<p>You can spin and downplay the evidence, but 30 leaving faculty over 5 years is significant. The reasons for them leaving are significant as well ($$$); not to mention where these faculty are matriculating (IVY)–demonstrating that these faculty, despite Berkeley having over 1500 (much of them mediocre or have yet to prove themselves), cannot be dismissed as dispensable. This is a BIG DEAL.</p>
<p>EDIT: </p>
<p>“work harder to improve endowment, offer better financial aid, and improve the university as a whole”? And where is this money going to come from? Donations numbering over 1 billion will certainly help, but won’t improve Berkeley by leaps and bounds or save its dwindling faculty, and this is taking into account that the fund raiser even succeeds. You are not offering solutions, but delusions; “work harder”? how laughable. Say that as Yale and Harvard have 20+% returns and Berkeley slowly becomes the University of Poverty with laughable money management. Other prominent state schools are doing fine since their respective states are not 8 billion in debt or facing exorbitant budget cuts. These returns will occur once Berkeley starts accepting investments and begins to PRIVATIZE. If we wait it out and try to pass off 30 prominent faculty leaving as insignificant, then we are simply letting Berkeley dig its own grave. Before we know it, more prominent faculty leave, less talented students choose to matriculate, and you have Birgenau’s dream: a school that educates the impoverished, but at the cost of a talent flight and lower quality students and faculty.</p>
<p>I’m not espousing elitism, but a practical solution. If Berkeley adopts a form of privatization, investors will jump at the opportunity, Berkeley will gain in endowment, and then can afford to have a competitive financial aid system. Again, this haughty morality against privatization is killing Berkeley.</p>