t rich and never will be. So what? That’s why it’s a state-run public university. If you want rich and elite, go to Stanfurd and have fun.</p>

<p>My father went from high school dropout to Cal Ph.D. That is a feature, not a bug, of California’s still-amazing system of public higher education.</p>

<p>You seem to want UC Berkeley to become something it’s not, and never will be. Tilting at windmills might be a more productive use of time.</p>

<p>Fun fact: In the real world, nobody cares about a totally subjective and easily-gamed “ranking” structure devised by a defunct newsmagazine that has never been subjected to, let alone passed, any empirical test for validity.</p>

<p>As for the funding issue, you still completely fail to comprehend that regardless of whether or not average funding per student rises, the lost revenue is GONE. You can’t pay faculty salaries with magic “elite selective” beans. A revenue reduction of $250 million (at least) at Cal would mean significant faculty layoffs, program closures, service cutbacks and probable tuition increases.</p>

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<p>Oh really?</p>

<p>Princeton University is planning to slash $170 million from its budget over the next two fiscal years, the university president said.</p>

<p>[Princeton</a> University proposes $170M in budget cuts over two years | NJ.com](<a href=“http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/princeton_u_proposes_170m_in_b.html]Princeton”>Princeton University proposes $170M in budget cuts over two years - nj.com)</p>

<p>*Dartmouth College students, faculty, staff and their supporters converged Saturday to hold a vigil in protest of budget cuts and more layoffs under consideration at the Ivy League school.</p>

<p>The 24-hour vigil started at noon Saturday on the college green, while trustees met at the Hanover Inn across the street to discuss how to erase a $100 million deficit brought on by the recession.</p>

<p>Like many other colleges and universities, Dartmouth has seen its endowment gobbled up by the recession. The school lost an estimated $800 million in the downturn. To patch up its finances, the school is laying off dozens of non-teaching staff workers.*</p>

<p>[Vigil</a> Protests Dartmouth Budget Cuts - Education News Story - WMUR Manchester](<a href=“http://www.wmur.com/education/23111854/detail.html]Vigil”>Manchester, New Hampshire News and Weather - WMUR Channel 9)</p>

<p>*Brown University says it’s laying off 60 non-faculty staff members as part of a plan to cut costs by $30 million.</p>

<p>The Ivy League school on Monday says the 60 people will lose their jobs at the end of June. The cuts amount to about 2 percent of the school’s 3,000 non-faculty jobs.</p>

<p>Brown’s endowment fell by $740 million between July 2008 and June 2009, from $2.8 billion to about $2 billion. Brown spokeswoman Marisa Quinn says the endowment accounts for about 20 percent of the school’s operating budget.</p>

<p>The university has taken several measures to scale back its budget, including offering early retirement to some employees last year. In 2008 Brown instituted a hiring freeze which has since been lifted. *</p>

<p>[Brown</a> University Lays Off 60 As Part of Budget Cuts | WPRI.com](<a href=“http://www.wpri.com/dpp/money/brown-university-to-layoff-60-people-as-part-of-budget-cuts]Brown”>http://www.wpri.com/dpp/money/brown-university-to-layoff-60-people-as-part-of-budget-cuts)</p>

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<p>Then it seems to me that you’re conceding that students will always be better off at Princeton, Brown, or Dartmouth rather than Berkeley for undergrad, and should choose Berkeley only for graduate school. </p>

<p>I’m not willing to concede that point forever. Those schools may indeed be better than Berkeley for undergrad right now, but it doesn’t always have to be that way. Things can and should change. </p>

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<p>Really? The classes where TA’s are most crucial are the large auditorium-style courses that have 500+ enrollees. Not so coincidentally, these courses are generally lower-level intro courses. Let’s face it - you don’t really need to be a genius graduate student to be a perfectly competent TA in Chem 1A or Math 1A. My high school math teacher - who has never pursued graduate studies at all and certainly not graduate studies at a top ranked department - would surely have been an excellent Math 1A TA. {Heck, he probably could have taught Math 1A better than many Berkeley math profs do.} </p>

<p>Hence, what Berkeley could have done is lower the admissions standards for the graduate programs, have the less competent graduate students serve as TA’s for the large intro courses, and preserve the best graduate students to be TA’s for the advanced, upper-level courses. </p>

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<p>And that may be perfectly acceptable, as long as you are cutting student enrollment as well. Every university in the country, including Berkeley, famously (although perhaps apocryphally) claims that they lose money on every undergrad they enroll. If that claim is really true, then a reduction of undergraduate students would necessarily mean fewer financial losses. </p>

<p>{The natural counterargument is that the above claim is not really true but is actually a function of sketchy accounting. But that then just points to a different problem - maybe state universities need to implement accounting reform so that we taxpayers can understand exactly how much it really costs to educate a given student.}</p>

<p>I agree that enrollment cuts would necessarily entail a consolidation of programs. But that’s not necessarily bad. As a case in point, why exactly does Berkeley need to offer 6 distinct biology majors (MCB, IB, CB, MEB, MB, and GPB), along with another, MT, which is also arguably a biology or perhaps a chemistry major? I don’t know of any other top university that offers 6-7 different biology majors - most such schools offer only 1 or perhaps 2 biology majors. Nobody ever accuses Stanford of offering a poor biology educational experience just because they don’t offer 6-7 different bio majors. Heck, according to USNews, Stanford has a better biology ranking than Berkeley does. </p>

<p>If Berkeley’s budget situation were pristine, then I would have no issue with Berkeley offering 6, or even 60 different undergrad bio majors. Heck, if you have the money, you could offer an individualized major to every single bio undergrad. But Berkeley is under significant budget pressure and must determine which programs make sense to preserve and which don’t. </p>

<p>To be fair, I don’t mean to pick on bio. Bio is just an example. There are surely plenty of different programs that could be cut or consolidated with relatively little loss. After all, like I said, Berkeley successfully (albeit sadly) eliminated the old mining engineering program despite being the ancestral heritage of the School of Engineering. If they could do that, they could surely eliminate other programs as well.</p>