CS Major No Longer Impacted

eudean · December 22, 2006, 12:13am

[quote]
Besides, think about what you're saying. You're talking about the department deciding to use impaction as a matter of enforcing quality. So what does that imply? Does that mean that other non-impacted departments don't care about quality? MCB is the largest major on campus, and one of the highest quality ones, yet they somehow manage to do it without impaction. If they can do it, why can't EECS?

[/quote]

Why do you assume they are equal? You keep trying to pass this non-sensical argument, but it just doesn't make sense. If the US can be democratic, why can't every country? If <insert any="" institution="" person="" here=""> can do <insert any="" activity="">, then why can't <insert any="" other="" institution="" person="">?</insert></insert></insert>

Maybe MCB gets more funding, maybe MCB needs to dedicate less money per student for a complete education, maybe lots of things--either way, you don't know, and for you to judge the actions of the EECS department with your lack of knowledge, without having attempted to consult them, is unfair. They know the answer to your question, and just because you think they'll lie to you doesn't mean that you're right or that you can ignore what they may have to say on the issue.

I mean, tell me, what is the cost per student in these department? What is their funding? Do you know any of this? Not some guess you make, I mean actually what it costs to educate a student at Berkeley for a year in these departments. How can you possibly make a fair assessment without that information?

I'll point out another contradiction at this point. I said:

[quote]
to convert EE42 into another EE40 section would require an increase in resources

[/quote]

You said:

[quote]
Uh, not really, and I think just a bit of common sense would have told you so.

[/quote]

And then you said:

[quote]
The only thing I can agree with is that you may need more resources.

[/quote]

Although it may be true that EE40 doesn't require TAs that have taken EE40, the point is that fewer individuals are qualified to teach EE40 than are qualified to teach EE42 (for obvious reasons). I mean, EE40 is strictly a superset of EE40--isn't it obvious that would imply that it requires strictly equal to or more resources than EE42, especially given that EE42 is already an established course? Heck, you've already agreed with my statement, so I'll move on.

[quote]
So, again I ask - why can't EECS option IV do that? Honestly, what is the difference between CS and EECS option IV? Just a few classes, none of which are at capacity.

[/quote]

Do you know what the EECS option even is? Do you know what it does? Because you consistently imply you do not. The EECS option is (almost) meaningless. It does not affect what classes you may take whatsoever. It does not affect what classes you need to graduate whatsoever. The option is a guideline for your adviser to suggest classes for you to take that would match your interest. That is all. You can change your option at any time without consequence.

Further, the most obvious answer to you question is "it doesn't matter". Consider, if L&S CS is not impacted and is almost the same as EECS Option IV, then why would any student bother applying into EECS Option IV UNLESS they wanted to take more (possibly fuller) engineering courses instead of L&S CS? Why would we bother adjusting EECS Option IV if L&S CS fills that gap and is no longer impacted?

[quote]
To give you one very simple example - one that I have been pushing for awhile. Why not let the guys in EECS who are doing poorly and who want to leave be allowed to do so? These guys are all caught in the "engineering major trap", and they want out. In return, for each one that wants to leave, we can then admit one more person who is doing decently to come in.

[/quote]

Firstly, I'd like to know the specifics of this person's situation. When did he apply to a different major, and what major was it? If he did it after his 2nd year, I'm not at all surprised they wouldn't let him. They probably prevented him from failing to graduate at all by doing that.

Second, why should we force a department to take a bad student? EECS allowed that student in because s/he looked like a good student. He ended up sucking. That's EECS's problem, that isn't (say) the Music department's problem. Does the music department want a 1.8 student? Why should we force them to take a 1.8 student? That would concentrate bad students in certain majors, and that simply wouldn't be fair to those majors. Yes, we want our EECS department to be good, but no, we won't let another department be a dumping place for EECS rejects.

Your idea makes sense from an EECS-greedy perspective, but not otherwise.

[quote]
But like I said, this is probably all an irrelevant gambit because, like I said, I doubt that the real issue is capacity in EE40/42. What I am simply doing is taking away a possible excuse.

[/quote]

Okay, let's drop the EE40/42 thing, I really don't think it matters. I don't think combining them would do anything and it seems you don't either.

EDIT: On a side note, maybe we should move this to PMs. It seems like no one else is involved in this discussion and this thread is dead as a doornail otherwise (and continuously bumping it just for this is kind of pointless).

commonsense · December 22, 2006, 12:36pm

hm.. please dont move this to PMs.. I quite like reading these discussions actually :D

sakky · December 22, 2006, 5:02pm

[quote]
Why do you assume they are equal? You keep trying to pass this non-sensical argument, but it just doesn't make sense. If the US can be democratic, why can't every country? If <insert any="" institution="" person="" here=""> can do <insert any="" activity="">, then why can't <insert any="" other="" institution="" person="">?</insert></insert></insert>

Maybe MCB gets more funding, maybe MCB needs to dedicate less money per student for a complete education, maybe lots of things--either way, you don't know, and for you to judge the actions of the EECS department with your lack of knowledge, without having attempted to consult them, is unfair. They know the answer to your question, and just because you think they'll lie to you doesn't mean that you're right or that you can ignore what they may have to say on the issue.

I mean, tell me, what is the cost per student in these department? What is their funding? Do you know any of this? Not some guess you make, I mean actually what it costs to educate a student at Berkeley for a year in these departments. How can you possibly make a fair assessment without that information?

[/quote]

Obviously I don't know the answer to all of these questions. So let's put it out on the table. I think it is perfectly valid for the EECS department to publicly justify why they are impacted and other departments (notably MCB) are not. If they claim the problem is funding, then I think it is their job, as part of a department of a public school, to demonstrate that they do indeed lack funding. If it is a matter of resources, again, they should demonstrate that - and with publicly accessible facts. This is a public department using public money, so their decisions and reasoning behind those decsions should also be public.

What I am saying is that I expect the department to lie to me. Not that they are bad people, but rather that people who are representing any organization will inevitably lie to make their organization look good, as part of their job. Heck, in some cases, they may not even know that they are lying, because anybody who becomes part of any organization inevitably becomes acculturated into that organization and begins to equate the goals of that organization to his own, and so subconsciously chooses not to see things that the organization is doing badly. This happens to everybody.

So, no, I never said that we should never ask for an answer. I am simply saying that the answer should not be taken at face value because of the inevitable organization biases behind the answer, and so the answer should be carefully examined for veracity.

[quote]

Quote:
to convert EE42 into another EE40 section would require an increase in resources

You said:

Quote:
Uh, not really, and I think just a bit of common sense would have told you so.

And then you said:

Quote:
The only thing I can agree with is that you may need more resources.

[/quote]

Uh, no, you didn't place the text in proper context. Take the last quote in particular. I said that you MAY need more resources. I didn't say that you were sure to need more resources. And of course you will need more resources just to convert EE42 to EE40. But you then also SAVE resources by not having to run 2 separate tracks and thus eliminating the administrative overhead that goes with that. Whether you actually then use more or less resources in the aggregate is then an empirical question. You MAY need more, but then again, you MAY NOT. That's the point.

[quote]
Although it may be true that EE40 doesn't require TAs that have taken EE40, the point is that fewer individuals are qualified to teach EE40 than are qualified to teach EE42 (for obvious reasons). I mean, EE40 is strictly a superset of EE40--isn't it obvious that would imply that it requires strictly equal to or more resources than EE42, especially given that EE42 is already an established course? Heck, you've already agreed with my statement, so I'll move on.

[/quote]

No, I don't really agree with your statement. Yes, EE42 is a superset of EE40. But the difference is negligible, particularly when you are talking about TA's. After all, most TA's are grad students, usually in EE (along with the occasional physics, applied math, and other engineering grad student), and the fact is, if you are a grad student in any of those fields who is even eligible to become a TA for electronics, you should be able to TA either course. This is especially true of the EE grad students, which comprise most of the EE40/42 TA's. Come on, these are basic electronics courses here. If you're a Berkeley EE grad student, and you can't handle being a TA for EE40, something is wrong. How can you be a Berkeley EE grad student and not know basic electronics, even if it is the 'superset' version of basic electronics? That's like a math grad student who doesn't know calculus. This is basic stuff here.

[quote]
Do you know what the EECS option even is? Do you know what it does? Because you consistently imply you do not. The EECS option is (almost) meaningless. It does not affect what classes you may take whatsoever. It does not affect what classes you need to graduate whatsoever. The option is a guideline for your adviser to suggest classes for you to take that would match your interest. That is all. You can change your option at any time without consequence.

[/quote]

See, there you go again, not using your creativity, and treating the rules as if they are static. I am well aware that the options exist merely as guidelines. But so what? It doesn't always have to be that way. You can make the options 'stricter', in the sense that perhaps just Option 4 becomes open to anybody who wants in (as long as they stay within Option 4 classes), but those people who then want to transition into non-Option-4 courses may now have to apply into those "impacted" options. But the point is, if CS and Option 4 share most of the same courses, and CS is unimpacted, then why can't we devise a method where Option 4 (and just option 4) can be unimpacted also? It just takes a bit of creativity. All you would do is move the impaction 'barrier' away from where it is right now (where it encompasses all of EECS), and move it inwards so that it no longer encompasses part of EECS.

I hardly see this as an administrative hassle. After all, we are not talking about having to police individual classes, because right now, that doesn't happen. For example, anybody can sign up for open spots in upper-division EE classes, regardless of whether you are even in the major or not. For example, I know chemical engineers who have taken EE 130 (integrated circuits) and EE 143 (microfab). Heck, for the materials science 'option' of chemical engineering, those 2 classes are designated as fulfilling part of that option. The point is, anybody can sign up for any open classes. I am therefore not asking the EECS department to "police" its classes and kick people out of classes who aren't in EECS, because that doesn't happen even today.

The real issue about impaction is not so much whether you can sign up for classes, but only about whether you can graduate with the major. And again, what I am saying is that if CS can be unimpacted, why can't at least the CS part of EECS do the same? Why is that so hard?

But come on, eudean, you're a smart guy, so just use a bit of imagination. Rules are never set in stone. Rules change all the time. Yeah, right now, the rules say that you can switch your option anytime you want. But does it always have to be that way? This rule can change, just like any other rule can. For example, we might have a situation where we have "fully-fledged" EECS students who are free to switch around options, and then we might have "CS-only" EECS students who are only allowed to graduate from Option 4, and the barrier between these 2 types of students would be the new impaction barrier.

That's just one possibility. I am quite sure that we can think of others. But the point is, you gotta be more creative. I know you can be creative, it just seems like you don't want to be. Seems to me that you simply don't WANT to come up with another way of doing things.

[quote]
Firstly, I'd like to know the specifics of this person's situation. When did he apply to a different major, and what major was it? If he did it after his 2nd year, I'm not at all surprised they wouldn't let him. They probably prevented him from failing to graduate at all by doing that.

[/quote]

Trying to hide behind compassion? And what about the guys with the bad grades - why are they being forced to stay in EECS? By doing that, you are almost guaranteeing that these guys won't graduate.

And if you want specifics, then yeah, he applied after his 2nd year. So what? He would have graduated on time. Heck, he even ended up graduating early (but not in EECS). The point is, he was a pretty decent student - at least, far better than those EECS students who were doing poorly. And I think we can agree that there are plenty of EECS students who are doing poorly.

[quote]
Second, why should we force a department to take a bad student? EECS allowed that student in because s/he looked like a good student. He ended up sucking. That's EECS's problem, that isn't (say) the Music department's problem. Does the music department want a 1.8 student? Why should we force them to take a 1.8 student? That would concentrate bad students in certain majors, and that simply wouldn't be fair to those majors. Yes, we want our EECS department to be good, but no, we won't let another department be a dumping place for EECS rejects.

Your idea makes sense from an EECS-greedy perspective, but not otherwise.

[/quote]

Firstly, "bad" is only in the context of EECS. As I'm sure you know, EECS courses are very tough. Somebody who gets bad grades in those courses is just bad at EECS. He is not necessarily bad at other things. Heck, I know plenty of EECS students who have frankly said that they take courses in other departments as GPA boosters. I think we can agree that plenty of students in EECS who are doing poorly would have done just fine if they had gone to other majors, especially the creampuff ones.

Your answer, if anything, is super-cruel. Here are guys who are clearly bad at EECS. Yet you are forcing them to stay and take more EECS. What kind of sadism is that? They're bad at it and they don't want to do it anymore, and yet you force them to have more? What's up with that? I think it's a lot more compassionate to let them leave.

I'll give you a case in point. Take that guy with the 1.8. Frankly, his EECS grades were far far worse than 1.8, probably more like a 1.0. The only reason why his GPA was even a 1.8 was because he took a lot of Spanish classes and did well in them. Of course, being a Hispanic and native Spanish speaker doesn't hurt. Nevertheless, the point is, he's doing pretty well in his Spanish classes. So why not let the guy go ahead and major in Spanish? He has shown that he does well in that, it's just that he does poorly in EECS. But EECS has nothing to do with Spanish. So why should his bad EECS grades prevent him from majoring in something that he is clearly good at, when those majors have nothing to do with one another? It's like preventing somebody from majoring in English because they're bad at math.

[quote]
Okay, let's drop the EE40/42 thing, I really don't think it matters. I don't think combining them would do anything and it seems you don't either.

[/quote]

Exactly, so I wonder why you brought it up in the first place.

[quote]
EDIT: On a side note, maybe we should move this to PMs. It seems like no one else is involved in this discussion and this thread is dead as a doornail otherwise (and continuously bumping it just for this is kind of pointless).

[/quote]

Seems like we got at least one fan.

commonsense · December 24, 2006, 9:30am

Hey Sakky.. I remember you mentioning that most people in EECS choose the CS option.. just wondering, whered you get that from? I find that a lot of the EECS people that I know or have met follow the guidelines of the other options..

eudean · December 25, 2006, 3:45am

[quote]
Your answer, if anything, is super-cruel. Here are guys who are clearly bad at EECS. Yet you are forcing them to stay and take more EECS. What kind of sadism is that? They're bad at it and they don't want to do it anymore, and yet you force them to have more?

[/quote]

The problem is it isn't my choice necessarily. Imagine that you aren't the student or the EECS department, but the department that the student wants to transfer into. He has a 2.0GPA, you're looking at his petition and it has a bunch of lower division courses, stuff that really isn't that hard to begin with. I wouldn't want that student in my department, and I should have some say whether s/he is allowed to transfer, because my department has to take the extra burden of this student almost failing college.

Sure, I'd like to give him a second chance, but that isn't always my choice alone.

[quote]
Nevertheless, the point is, he's doing pretty well in his Spanish classes. So why not let the guy go ahead and major in Spanish? He has shown that he does well in that, it's just that he does poorly in EECS.

[/quote]

I don't feel we should blindly force all with low GPAs to stay in EECS. That's the point of having a form you fill out in basically a petition process to change your major. If the person processing that form decides that a person with a 4.0 in Spanish classes and a 1.0 in EECS classes shouldn't be allowed to transfer, then too bad. I really don't have compassion for people that can't pass basic EECS classes and decide to pad their GPA with language courses in which they're already fluent. Perhaps the person processing that form will realize that student should have a second chance because s/he clearly has the ability to succeed in Spanish. Fine, then s/he got his/her second chance. I see nothing wrong with this system.

[quote]
Exactly, so I wonder why you brought it up in the first place.

[/quote]

Just stating that L&S CS and EECS Option IV are not equal (in response to you saying "If L&S CS can do it, why can't EECS?", which IMO was a naive way of looking at things).

[quote]
I said that you MAY need more resources. I didn't say that you were sure to need more resources.

[/quote]

I'm sorry, you said "...I can agree on...", which to me meant you agreed with the statement I made. Perhaps you meant to put the "may" where the "can" is.

[quote]
That's just one possibility. I am quite sure that we can think of others. But the point is, you gotta be more creative. I know you can be creative, it just seems like you don't want to be. Seems to me that you simply don't WANT to come up with another way of doing things.

[/quote]

The first problem with your solution is that there exists a simpler one: anyone wanting to major in EECS Option IV should simply choose L&S CS, which is now un-impacted. Your description of the "CS-Only" track is basically L&S CS, so why complicate things where this is no problem?

See, the reason I don't care to find a solution is because I see no problem. I don't see impacted majors as a problem, I see them as a solution to another problem: overcrowding a major. If a group of faculty believes that restricting enrollment in EECS will help maintain a higher QoE, I'm more inclined to trust their judgement than a former student's opinion that impacted majors are a bad thing.

My view is that impacted majors is a way to ensure Berkeley is filled to capacity as a whole without harming the QoE in any particular field. I see a few alternatives: 1) The campus accepts fewer students and no major is impacted; 2) The campus keeps the current enrollment numbers but majors are un-impacted. With 1), you're basically allowing fewer students to attend college, so we're indirectly raising the bar for college admissions, which is a bad thing since it isn't that low right now. With 2), we're potentially hurting QoE. With our current situation, we have a few students that don't get their desired major, but can at least pick something related and/or take courses in their field of interest anyway without suffering the cons either of the other options (which I feel are more significant than the cons of our current choice).

The reason one of these choices must be made is because we simply cannot force our departments to have faculty and resources directly proportional to the number of students that want to major in that field each year (this varies too much). Otherwise it'd be feasible to find an optimal number of students to accept such that a perfect, capacity-filling amount (per-department and across the entire campus) could be achieved. Otherwise, it just isn't possible.

[quote]
And if you want specifics, then yeah, he applied after his 2nd year. So what? He would have graduated on time. Heck, he even ended up graduating early (but not in EECS).

[/quote]

Wait, so he transferred out of EECS? Then what was the issue?

[quote]
hm.. please dont move this to PMs.. I quite like reading these discussions actually

[/quote]

Hah, well, okay. Feel free to jump in, too. It'd be interesting to get more opinions (since I think sakky and I know each other's arguments inside and out already).

vicissitudes · December 25, 2006, 4:25pm

Just adding some overall comments:

<ol>
<li>Regarding why EECS Option IV can't also be unimpacted...maybe demand is still much higher than L&S CS to the point that it can't be unimpacted yet. If I'm not mistaken, students don't apply to the options - they apply to EECS. So to truly unimpact EECS Option IV means unimpacting all of EECS, and surely it wouldn't make sense to umimpact the major that's hardest to gain entry in CoE before unimpacting all Engineering majors. Well I don't see unimpacting all of CoE anytime soon. Demand is still high. The CS professor mentioned that there might be a surge in applicants now that CS is unimpacted, to the point that CS might be impacted again. Well, imagine how many people would go into Engineering if it were unimpacted. Maybe there are enough spaces in some classes to allow EECS to admit a few more students, but probably not unimpact EECS entirely. How did CS manage to figure out how to unimpact itself while EECS can't? Probably because demand for EECS is higher, and it wants to maintain a higher quality (meaning higher selectivity).</li>
<li>I think it's likely that CS will be unimpacted. sakky, you have a point in saying just because the department voted on it doesn't necessarily mean it will get through, but I think it's a bit cynical to start saying things like "I expect the department to lie."</li>
<li>Yeah, it should be easier for poor Engineers to transfer to another major in L&S. That was a poor policy. I have a question about the policy though: if you have a 2.9 in Engineering, does that mean you cannot automatically transfer to L&S, and would have to file a petition or something? If you have a 3.0, can you automatically transfer into L&S?</li>
</ol>

sakky · December 25, 2006, 6:46pm

[quote]
The problem is it isn't my choice necessarily. Imagine that you aren't the student or the EECS department, but the department that the student wants to transfer into. He has a 2.0GPA, you're looking at his petition and it has a bunch of lower division courses, stuff that really isn't that hard to begin with. I wouldn't want that student in my department, and I should have some say whether s/he is allowed to transfer, because my department has to take the extra burden of this student almost failing college.

Sure, I'd like to give him a second chance, but that isn't always my choice alone.

[/quote]

Look, it's a bad situation all-around. Having him go to another department may be bad. But forcing him to stay in the department in which he is screwing up is also bad. The real question is - which is worse? I would argue that forcing him to stay in a bad situation is worse. Some people benefit from a change in scenery. However, the point is, if one particular path isn't working, you don't stay on that path. It's probably better to try another path. That new path might be bad too, but at least you'd have the chance of improvement. By staying on the current path, you basically have no chance of improvement.

[quote]
I don't feel we should blindly force all with low GPAs to stay in EECS. That's the point of having a form you fill out in basically a petition process to change your major. If the person processing that form decides that a person with a 4.0 in Spanish classes and a 1.0 in EECS classes shouldn't be allowed to transfer, then too bad. I really don't have compassion for people that can't pass basic EECS classes and decide to pad their GPA with language courses in which they're already fluent. Perhaps the person processing that form will realize that student should have a second chance because s/he clearly has the ability to succeed in Spanish. Fine, then s/he got his/her second chance. I see nothing wrong with this system.

[/quote]

I don't think it should be up to that particular bureaucrat to play God in that manner. My take is that if you're not going to major in something, then who cares what grades you got in the weeder courses of that major? You're not majoring in it anyway, so what does it matter?

Hence, if you decide to switch away from EECS, your EECS-grades shouldn't matter. After all, EECS has nothing to do with what you are switching into (with the possible exceptions of physics or math).

And furthermore, I don't see why you don't have any compassion for these people anyway. After all, what about those fluent Spanish speakers who decided to major in Spanish right from the get-go? They get to basically have an easy life for 4 years at Berkeley on their way to coasting to a degree. Nobody seems to have a problem with that. Yet a guy who decides to try out another major gets crucified for it. Why? What's up with that? People should be allowed to shop around and try on certain majors to see what fits them and if they find out it doesn't work, they should be allowed to leave freely. It's just a major. You're not getting married - in other words, you're not making a lifetime commitment. And even if you were getting married, I would think that to be wise, you would first date the person for awhile before marrying them, during which you are free to break up anytime you want. You don't force somebody into marrying a person that they barely even know. But that's what EECS is trying to do. Why?

[quote]
The first problem with your solution is that there exists a simpler one: anyone wanting to major in EECS Option IV should simply choose L&S CS, which is now un-impacted. Your description of the "CS-Only" track is basically L&S CS, so why complicate things where this is no problem?

[/quote]

I would turn that question around and say that if there is no difference anyway, then why not open up Option IV? This gives students even more free choice. After all, some people want to get a formally accredited engineering degree, which an Option IV degree would be, but which the BACS degree is not. If some people want this, and the ability is there to provide it, then why not? This is all about opening up maximum choice.

[quote]
See, the reason I don't care to find a solution is because I see no problem. I don't see impacted majors as a problem, I see them as a solution to another problem: overcrowding a major. If a group of faculty believes that restricting enrollment in EECS will help maintain a higher QoE, I'm more inclined to trust their judgement than a former student's opinion that impacted majors are a bad thing.

[/quote]

That belies the fact that the courses don't seem overcrowded. Again, looking back at all of those EECS courses, I see very few of them that are actually at capacity. So where is this evidence of overcrowding? Where are the long wait-lists?

You sound like a person who is flying on a half-empty plane who doesn't want to allow anybody else on board just because you want the luxury of stretching out across multiple seats. Hey, you only bought one ticket, so you have the right to occupy only one seat. You don't have the "right" to stretch yourself across multiple seats. If they happen to be empty, good for you. But if they are occupied, hey man, that's too bad.

If EECS courses were really "overcrowded", you would expect to see 2 things. First, many EECS courses would actually have wait-lists and people being denied from the major. That's not happening. Secondly, these EECS courses would begin to bar people from other majors. That's not happening either. Like I said, plenty of chemical engineering students take EECS classes like EECS 130. Other non-EECS engineering students, as well as math and physics students also sometimes take EECS classes. So what would happen if, in one semester, a whole slew of non-EECS students decided to take the same EECS class that you took, thereby crowding the class to capacity? How is that any different from just having lots of EECS students in that class? At the end of the day, students are students. A chemical engineering student in EECS 130 consumes just as many class resources as an EECS student in EECS 130.

The same thing is true if CS becomes unimpacted. After all, those new CS students will obviously end up consuming lots of EECS resources. Most of those resources will obviously be computer science courses, but some won't be. Again, right now, CS students can use EE courses to fulfill their technical electives, and many take courses like EECS 150 or 152 that lots of regular EE's take. Hence, if you are going to have this influx of students anyway into EE courses as a consequence of unimpacting CS, then it seems as if quality of education is not that much of an issue. For example, right now, with the opening of CS, you are probably going to have some mediocre students who are going to major in CS and then take a bunch of EE courses in order to fulfill their technical electives. That's going to have an impact on the quality of education, isn't it?

Eudean, I am well aware that you don't see any problem, and I would argue that that's because you are already in EECS. Of course * you * don't see a problem. It's like a rich person who doesn't see poverty. You already 'got yours', and that's all you really care about. What about the person who wants to get into EECS and does decently (i.e. GPA > 3.0), but still can't get in? What about that person? I am quite certain that if you told him there is no problem, he would give you quite an earful, particularly when you account for the fact that there are current EECS students who are doing worse than him, yet they get to stay in EECS and he doesn't get to come in. What's up with that?

[quote]
My view is that impacted majors is a way to ensure Berkeley is filled to capacity as a whole without harming the QoE in any particular field. I see a few alternatives: 1) The campus accepts fewer students and no major is impacted;

[/quote]

You forgot about the other choice that I have discussed repeatedly. You can admit the same number of students, but just raise the quality of those students admitted, by getting better students to apply and then raising the yield of those better students. For example, right now, the majority of people who get admitted to Berkeley and to one of HYPSM will choose the latter. And of course plenty of the best students (especially if they're not from California) don't even apply to Berkeley. If that can be changed, and better students would come, then we could keep the same number of students while raising the quality of those students and thus remove impaction. Obviously this is a big job, but hey, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

We can start with just Californians. I'm embarrassed that the best high school students in California tend to prefer Stanford to Berkeley. I think Berkeley should be competing for these students. Maybe Berkeley can't win, but Berkeley can at least be more competitive and hence draw more matriculants away from Stanford. I believe I read somewhere that the cross-admit battle is being lost something like 75/25 (maybe more) with Stanford. If we can get it down to say, 60/40, that would be a significant improvement. The same could be said for the battle with Harvard, which is really being lost badly, probably like 90/10 or perhaps more. If we can get that down to 75/25, that would be a vast improvement.

[quote]
With 2), we're potentially hurting QoE. With our current situation, we have a few students that don't get their desired major, but can at least pick something related and/or take courses in their field of interest anyway without suffering the cons either of the other options (which I feel are more significant than the cons of our current choice).

[/quote]

But like I said, why is it that MCB can be so big, so well-respected, and yet still be unimpacted. What does MCB know that EE doesn't know? Apparently MCB has managed to figure out how to run a high quality program without impaction.

I would like to hear some reasons from the EECS department about why they are so different from MCB that they have to use impaction and MCB doesn't.

[quote]
The reason one of these choices must be made is because we simply cannot force our departments to have faculty and resources directly proportional to the number of students that want to major in that field each year (this varies too much). Otherwise it'd be feasible to find an optimal number of students to accept such that a perfect, capacity-filling amount (per-department and across the entire campus) could be achieved. Otherwise, it just isn't possible.

[/quote]

Again, look at the MCB example. Nobody really "knows" how many students are going to major in MCB. Yet MCB has somehow managed to allocate its resources to handle whatever demand comes along without having to resort to impaction. Is this just a management problem - that MCB knows how to allocate its resources efficiently and EECS doesn't? If so, then the answer seems to be to force EECS to learn from MCB.

[quote]
Wait, so he transferred out of EECS? Then what was the issue?

[/quote]

No, this is the guy who couldn't get into EECS despite having decent grades, and so ended up majoring in something else because he had to. The point is, he was a decent student -certainly better than a lot of the bad students in EECS. Yet he wasn't allowed to major in EECS. And that's sad.

sakky · December 25, 2006, 6:57pm

[quote]
1. Regarding why EECS Option IV can't also be unimpacted...maybe demand is still much higher than L&S CS to the point that it can't be unimpacted yet. If I'm not mistaken, students don't apply to the options - they apply to EECS. So to truly unimpact EECS Option IV means unimpacting all of EECS, and surely it wouldn't make sense to umimpact the major that's hardest to gain entry in CoE before unimpacting all Engineering majors. Well I don't see unimpacting all of CoE anytime soon. Demand is still high. The CS professor mentioned that there might be a surge in applicants now that CS is unimpacted, to the point that CS might be impacted again. Well, imagine how many people would go into Engineering if it were unimpacted. Maybe there are enough spaces in some classes to allow EECS to admit a few more students, but probably not unimpact EECS entirely. How did CS manage to figure out how to unimpact itself while EECS can't? Probably because demand for EECS is higher, and it wants to maintain a higher quality (meaning higher selectivity).

[/quote]

Vicissitudes, you didn't carefully read what I said. I said that, to start, you can just unimpact ONLY Option IV of EECS. Now obviously that would mean some changes to the way that EECS is run because right now the options are just guidelines and people are free to switch options. What I am saying is that we could implement a situation where that wasn't the case - people would be free to switch around all of the options except the Option 4 people, who wouldn't have this freedom. In other words, we would have a situation where we have 2 kinds of EECS people, those "fully-fledged" EECS people who could choose any option, and those special EECS people who can only choose option 4.

Lest you think this is a matter of segregation and discrimination, let me point out that that's what's going to happen right now anyway with the new proposal - that you will have people majoring in CS in L&S, but not being allowed to enter EECS (not even for option 4). Hence, either way, segregation will happen. The difference is that you have more freedom with my proposal. People can choose to get an accredited CS degree, or an unaccredited one, and both would be available without impaction.

Of course ultimately I would want ALL of Berkeley to have no impaction. But I think this is a reasonable first step. If you can't eliminate all impaction, you can at least try to minimize the scope of impaction to only where it is truly necessary. If CS is going to be unimpacted, and it shares much of the same curriculum as EECS Option 4, then why not try to devise a system to unimpact the latter too?

[quote]
2. I think it's likely that CS will be unimpacted. sakky, you have a point in saying just because the department voted on it doesn't necessarily mean it will get through, but I think it's a bit cynical to start saying things like "I expect the department to lie."

[/quote]

Look, I expect ALL organizations to not tell me the complete truth because that's just the way that organizations are. Organizations are self-defending organisms that have an incentive to further their own agendas, even if that means shading the truth.

My point is simply that just because a prof/department says something is so doesn't necessarily make it so. Profs/departments have been known to lie before. That's all I'm saying. Is that cynical? Well, if you think that organizations will never lie to you, you are going to be in for a rude awakening one day.

[quote]
Yeah, it should be easier for poor Engineers to transfer to another major in L&S. That was a poor policy. I have a question about the policy though: if you have a 2.9 in Engineering, does that mean you cannot automatically transfer to L&S, and would have to file a petition or something? If you have a 3.0, can you automatically transfer into L&S?

[/quote]

I know that in the past, all you needed was a 2.0 and the transfer was automatic. Then that got changed sometime in the late 90's. A very sad change because that introduced the 'major trap'. Now, I think having even a 3.0 doesn't automatically guarantee you a switch. And come on, a 3.0 in engineering isn't exactly a walk in the park. There are PLENTY of engineers who don't have anywhere near a 3.0.

eudean · December 26, 2006, 2:46am

[quote]
Yet a guy who decides to try out another major gets crucified for it. Why? What's up with that? People should be allowed to shop around and try on certain majors to see what fits them and if they find out it doesn't work, they should be allowed to leave freely.

[/quote]

If by "shopping around" you mean getting C's in basic, lower division courses, then I don't see why I should have compassion for those students. Sure, you can shop around, but that doesn't mean you can ignore your GPA while doing so. Shopping around to me means getting a feel for different fields you might be interested in and picking the one you enjoy the most, not finding the field you don't fail in and picking that one.

[quote]
You don't force somebody into marrying a person that they barely even know. But that's what EECS is trying to do.

[/quote]

I view the analogy more as this: you date EECS for awhile. If you treat her well, you can get married and lead a happy life. If you beat her and brutalize her, and she takes you to court and you get assault and battery on your criminal record, most likely other majors aren't going to want to date you. You're stuck trying to mend things with her because you screwed up with her. You can blame it on her all you want, but it was you.

[quote]
I would argue that forcing him to stay in a bad situation is worse. Some people benefit from a change in scenery. However, the point is, if one particular path isn't working, you don't stay on that path. It's probably better to try another path. That new path might be bad too, but at least you'd have the chance of improvement. By staying on the current path, you basically have no chance of improvement.

[/quote]

I don't believe this is true. I believe there are opportunities whether you stay in EECS or not. I believe a poor student can raise his or her GPA without having to change majors (heck, I've seen it happen, and not infrequently). I'd prefer forcing students to make the best of something they screwed up--i.e. making them work hard--rather than allowing them to take an easy road out. I don't think the student benefits as much from that. In fact, I'd rather have that student try the hard task and complete it poorly, having learned something along the way, rather than doing the easy task without blinking and having gained nothing.

Then again, it could be argued either way. I see benefits in both paths.

[quote]
If EECS courses were really "overcrowded", you would expect to see 2 things. First, many EECS courses would actually have wait-lists and people being denied from the major. That's not happening. Secondly, these EECS courses would begin to bar people from other majors.

[/quote]

The problem with this argument is that EECS isn't overcrowded because it is an impacted major. Part of the reason why students major in the engineering version of an L&S major (e.g. bio vs. bioE, physics vs. engineering physics, CS vs. EECS) is because they want to take more engineering electives rather than L&S electives. That means we should have breathing room in most engineering courses to allow this to happen. Perhaps the faculty predicts that letting everyone into the major would cause such problems. Maybe they don't intend to fill up the courses to the maximum, and are simply relying on EECS being impacted to prevent course enrollment from going to high.

[quote]
So what would happen if, in one semester, a whole slew of non-EECS students decided to take the same EECS class that you took

[/quote]

So what would happen if, on one day, the earth magically imploded and humanity was destroyed? Okay, so maybe that's a 1 in 10^1000, but your scenario also isn't likely enough for someone to worry about (I'm sure we can plot the distribution of how many non-EECS students sign up for courses, and the chances of an outlier like you're talking about would probably be 3 standard deviations above the mean). Not that it wouldn't present a problem, but I'm not worried about it.

[quote]
What about the person who wants to get into EECS and does decently (i.e. GPA > 3.0), but still can't get in? What about that person? I am quite certain that if you told him there is no problem, he would give you quite an earful, particularly when you account for the fact that there are current EECS students who are doing worse than him, yet they get to stay in EECS and he doesn't get to come in. What's up with that?

[/quote]

Okay, so I'm biased, but picking an example of someone biased in the opposite direction doesn't resolve the issue. All you're saying is that impacted majors are good for some people and bad for others. Whoopee. Getting rid of impacted majors is good for some people and bad for others. I'm obviously arguing that the cost-benefit ratio is better with impacted majors than without.

[quote]
You forgot about the other choice that I have discussed repeatedly. You can admit the same number of students, but just raise the quality of those students admitted, by getting better students to apply and then raising the yield of those better students. For example, right now, the majority of people who get admitted to Berkeley and to one of HYPSM will choose the latter.

[/quote]

How does this solve the problem? A group of the best students in the world will still have its bottom half that get C's and D's (i.e. curves still apply). We could institute grade inflation and give everyone A's and B's, so nobody would be failing EECS anymore, but that wouldn't be a good thing IMO. I don't see how better students would solve the problem in general, though (unless they were all exactly equally good).

[quote]
I'm embarrassed that the best high school students in California tend to prefer Stanford to Berkeley.

[/quote]

I'm not. If people want to go to Stanford, good for them. I'm not unhappy with Berkeley's current set of undergrads. I don't view them as causing problems with impacted majors. I don't believe if we took Stanford's undergraduate class and proportionally increased it to the size of Berkeley's, we'd suddenly be rid of our problems.

Not to say that we shouldn't compete for better students, as always. Of course, it would be nice to always get the top students, but I don't see that as a major problem right now, or as a solution to any major problem.

[quote]
But like I said, why is it that MCB can be so big, so well-respected, and yet still be unimpacted. What does MCB know that EE doesn't know? Apparently MCB has managed to figure out how to run a high quality program without impaction.

[/quote]

I don't know. Maybe MCB enrollment numbers are more stable, maybe it has excessively many teaching faculty (and labs, TAs, etc.). I don't assume that EECS is mis-managed because MCB is large and un-impacted. Maybe EECS doesn't want to risk becoming too large too fast and hurting QoE, but is in fact working at expanding. I don't know, and neither do you. I'm not going to presume guilt of wrongdoing, though.

[quote]
If CS is going to be unimpacted, and it shares much of the same curriculum as EECS Option 4, then why not try to devise a system to unimpact the latter too?

[/quote]

But WHY? What benefits does anyone get? Some guy is going to get a BS instead of a BA? Who cares? His resume will still say he took CS141, 150, and 152, knows Cadence and SPICE, and as long as he has a decent GPA and doesn't suck at interviews, he'll get a job. Technically, nothing prevents him from taking EE20 and EE40 and E190 (and Math 53/54 and Physics 7A/7B). This is a solution looking for a problem, but there is no problem.

[quote]
And come on, a 3.0 in engineering isn't exactly a walk in the park. There are PLENTY of engineers who don't have anywhere near a 3.0.

[/quote]

Just because people don't do something doesn't mean it isn't easy. I'm betting the vast majority of Americans don't walk in a park every day, but that doesn't make it not a walk in the park. Getting a 3.0 is getting average on every assignment and test. Not that hard.

sakky · December 26, 2006, 4:02am

[quote]
If by "shopping around" you mean getting C's in basic, lower division courses, then I don't see why I should have compassion for those students. Sure, you can shop around, but that doesn't mean you can ignore your GPA while doing so. Shopping around to me means getting a feel for different fields you might be interested in and picking the one you enjoy the most, not finding the field you don't fail in and picking that one.

[/quote]

Aha - exactly. So that means that you agree that somebody who was admitted into EECS should still have the freedom to shop around, and if in fact, that EECS guy ends up getting C's (or worse) in EECS, but does well in some other major, he should be free to leave EECS, right? What's up with that major trap anyway?

[quote]
I view the analogy more as this: you date EECS for awhile. If you treat her well, you can get married and lead a happy life. If you beat her and brutalize her, and she takes you to court and you get assault and battery on your criminal record, most likely other majors aren't going to want to date you. You're stuck trying to mend things with her because you screwed up with her. You can blame it on her all you want, but it was you.

[/quote]

Uh, no, the analogy actually goes the other way. You don't brutalize EECS, rather, EECS * brutalizes you *. And then because now that you're all brutalized and beat up and scarred, no other major wants to take you. And that's just sad.

[quote]
I don't believe this is true. I believe there are opportunities whether you stay in EECS or not. I believe a poor student can raise his or her GPA without having to change majors (heck, I've seen it happen, and not infrequently). I'd prefer forcing students to make the best of something they screwed up--i.e. making them work hard--rather than allowing them to take an easy road out. I don't think the student benefits as much from that. In fact, I'd rather have that student try the hard task and complete it poorly, having learned something along the way, rather than doing the easy task without blinking and having gained nothing.

[/quote]

Yet what of those students who had ALWAYS taken the easy path - in other words, had gotten themselves into L&S to do a creampuff major. What about them? Why should those people who try out EECS and then have to resort to retreating to a creampuff major be made worse off than somebody who was always in that creampuff major? I think both should be normalized to the same condition. Like I said, the guy who tried EECS and performed miserably - why should he have to carry around his bad EECS grades forever when the guy who had never tried EECS at all doesn't have to? That basically means that the guy who tried EECS and did poorly would have been better off had he never tried at all. That's sad.

[quote]
The problem with this argument is that EECS isn't overcrowded because it is an impacted major. Part of the reason why students major in the engineering version of an L&S major (e.g. bio vs. bioE, physics vs. engineering physics, CS vs. EECS) is because they want to take more engineering electives rather than L&S electives. That means we should have breathing room in most engineering courses to allow this to happen. Perhaps the faculty predicts that letting everyone into the major would cause such problems. Maybe they don't intend to fill up the courses to the maximum, and are simply relying on EECS being impacted to prevent course enrollment from going to high.

[/quote]

Yet again, compare EECS to MCB. It's not like EECS has less breathing room than MCB does. Both majors seem to have roughly the same percentage of open seats in their classes. Yet MCB still manages to avoid the use of impaction. Why can't EECS do that?

[quote]
So what would happen if, on one day, the earth magically imploded and humanity was destroyed? Okay, so maybe that's a 1 in 10^1000, but your scenario also isn't likely enough for someone to worry about (I'm sure we can plot the distribution of how many non-EECS students sign up for courses, and the chances of an outlier like you're talking about would probably be 3 standard deviations above the mean). Not that it wouldn't present a problem, but I'm not worried about it.

[/quote]

Then a more optimal answer is to increase the number of EECS seats, and then to give the EECS students more priority in enrolling in EECS classes, similar to how Haas students get priority in enrolling in Haas classes. After all, think about what you are saying. You are saying that EECS needs to preserve breathing room for its classes via impaction (never mind the fact that MCB also has breathing room for its classes without impaction), yet that 'breathing room' is open for enrollment to non-EECS students. It would seem to me that if anything, if EECS REALLY needed that breathing room, then EECS ought to be trying to preserve that room to its own students, not for students who are coming in from entirely different majors, or, in the case of chemical engineers, from an entirely different college.

[quote]
Okay, so I'm biased, but picking an example of someone biased in the opposite direction doesn't resolve the issue. All you're saying is that impacted majors are good for some people and bad for others. Whoopee. Getting rid of impacted majors is good for some people and bad for others. I'm obviously arguing that the cost-benefit ratio is better with impacted majors than without.

[/quote]

I hardly see how my reforms are 'bad' for others. Who is it 'bad' for? If anything, I would argue that the status quo is worse than my reforms. Again, we have people who are doing badly in EECS who are being forced to stay, and people who are doing decently in EECS who can't get in. That's sad because that is a lose-lose situation for everybody. You have 2 people who end up majoring in something that they don't want, when you could have zero.

[quote]
How does this solve the problem? A group of the best students in the world will still have its bottom half that get C's and D's (i.e. curves still apply). We could institute grade inflation and give everyone A's and B's, so nobody would be failing EECS anymore, but that wouldn't be a good thing IMO. I don't see how better students would solve the problem in general, though (unless they were all exactly equally good).

[/quote]

Increased student quality would mean an increased curve, just like how honors classes have increased curves, because you wouldn't have to weed because the higher student quality would mean that the students are already 'pre-weeded'. I hardly see how that is a bad thing. Stanford basically institutes a de-facto policy of giving everybody a decent grade, and yet employers still greatly respect the Stanford degree.

[quote]
I'm not. If people want to go to Stanford, good for them. I'm not unhappy with Berkeley's current set of undergrads. I don't view them as causing problems with impacted majors. I don't believe if we took Stanford's undergraduate class and proportionally increased it to the size of Berkeley's, we'd suddenly be rid of our problems.

Not to say that we shouldn't compete for better students, as always. Of course, it would be nice to always get the top students, but I don't see that as a major problem right now, or as a solution to any major problem.

[/quote]

Actually, I would consider it a solution that could solve MOST of Berkeley's problems, and in the context of this thread, could solve the problem of impaction, at least indirectly. You said it yourself - you believe impaction is necessitated to ensure that the student quality remain high. But if student quality were * already * high, then you wouldn't need impaction.

Besides, why are you talking about 'scaling up' anything? That's an argument perhaps for institution an impaction policy from L&S to engineering, but doesn't justify the other aspects of engineeirg impaction. Berkeley has about 2600 undergrad engineering students. That's about the same number as MIT has. {MIT has 1750 undergrads who are currently majoring in engineering, but MIT students don't declare their major until their sophomore year, so you add in the roughly 60% of students in the 1000-person freshman class who will declare engineering, and you have about 2350 undergrads effectively within the MIT School of Engineering). Hence, Berkeley undergrad engineering is not substantially larger than MIT undergrad engineering, and yet MIT has no impaction. Hence, what that means is that Berkeley ought to at least remove the 'intra-engineering' impaction restrictions so that, for example, CivE's can freely switch to EECS.

<a href="http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/explore/facts.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/explore/facts.html</a>
<a href="http://web.mit.edu/engineering/about/statistics.html%5B/url%5D">http://web.mit.edu/engineering/about/statistics.html</a>

It also, again, begs the question of why the huge L&S majors like MCB or poli-sci can run their strong programs without impaction. Think about it. Both MCB and poli-sci grant almost as many bachelor's degrees each year as the ENTIRE College of Engineering does, in all of the engineering majors. The CoE is a relatively small college, and is a minnow compared to L&S. Yet most of L&S is still able to operate without impaction, yet EVERY MAJOR in the CoE is impacted.

<a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/CarDest/2005Majors.stm%5B/url%5D">http://career.berkeley.edu/CarDest/2005Majors.stm</a>

[quote]
I don't know. Maybe MCB enrollment numbers are more stable, maybe it has excessively many teaching faculty (and labs, TAs, etc.). I don't assume that EECS is mis-managed because MCB is large and un-impacted. Maybe EECS doesn't want to risk becoming too large too fast and hurting QoE, but is in fact working at expanding. I don't know, and neither do you. I'm not going to presume guilt of wrongdoing, though.

[/quote]

I am not aware of any evidence to indicate that MCB has suffered from poor "QoE". If anything, the evidence indicates the opposite. Hence, I think this is pretty damning evidence against EECS. Not definitive evidence, of course. But the fact that not just MCB, but several departments in L&S are significantly larger than EECS are, and can run highly respected programs without resorting to impaction seems to tell me that EECS could probably do the same. MCB, poli-sci, English - all of these departments confer more bachelor's degrees than EECS does, yet none of them have to resort to the crutch of impaction to manage their programs. Why not? If these departments can do it, why can't EECS?

But I know you're not going to presume guilt or wrongdoing - because frankly, you don't even think there is a problem at all. If you don't even think there is a problem, then obviously you're not going to be looking for guilt or wrongdoing. Hey, if the system is benefitting you personally (even if it is screwing over other people), then obviously you don't care. Too bad if other people are getting hurt, as long as you get yours, right eudean?

[quote]
But WHY? What benefits does anyone get? Some guy is going to get a BS instead of a BA? Who cares? His resume will still say he took CS141, 150, and 152, knows Cadence and SPICE, and as long as he has a decent GPA and doesn't suck at interviews, he'll get a job. Technically, nothing prevents him from taking EE20 and EE40 and E190 (and Math 53/54 and Physics 7A/7B). This is a solution looking for a problem, but there is no problem.

[/quote]

I would turn that right on its head - if there is no problem, and nobody cares anyway, then there is no reason not to give him that BS degree, especially if he has fulfilled all the requirements to get it. YOU might not think it is a big deal, but if that guy wants it, and passes all of the requirements, why do you want to deny it from him, if it truly is no big deal?

I think that's evidence of a paradox. You say that it's no big deal that he doesn't get the BS degree, but then you still don't want to give it to him. I think we should let * each student * to decide for himself whether it's a big deal or not. Those students who agree with you that it's not a big deal will probably happily take the BA degree and not have to take the tougher engineering courses. But those students who decide that it is a big deal and who are willing to fulfill the requirements and pass them should be given the BS degree. But the point is, we should let the students decide for themselves what kind of degree they want. Nobody (not you, not I, not anybody) should make that decision for them.

[quote]
Just because people don't do something doesn't mean it isn't easy. I'm betting the vast majority of Americans don't walk in a park every day, but that doesn't make it not a walk in the park. Getting a 3.0 is getting average on every assignment and test. Not that hard.

[/quote]

But not that easy. And certainly it's not as easy as getting a 2.0 in engineering, which some engineering students do. How do you defend the inequity of forcing bad engineering students to stay in engineering when they don't want to, while barring decent potential engineering students from joining?

eudean · December 26, 2006, 6:35am

[quote]
So that means that you agree that somebody who was admitted into EECS should still have the freedom to shop around

[/quote]

Yes, but if he gets a 2.0GPA and finds nobody wants to take him, that's his problem. That's our difference of opinion.

[quote]
Uh, no, the analogy actually goes the other way. You don't brutalize EECS, rather, EECS brutalizes you.

[/quote]

I don't see things that way. You screwed up the EECS department, not the other way around. EECS gave you a chance to score, and you ended up throwing up on her. The story gets out and you have to change schools to find anyone willing to date you. Maybe assault wasn't the best example, but same idea. It was your fault that you failed courses, not EECS's fault (and if you disagree with that, then this discussion is completely over).

[quote]
That basically means that the guy who tried EECS and did poorly would have been better off had he never tried at all.

[/quote]

Your idea of being better off is having a higher GPA. My idea of being better off is learning more. They aren't always the same thing. Having a 3.0GPA but having taken the hardest of the hard EECS courses is respectable. Having a 4.0GPA but having taken the easiest of the easy humanities courses is not worth much (and any interviewer will find out in a heartbeat).

[quote]
It would seem to me that if anything, if EECS REALLY needed that breathing room, then EECS ought to be trying to preserve that room to its own students, not for students who are coming in from entirely different majors, or, in the case of chemical engineers, from an entirely different college.

[/quote]

That's just another trade-off. Great, now we have more EECS majors. Oh no, now everyone that wants to have an EECS elective can't. Those that want a minor can't get one. Is it worth it? Maybe.

[quote]
I hardly see how my reforms are 'bad' for others. Who is it 'bad' for?

[/quote]

Which reform? Your forcing another department to take bad EECS students is bad for that department and everyone in it. It's good for EECS. Your desire to remove impacted majors has the potential to reduce QoE (assuming that QoE is the constraint), but lets more people into the major. There are always trade-offs. You haven't presented me a solution that doesn't have any cons, or a pro-con ratio better than the present solution.

[quote]
Stanford basically institutes a de-facto policy of giving everybody a decent grade, and yet employers still greatly respect the Stanford degree.

[/quote]

See, I see that as a bad thing. Grade inflation makes high GPAs meaningless. I like getting a high GPA, and grade inflation would help me do that, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing. Further, if the course average on a test is actually higher than a 3.0 (e.g. mean is 95%), then that was a terribly written test because it didn't challenge anybody. I think courses should be designed so that means are in the 50-70 range, then curved appropriately. Most professors I have agree.

[quote]
You said it yourself - you believe impaction is necessitated to ensure that the student quality remain high. But if student quality were already high, then you wouldn't need impaction.

[/quote]

Wait, so this simply forces some OTHER school to have impacted majors. Sure, we steal the better kids from (say) Stanford, so now Stanford has worse incoming students--and Stanford has to impact majors as a result. If impacted majors make sure the best students come out on top (i.e. if my belief is true), then it is always a good thing unless it is applied where it is absolutely unnecessary.

[quote]
Berkeley has about 2600 undergrad engineering students. That's about the same number as MIT has.

[/quote]

Berkeley isn't MIT. Gee, half of their campus is engineering. One tenth of ours is engineering. I'm guessing MIT spends a bigger slice of their pie on engineering than Berkeley does. I wouldn't be surprised if that slice ended up being larger than ours.

The point is that if you took any group of 2600 students (that weren't geniuses) and stuck them in Berkeley engineering, that wouldn't suddenly fix all the problems in EECS. All of your "A can do it, so why can't B?" arguments are just silly. A being able to do something does not imply it is reasonable for B to do so. I'm just going to ignore any future "MCB can, why can't EECS?" and "MIT can, so why can't Berkeley?" style arguments because they all have the same rebuttal (unless you provide foundation as to why A doing something implies it is reasonable and wise for B to do it).

[quote]
Hey, if the system is benefitting you personally (even if it is screwing over other people), then obviously you don't care. Too bad if other people are getting hurt, as long as you get yours, right eudean?

[/quote]

Wow, going ad hominem? Okay, fair enough. I would gladly trade the happiness of 99% of the population for the mild discomfort of 1% (and that's really what we're talking about). I don't want everyone to get A's, I don't want colleges to let anyone in, I don't want EECS to be open to anyone. That ensures quality. Heck, I don't get A's all the time, and I STILL don't think everyone should get A's.

We keep unqualified individuals out of certain colleges because it benefits those attending those colleges. You, I, and a lot of other people benefit from the "harm" those people receive. You and I benefit from other people failing classes, because it makes my grade worth something. I don't go around encouraging people to fail--I encourage them to do their best, because that forces me to do better. If their best is worse than my best, then that benefits me and hurts them.

You want Berkeley to be this socialist ideal where everyone has free access to everything. Fine, if you can do that without harming QoE then go ahead. Otherwise, forcing competition works, and that's what impacted majors do. They force students that want a limited resource to earn it.

[quote]
But the point is, we should let the students decide for themselves what kind of degree they want. Nobody (not you, not I, not anybody) should make that decision for them.

[/quote]

Yes, we should. We do all the time. By getting into Berkeley, I prevented someone else from getting in. One of those people that was prevented from getting in inevitably didn't go to college at all. He didn't even get a degree. Someone decided for him that he wouldn't even be allowed to come to college. He didn't even get a choice. I'm sure that person got hurt (and I benefited directly from that), but that's tough luck because resources are finite.

[quote]
I would turn that right on its head - if there is no problem, and nobody cares anyway, then there is no reason not to give him that BS degree, especially if he has fulfilled all the requirements to get it.

[/quote]

It's because the university cares. You can ask me why, but it will do you no good, as I'll just tell you to ask the university, and you'll tell me they lie, leading to no conclusion. Whether it's because of EE20/40, E190, lower div physics, the desire to have more L&S CS majors, a higher interest in L&S CS than EECS Option IV, or whatever else, I don't know. You can guess all you like, but you will never know the truth in doing so.

[quote]
But not that easy. And certainly it's not as easy as getting a 2.0 in engineering, which some engineering students do. How do you defend the inequity of forcing bad engineering students to stay in engineering when they don't want to, while barring decent potential engineering students from joining?

[/quote]

Look, I like EECS too, but I'm not going to greedily force other majors to take bad students from EECS. Again, you're not citing a situation with a higher pro-con ratio than what exists. Try again.

vicissitudes · December 26, 2006, 3:07pm

[quote]
Vicissitudes, you didn't carefully read what I said. I said that, to start, you can just unimpact ONLY Option IV of EECS. Now obviously that would mean some changes to the way that EECS is run because right now the options are just guidelines and people are free to switch options. What I am saying is that we could implement a situation where that wasn't the case - people would be free to switch around all of the options except the Option 4 people, who wouldn't have this freedom. In other words, we would have a situation where we have 2 kinds of EECS people, those "fully-fledged" EECS people who could choose any option, and those special EECS people who can only choose option 4.

[/quote]

I read what you said. But look, it's very difficult to transfer into CoE from other colleges right now, especially EECS. What this means is the vast majority of EECS students are freshman admits. Now, how do high school seniors apply to EECS? They apply to the major. Not Option IV, Option II, or other options. They apply to the entire major. So what this means is if you want to only unimpact Option IV and leave Options I, II, and III impacted, that you have to create separate options on the application. So now high school seniors will pick to apply to EECS Options I, II, III or EECS Option IV. But if it really has to come to this, then that student should just apply to L&S CS anyway, since the two options are pretty much the same. There wouldn't even really be a need for EECS Option IV. Like you said, it takes less resources to run one option instead of two.

What about leaving things the way it is? Well, if we leave Option IV impacted, that means all EECS students will have the option of picking CS while still have the freedom to hop back to other Options.

[quote]
Berkeley has about 2600 undergrad engineering students. That's about the same number as MIT has. {MIT has 1750 undergrads who are currently majoring in engineering, but MIT students don't declare their major until their sophomore year, so you add in the roughly 60% of students in the 1000-person freshman class who will declare engineering, and you have about 2350 undergrads effectively within the MIT School of Engineering). Hence, Berkeley undergrad engineering is not substantially larger than MIT undergrad engineering, and yet MIT has no impaction.

[/quote]

Well, MIT has a lot more resources than Berkeley and is much more dedicated to engineering whereas Berkeley has to split its resources among so many different departments. Now I know you might argue that it's not a matter of resources because EECS has empty seats and MCB, a larger major, manages quite well. To this I would say if Berkeley has enough resources to admit more engineers then certainly MIT has more resources to admit more engineers (why limit to ~2350? I'm sure MIT can make room for more if it really wanted to). Now you'll probably argue that just because other schools don't use their resources fully doesn't mean Berkeley shouldn't. Yeah, true. But in any case I don't think bringing up MIT is a good argument because I don't think MIT is doing any better in the department of resource allocation.

[quote]
I am not aware of any evidence to indicate that MCB has suffered from poor "QoE". If anything, the evidence indicates the opposite. Hence, I think this is pretty damning evidence against EECS. Not definitive evidence, of course. But the fact that not just MCB, but several departments in L&S are significantly larger than EECS are, and can run highly respected programs without resorting to impaction seems to tell me that EECS could probably do the same. MCB, poli-sci, English - all of these departments confer more bachelor's degrees than EECS does, yet none of them have to resort to the crutch of impaction to manage their programs. Why not? If these departments can do it, why can't EECS?

[/quote]

Hmmm...I agree with this point. In fact, if I think about it, let's suppose that EECS admits 25% more students than it does now. Most EECS students get a job after graduation. I doubt employers will say "EECS is admitting more students, this must mean graduates are getting worse." The Berkeley EECS degree will probably still be regarded highly, and the engineering departments will probably still be ranked very high.

[quote]
Wait, so this simply forces some OTHER school to have impacted majors. Sure, we steal the better kids from (say) Stanford, so now Stanford has worse incoming students--and Stanford has to impact majors as a result. If impacted majors make sure the best students come out on top (i.e. if my belief is true), then it is always a good thing unless it is applied where it is absolutely unnecessary.

[/quote]

With Stanford's endowment and small number of undergrads this won't happen anytime soon.

[quote]
I don't see things that way. You screwed up the EECS department, not the other way around. EECS gave you a chance to score, and you ended up throwing up on her.

[/quote]

I don't think it's a well-kept secret that EECS weeds students. The curves are set up that way. I'd believe that there are students who try hard but STILL do badly in EECS simply because of the weeding and that, maybe they just aren't suited for EECS (we all have our natural talents). I don't think we should say "well you chose this major...so too bad." We should at least let the guy be able to transfer into an easier major in L&S.

[quote]
See, I see that as a bad thing. Grade inflation makes high GPAs meaningless. I like getting a high GPA, and grade inflation would help me do that, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing. Further, if the course average on a test is actually higher than a 3.0 (e.g. mean is 95%), then that was a terribly written test because it didn't challenge anybody. I think courses should be designed so that means are in the 50-70 range, then curved appropriately. Most professors I have agree.

[/quote]

I think we have been through this before, which is that either admit better students so that there would be no need to weed students out, or at least make ALL majors pretty rigorous, like certain easy L&S majors, so that we don't have the present situation in which some hard-working EECS students still fail yet other students who do much less work but in an easier major still graduate.

eudean · December 26, 2006, 8:51pm

[quote]
I don't think we should say "well you chose this major...so too bad."

[/quote]

I think we are justified in saying "you chose this major and you did absolutely terribly, so don't be surprised if no other major wants you now."

[quote]
let's suppose that EECS admits 25% more students than it does now. Most EECS students get a job after graduation. I doubt employers will say "EECS is admitting more students, this must mean graduates are getting worse."

[/quote]

When will they notice? When we double the number of admits? There must be some point, you're just saying its higher than it is currently set. Clearly our faculty don't believe that. I don't see any real justification that adding, say, 25% to the EECS department will be without negative consequences.

[quote]
With Stanford's endowment and small number of undergrads this won't happen anytime soon.

[/quote]

That's not really the point. The point is that there will be a trade-off either way unless resources increase overall. If the US can only educate N students to a desired level, then shifting the best 1% from Stanford to Berkeley (or any A to any B) doesn't increase N--someone gets shafted either way.

sakky · December 27, 2006, 12:40am

[quote]
I read what you said. But look, it's very difficult to transfer into CoE from other colleges right now, especially EECS. What this means is the vast majority of EECS students are freshman admits. Now, how do high school seniors apply to EECS? They apply to the major. Not Option IV, Option II, or other options. They apply to the entire major. So what this means is if you want to only unimpact Option IV and leave Options I, II, and III impacted, that you have to create separate options on the application. So now high school seniors will pick to apply to EECS Options I, II, III or EECS Option IV. But if it really has to come to this, then that student should just apply to L&S CS anyway, since the two options are pretty much the same. There wouldn't even really be a need for EECS Option IV. Like you said, it takes less resources to run one option instead of two.

[/quote]

Your fallacy is that you don't see that we would STILL have multiple options either way. I would simply consider option 4 to be something like an 'honors' version of CS, in which you would get an actual accredited BS engineering degree (provided you pass everything), in the same way that you can get a BS in chemistry (as opposed to a BA in chemistry) right now. For some people, getting that BS is more appealing. I don't see it as creating any separate 'options' on the table, but simply opening Option 4 of EECS to L&S.

[quote]
Well, MIT has a lot more resources than Berkeley and is much more dedicated to engineering whereas Berkeley has to split its resources among so many different departments. Now I know you might argue that it's not a matter of resources because EECS has empty seats and MCB, a larger major, manages quite well. To this I would say if Berkeley has enough resources to admit more engineers then certainly MIT has more resources to admit more engineers (why limit to ~2350? I'm sure MIT can make room for more if it really wanted to). Now you'll probably argue that just because other schools don't use their resources fully doesn't mean Berkeley shouldn't. Yeah, true. But in any case I don't think bringing up MIT is a good argument because I don't think MIT is doing any better in the department of resource allocation.

[/quote]

I bring up MIT as an argument for 2 reasons. #1 - MIT has no impaction in ANY major. And #2, MIT illustrates that Berkeley's engineering school really isn't that "big" - as it is only slightly bigger than MIT's engineering school. Yet the fact is, Berkeley's engineering school, being only slightly larger than MIT's engineering school, has plenty of impaction. If anything, if size is the problem, then, at worst, Berkeley engineering should have only 'slight' intra-college impaction (i.e. in which CivE's should have at most mild difficulty in switching to EECS), again, in contrast to MIT, in which anybody can major in anything at any time.

See, that's the issue. MIT has impaction. Berkeley doesn't. Hence, Berkeley has a resource allocation problem that MIT evidently doesn't. That's why I bring it up.

[quote]
Hmmm...I agree with this point. In fact, if I think about it, let's suppose that EECS admits 25% more students than it does now. Most EECS students get a job after graduation. I doubt employers will say "EECS is admitting more students, this must mean graduates are getting worse." The Berkeley EECS degree will probably still be regarded highly, and the engineering departments will probably still be ranked very high.

[/quote]

To follow up this point, if CS really does become unimpacted, then that will inevitably affect EECS. After all, employers rarely distinguish between CS and EECS, and especially not between CS and Option IV EECS. To the employers, it's all the same. Hence, if CS starts bringing in all of these mediocre students because of the elimination of impaction, then that will inevitably hurt EECS as collateral damage. After all, these mediocre graduates will go run out there and embarrass both CS and EECS, as people will simply say "Yeah, I know a Berkeley CS grad, and he sucked", and so he will think that ALL of Berkeley computer science programs (including EECS) sucks. Yet that evidently hasn't stopped CS from trying to unimpact itself.

Hence, it gets back to my central point. If CS can unimpact itself, then why can't/shouldn't Option IV of EECS? Whatever damage is going to happen by bringing in mediocre students is going to happen anyway through CS.

sakky · December 27, 2006, 1:07am

[quote]
Yes, but if he gets a 2.0GPA and finds nobody wants to take him, that's his problem. That's our difference of opinion

[/quote]

It is NOT a difference of opinion, because I think we all agree that EECS classes are more difficult than the average class. If he had been taking easy clases the whole time, he wouldn't even be in that situation in the first place. EECS put him in that situation.

[quote]
I don't see things that way. You screwed up the EECS department, not the other way around. EECS gave you a chance to score, and you ended up throwing up on her. The story gets out and you have to change schools to find anyone willing to date you. Maybe assault wasn't the best example, but same idea. It was your fault that you failed courses, not EECS's fault (and if you disagree with that, then this discussion is completely over).

[/quote]

Considering EECS well-deserved reputation for difficulty, I think the onus is on EECS. It's like dating somebody who has a well-known history of domestic violence and brutality, and then acting all surprised when you get brutalized.

I don't agree that it's solely "your fault" that you performed poorly in EECS. It is both the fault of EECS and the student. After all, if the student was going to do poorly, then why did the department even admit that student in the first place? The department has a responsibility to aid the students that it brings in. These are your students, and you ought to be helping them. After all, that's what Stanford does. Heck, to some extent, that's what even MIT does. For example, MIT implements a policy of P/no-grade for the first semester, in an effort to help its students adjust. Why can't Berkeley EECS do that?

[quote]
Your idea of being better off is having a higher GPA. My idea of being better off is learning more. They aren't always the same thing. Having a 3.0GPA but having taken the hardest of the hard EECS courses is respectable. Having a 4.0GPA but having taken the easiest of the easy humanities courses is not worth much (and any interviewer will find out in a heartbeat).

[/quote]

But will it matter? When it comes to getting the interview with McKinsey or Goldman Sachs, who's going to get it? When it comes to applying to medical school or law school, who's going to get in? When it comes to trying to win the Rhodes Scholarship or Marshall Scholarship, who has the better shot?

Look, like it or not, we live in a world where GPA matters. Plenty of employers won't even bother to interview you without a certain GPA. Plenty of grad schools and scholarship programs won't even consider you. So you can talk about how much you know, but if you can't even get into the interview, then what does it matter?

[quote]
That's just another trade-off. Great, now we have more EECS majors. Oh no, now everyone that wants to have an EECS elective can't. Those that want a minor can't get one. Is it worth it? Maybe.

[/quote]

It's better than the currrent situation. If we have to use impaction, then we should minimize its scope to those particular programs that need impaction, and no others.

[quote]
Which reform? Your forcing another department to take bad EECS students is bad for that department and everyone in it. It's good for EECS. Your desire to remove impacted majors has the potential to reduce QoE (assuming that QoE is the constraint), but lets more people into the major. There are always trade-offs. You haven't presented me a solution that doesn't have any cons, or a pro-con ratio better than the present solution.

[/quote]

I am proposing that students should be allowed to major in what they want. Look at the situation we have now. Right now, there are people in L&S who want to be engineers but can't get in, and so are forced to stay in L&S even though they don't really want to. Is that good for L&S? At the same time, we have students in engineering who don't want to be in engineerig. Is that good for engineering? At least with a switch, you have students going to the major that they want. Yes, L&S brings in a supposedly 'bad' student. But this student wants to be there. That's better than keeping a 'good' student who doesn't want to be around. I for one would rather have a bad student who actually wants to be here than a good student who doesn't want to be here. In fact, I think studies have shown that employers tend to prefer to hire employees who actually want to work for the company, even if they aren't that good, than hire highly competent employees who would rather be working somewhere else.

[quote]
Wait, so this simply forces some OTHER school to have impacted majors. Sure, we steal the better kids from (say) Stanford, so now Stanford has worse incoming students--and Stanford has to impact majors as a result. If impacted majors make sure the best students come out on top (i.e. if my belief is true), then it is always a good thing unless it is applied where it is absolutely unnecessary.

[/quote]

Huh? How is that? You just went off the deep end there. Why would Stanford have to impact its majors, even if we do steal all of their good students (which we won't). After all, plenty of lower-ranked engineering schools don't have impaction. There is no impaction at, say, Brown or Dartmouth. They are not as good of engineering schools than Berkeley or Stanford are. The point is, plenty of less prominent engineering schools don't need to use impaction. Why is impaction necessary?

Let me put it to you this way. If impaction is so necessary for the best students to come out on top, then why don't MIT, Stanford, and Caltech use it now? Are you saying that at these schools, the best students don't come out on top? Or are you admitting that these schools have managed to figure out how to run a top-flight engineering school without impaction? And if so, then you have to ask yourself why can't Berkeley do that?

[quote]
Berkeley isn't MIT. Gee, half of their campus is engineering. One tenth of ours is engineering. I'm guessing MIT spends a bigger slice of their pie on engineering than Berkeley does. I wouldn't be surprised if that slice ended up being larger than ours.

The point is that if you took any group of 2600 students (that weren't geniuses) and stuck them in Berkeley engineering, that wouldn't suddenly fix all the problems in EECS. All of your "A can do it, so why can't B?" arguments are just silly. A being able to do something does not imply it is reasonable for B to do so. I'm just going to ignore any future "MCB can, why can't EECS?" and "MIT can, so why can't Berkeley?" style arguments because they all have the same rebuttal (unless you provide foundation as to why A doing something implies it is reasonable and wise for B to do it).

[/quote]

I know, because you don't have an answer, and you still don't. I am going to leave it up to the readers to decide why Berkeley EECS is so 'special' that they can't do something that other departments can do.

[quote]
Wow, going ad hominem? Okay, fair enough. I would gladly trade the happiness of 99% of the population for the mild discomfort of 1% (and that's really what we're talking about). I don't want everyone to get A's, I don't want colleges to let anyone in, I don't want EECS to be open to anyone. That ensures quality. Heck, I don't get A's all the time, and I STILL don't think everyone should get A's.

[/quote]

99% of the population? How many people apply to switch into Berkeley EECS, and don't get it? And how many people don't even bother to apply to EECS because they don't think they will get in? To answer these questions, I think we can just look back at how many people used to try to get into CS and didn't make it. I believe that the admsisions stats indicated that over 1/3 of those who applied to CS didn't make it (and that doesn't include those people who didn't even apply).

[quote]
We keep unqualified individuals out of certain colleges because it benefits those attending those colleges. You, I, and a lot of other people benefit from the "harm" those people receive. You and I benefit from other people failing classes, because it makes my grade worth something. I don't go around encouraging people to fail--I encourage them to do their best, because that forces me to do better. If their best is worse than my best, then that benefits me and hurts them.

[/quote]

Aha, the Ben Golub defense - that you enjoy other people's pain. Yet the evidence belies your opinions. Stanford apparently can educate people quite well without needing to fail a lot of people out. Why is it that Stanford can do that, but Berkeley can't? Heck, even MIT has implemented some rather progressive policies. Again, like how no failed grades in your first year will appear on your external transcript. The notion of shadow grades (where you can drop a particular course after you have already seen your final grade). If MIT can implement policies like that, why can't Berkeley?

I know, I know, you are constantly embarrassed by the comparative analyses because, frankly, you have no answer. Yet the world doesn't work that way. In the real world, if one particular organization claims to not be able to do something that other peer organizations can do, then it is a legitimate question to ask why. In the business world, if a manager claims that he can't meet his objectives, yet all of the other managers can meet their objectives, then that elicits questions of why.

[quote]
Yes, we should. We do all the time. By getting into Berkeley, I prevented someone else from getting in. One of those people that was prevented from getting in inevitably didn't go to college at all. He didn't even get a degree. Someone decided for him that he wouldn't even be allowed to come to college. He didn't even get a choice. I'm sure that person got hurt (and I benefited directly from that), but that's tough luck because resources are finite.

[/quote]

Yet Stanford and MIT make the same harsh choice when it comes to admission, and yet once you are admitted, you are allowed to major in whatever you like. Berkeley could do the same.

Eudean, you fail to see that just because admissions is rather harsh and unfair, that doesn't mean that you have to make impaction harsh and unfair also. Like I said, if a guy in L&S who is doing well in engineering courses wants to come in, and a guy in engineering wants to leave, why not allow them to switch places? Who is getting hurt here? Where are the extra resources that are being used? You continue to have no answer to that.

[quote]
t's because the university cares. You can ask me why, but it will do you no good, as I'll just tell you to ask the university, and you'll tell me they lie, leading to no conclusion. Whether it's because of EE20/40, E190, lower div physics, the desire to have more L&S CS majors, a higher interest in L&S CS than EECS Option IV, or whatever else, I don't know. You can guess all you like, but you will never know the truth in doing so.

[/quote]

And neither will you. But that's not the point. The point is to lay out the situation to the readers out there and let them arrive at their own conclusion about what is really going on. You continue to defend a status quo that could be improved.

[quote]
Look, I like EECS too, but I'm not going to greedily force other majors to take bad students from EECS. Again, you're not citing a situation with a higher pro-con ratio than what exists. Try again.

[/quote]

Uh, I think I did. With the current situation, you are forcing L&S to take students who would rather be in engineering, but cant' get in, and hence are forced to major in something that they don't like. Is that good? Hence, you end up with 2 people who are in a college that they would rather not be in. How does that help anybody?

sakky · December 27, 2006, 1:29am

[quote]
I think we are justified in saying "you chose this major and you did absolutely terribly, so don't be surprised if no other major wants you now."

[/quote]

Then the compassionate thing to do is give somebody the chance to try out a major. Hence, a MIT-style grading scheme where failing grades in your freshman year are sealed. What's wrong with that? If MIT can do it, why can't Berkeley?

[quote]
When will they notice? When we double the number of admits? There must be some point, you're just saying its higher than it is currently set. Clearly our faculty don't believe that. I don't see any real justification that adding, say, 25% to the EECS department will be without negative consequences.

[/quote]

I am quite sure that MCB might be able to come up with a better 'education' if it just cut the number of students it has in half. But it has elected not to do that. Instead, it has elected to accomodate its large cohort of students.

I don't even think it's a matter of the faculty believing it or not. Rather, it's probably more about institutional inertia. In the past, there probably was a time when impaction was necessary - for example, when the department experienced a large and unexpected boost in demand. But the truth is, all organizations have inertia in which decisions made in the past are kept in place even when they have outlived their usefulness. You see it in government- there are plenty of laws that are basically archaic, yet nobody has bothered to take them off the books. Read "A Behavorial Theory of the Firm" by Cyert and March and you will realize that plenty of organizations are prisoners to their own rules that they had set years before, because no organization revisits every decision that has ever been made in the past. It is unclear to me as to whether the current EECS faculty really "supports" impaction or whether it is just something that is taken as a matter of custom and settled policy, regardless of whether they really believe in it. Just think about a hypothetical vote about whether impaction should be enacted today (if there had been no impaction in the past), and whether currently existing impaction should remain in place, and you will almost certainly get different numbers voting for each.

That's not to say that change never happens. Obviously plenty of change occurs. But the point is, even more change would occur if not for institutional inertia. That's why old dinosaur companies can stay in business for years on end, even when they're unprofitable. That's why it's difficult to shut down organizations, even when they have fulfilled their purported goals. For example, the March of Dimes was founded to discover a cure for polio. Then, in 1955, that cure was found. So did the March of Dimes shut down, as having fulfilled its mission, and hence allow society to reallocate its resources through liquidation? Of course not. It simply redirected its resources into fighting birth defects. The point is, policies tend to be self-replicating and self-sustaining. It is much harder to eliminate a long-standing policy of impaction than to vote against impaction in a tabula rasa situation.

[quote]
That's not really the point. The point is that there will be a trade-off either way unless resources increase overall. If the US can only educate N students to a desired level, then shifting the best 1% from Stanford to Berkeley (or any A to any B) doesn't increase N--someone gets shafted either way.

[/quote]

Even if your logic is right, then Stanford could simply elect to be a less strong engineering school - like Dartmouth or Brown. Why not? After all, Stanford isn't strong in everything. There are certain programs at Stanford that aren't that good. But Stanford doesn't try to use impaction to 'improve' the quality of those programs. Similarly, Harvard's engineering isn't as good as MIT's. But Harvard doesn't use impaction to try to improve its engineering program.

But I would contend that your logic is flawed - you don't need to use impaction or weeding to see which student is the best. Right now, Stanford doesn't have any impaction or much weeding, and yet Stanford produces plenty of top engineering graduates. Even MIT, like I said, has implemented policies to reduce the harshness of the school, and yet MIT still obviously produces plenty of top-flight engineers.

You see, all of this refusal to improve Berkeley simply discourages people from wanting to go to Berkeley. After all, why go to Berkeley and put up with impaction and weeding when you could go to Stanford and not have to deal with any of that garbage?

sakky · December 27, 2006, 1:47am

[quote]
I don't think it's a well-kept secret that EECS weeds students. The curves are set up that way. I'd believe that there are students who try hard but STILL do badly in EECS simply because of the weeding and that, maybe they just aren't suited for EECS (we all have our natural talents). I don't think we should say "well you chose this major...so too bad." We should at least let the guy be able to transfer into an easier major in L&S.

[/quote]

I don't understand why this is a controversial point in the least. Look, 17-18 year old kids usually don't know exactly what they want to study. That's why the vast majority of undergrad programs allow students to shop around and try on different majors before they finally settle on one. Plenty of schools, i.e. MIT and Harvard, don't even require that students declare a major until their sophomore year. The same thing is true of Berkeley L&S - in L&S, you are free to remain undeclared for several semesters while you try out different majors before you settle on one that you want.

So why can't Berkeley engineering do that? Berkeley engineering is one of the few undergrad programs out there that actually force incoming students to declare their major BEFORE they have even taken not just a single class in that major, but before they have even taken a single college class at all. Hence, there is no opportunity for shopping around. Why not?

Look, if this was such a good idea, then why not make everybody at Berkeley do that? Why doesn't every student have to declare his major on his application, with only limited opportunity to switch later? For example, somebody who declares he wants to major in English, and then when he gets to Berkeley, finds out that he actually doesn't want to major in English at all - oh well, too bad, he said he wanted to major in English, so that's where he will stay. Can you imagine the demoralization that the Berkeley student body would feel, because you would have thousands more students being forced to stay in majors that they don't really want, being forced to take classes that they don't want to take. Well, that's what happens right now in engineering. Like I said, plenty of engineering students don't want to be engineers anymore, but can't get out, so they are forced to take classes that they don't want, and are in general, a disgruntled and disruptive cancer in the department. Heck, I would be too if I was forced to stay in a program that I didn't want to stay in. At the same time, there are other students who do want to come in, but can't because spots are being taken up by these disgruntled students who want to leave. I hardly see how this is optimal.

eudean · December 27, 2006, 1:56am

[quote]
Like I said, if a guy in L&S who is doing well in engineering courses wants to come in, and a guy in engineering wants to leave, why not allow them to switch places? Who is getting hurt here? Where are the extra resources that are being used? You continue to have no answer to that.

[/quote]

I'm sick of repeating myself. Try reading harder.

Again, I'm going to ignore the "if A can, then why can't B?" arguments that are made without any support.

[quote]
I am going to leave it up to the readers to decide why Berkeley EECS is so 'special' that they can't do something that other departments can do.

[/quote]

If you ever did that this thread would never have blown up. From the beginning I've been saying that nobody here knows why, and that listening to your speculations doesn't help anyone. You have repeatedly insisted that Berkeley EECS does not want more students and that no capacity problem exists. If you want to leave it up to the readers, then stop speculating because that isn't leaving it up to the readers.

You come in here saying impacted majors are terrible, that Berkeley would be so much better off without them, that the departments suck at managing resources (compared to Stanford and MIT) and that's why this travesty exists. You're acting like a politician, appealing to what you feel is common sense but what really isn't so cut and dry.

[quote]
If impaction is so necessary for the best students to come out on top

[/quote]

Never said it was a necessary condition, but rather a sufficient condition. Making Berkeley half as large would also be a sufficient condition. Having sufficient resources for the number of students we're trying to educate is the necessary condition.

[quote]
It's better than the currrent situation. If we have to use impaction, then we should minimize its scope to those particular programs that need impaction, and no others.

[/quote]

If it affects the same number of students, what does it matter? So more people are in EECS, fine. Then a bunch of other students that wanted to take EECS courses can no longer take those courses. We've "limited" the scope of impaction by making EECS less impacted, but that hasn't helped the actual problem at all.

[quote]
Look, like it or not, we live in a world where GPA matters. Plenty of employers won't even bother to interview you without a certain GPA. Plenty of grad schools and scholarship programs won't even consider you. So you can talk about how much you know, but if you can't even get into the interview, then what does it matter?

[/quote]

Look, a 3.0 in EECS will not be competing for the same job as the 4.0 in philosophy. I'll concede it's possible, but I really don't see grade-inflated philosophy taking jobs from lower GPA EECS majors very often. If this really was an issue, it already would've manifested itself.

[quote]
If he had been taking easy clases the whole time, he wouldn't even be in that situation in the first place. EECS put him in that situation.

[/quote]

Who chooses your classes? EECS has never signed me up for classes on Telebears. Yeah, I have to take one tech per semester. Yeah, I need 12 units per semester. If a student takes a lower div EECS course and two easy classes, it's his/her fault that s/he does poorly.

[quote]
I don't agree that it's solely "your fault" that you performed poorly in EECS. It is both the fault of EECS and the student. After all, if the student was going to do poorly, then why did the department even admit that student in the first place? The department has a responsibility to aid the students that it brings in.

[/quote]

The department does aid students. It tells them to take the first semester easy. It tells them to take seminars to get a feel for different majors if they aren't sure of what they want to major in. Sure, it could give more help, but I think the amount of advice it gives is reasonable already. The department can only guess how well an admitted student will do. It's not the department's fault if a great high school student can't cope with college. The degree to which you could hold the department liable for a student's poor GPA is extremely minor--the fact is the playing field is fairly level.

[qoute]And neither will you. But that's not the point. The point is to lay out the situation to the readers out there and let them arrive at their own conclusion about what is really going on. You continue to defend a status quo that could be improved.

[/quote]

I continue to defend the status quo because a) it works and b) no better idea has been proposed here (IMO). I feel like your ideas are meant to bail out students that did stupid things (e.g. waited until their 3rd year to decide on a major; got a low GPA in easy courses; applied into the wrong major).

[quote]
Yes, L&S brings in a supposedly 'bad' student. But this student wants to be there. That's better than keeping a 'good' student who doesn't want to be around.

[/quote]

Okay, well your opinion carries no more weight than the opposite opinion. Maybe an administrator feels the opposite way (they don't want a 2.0 student no matter how much he loves the major).

[quote]
For example, somebody who declares he wants to major in English, and then when he gets to Berkeley, finds out that he actually doesn't want to major in English at all - oh well, too bad, he said he wanted to major in English, so that's where he will stay.

[/quote]

He can fill out a form to transfer out. Doesn't mean he's guaranteed to get out--slots have been filled already. If he really was uncertain about what major to pick, perhaps he shouldn't have declared his major. Not an unreasonable expectation. When you declare a major, the college doesn't think, "oh, well we'd better make sure we have space in EECS just in case...".

[quote]
Berkeley engineering is one of the few undergrad programs out there that actually force incoming students to declare their major BEFORE they have even taken not just a single class in that major, but before they have even taken a single college class at all. Hence, there is no opportunity for shopping around.

[/quote]

I'm sorry, that's just completely wrong: <a href="http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/engsci/undeclared.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/engsci/undeclared.html</a>

sakky · December 31, 2006, 2:21am

[quote]
I'm sick of repeating myself. Try reading harder.

Again, I'm going to ignore the "if A can, then why can't B?" arguments that are made without any support.

[/quote]

I am equally tired of repeating myself, and I would urge you to read harder. I take it that you don't have answer to this. And that's fine. We'll let the readers judge who has made the better argument.

[quote]
If you ever did that this thread would never have blown up. From the beginning I've been saying that nobody here knows why, and that listening to your speculations doesn't help anyone. You have repeatedly insisted that Berkeley EECS does not want more students and that no capacity problem exists. If you want to leave it up to the readers, then stop speculating because that isn't leaving it up to the readers.

[/quote]

And by your own logic, you too should stop posting about this subject if you want to leave it up to the readers.

Think of it as a legal trial. Only the principals knows what REALLY happened on the day of a purported event that is up for trial. Yet we impanel a jury to assess what they THINK happened on that day. I agree that the jurors can never know for 100% sure what happened. But that doesn't stop the jurors from rendering an opinion anyway.

I therefore leave it up to the 'court of public opinion'. Can EECS admit more students without undue negative effects, considering that MCB and poli-sci do it right now? Again, we'll leave it up to the readers.

[quote]
Never said it was a necessary condition, but rather a sufficient condition. Making Berkeley half as large would also be a sufficient condition. Having sufficient resources for the number of students we're trying to educate is the necessary condition.

[/quote]

Aha, so that means that you agree that other possible 'sufficient' conditions can exist. Hence, it is possible that things don't need to be the way that they are.

[quote]
If it affects the same number of students, what does it matter? So more people are in EECS, fine. Then a bunch of other students that wanted to take EECS courses can no longer take those courses. We've "limited" the scope of impaction by making EECS less impacted, but that hasn't helped the actual problem at all.

[/quote]

Uh, sure it has. Like I said, reduction of impaction scope is a good thing. After all, who says that a bunch of students who want to take EECS courses can't take those courses. Which courses are you referring to specifically? I have already demonstrated that few EECS courses are oversubscribed. Hence, there seems to be spare capacity.

If you are going to contend that students are not going to be able to take certain courses, then I think you should identify the courses in question.

[quote]
The department does aid students. It tells them to take the first semester easy. It tells them to take seminars to get a feel for different majors if they aren't sure of what they want to major in. Sure, it could give more help, but I think the amount of advice it gives is reasonable already. The department can only guess how well an admitted student will do. It's not the department's fault if a great high school student can't cope with college. The degree to which you could hold the department liable for a student's poor GPA is extremely minor--the fact is the playing field is fairly level.

[/quote]

Many other schools out there will not lock you into a major right from the get-go. The department does not allow the room to explore that other schools do. Why not? That's a problem. The fact is, few 17 year old high school seniors really know what they want to major in. If they did, then why do other schools allow students to shop around?

[quote]
I continue to defend the status quo because a) it works and b) no better idea has been proposed here (IMO). I feel like your ideas are meant to bail out students that did stupid things (e.g. waited until their 3rd year to decide on a major; got a low GPA in easy courses; applied into the wrong major).

[/quote]

Hey, in life, people get bailed out of stupid things. And I feel that they should be, as a matter of compassion. For example, as a matter of law, evidence of personal bankruptcy is wiped from your credit report after 10 years. That's a matter of law. In fact, most credit reporting bureaus will wipe it out in 7. Points on your driving record are also wiped after a certain length of time. I think this is the compassionate thing to do as it allows people to make mistakes early in life, and then still move on with a clean slate. Let's face it. Young people do stupid things. It seems to me that you have no compassion for the foibles of humans.

[quote]
Look, a 3.0 in EECS will not be competing for the same job as the 4.0 in philosophy. I'll concede it's possible, but I really don't see grade-inflated philosophy taking jobs from lower GPA EECS majors very often. If this really was an issue, it already would've manifested itself.

[/quote]

Oh? Tell that to the guy in EECS who is dreaming of the Rhodes Scholarship. Tell that to the EECS guy who is thinking he might want to work for McKinsey or Goldman Sachs. Or go to a top medical/law school. Then he can't do it because of his grades, and then he sees the guy over in a creampuff major who works less than he does be competitive for all of those honorariums, and he is not. How do you think that makes him feel?

Don't come back with the notion that 'if the EECS guy wanted to become a consultant or investment banker, he should have majored in something more suited to that career field'. After all, the creampuff major guy didn't major in something suited to that career field either. Yet the latter is eligible, but the former is not.

[quote]
Okay, well your opinion carries no more weight than the opposite opinion. Maybe an administrator feels the opposite way (they don't want a 2.0 student no matter how much he loves the major).

[/quote]

Like I said, we'll let the readers decide what is optimal.

[quote]
e can fill out a form to transfer out. Doesn't mean he's guaranteed to get out--slots have been filled already. If he really was uncertain about what major to pick, perhaps he shouldn't have declared his major. Not an unreasonable expectation. When you declare a major, the college doesn't think, "oh, well we'd better make sure we have space in EECS just in case...".

[/quote]

Not unreasonable, is it? Then why not simply force ALL Berkeley applicants to declare their major, just like EECS does, right from the get-go? Why allow anybody to freely switch around and shop around? After all, if it's 'not unreasonable' for the EECS people to do it, then it's also 'not unreasonable', for the MCB, poli-sci, English, history, and every other major to do the same.

[quote]
I'm sorry, that's just completely wrong: <a href="http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/engsci/undeclared.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/engsci/undeclared.html</a>

[/quote]

Uh, you are not remaining within context. Obviously there is an undeclared option. But there is also an EECS option. It is precisely the latter that I am talking about, and have been talking about in this entire thread, and you know it. Stop bringing in irrelevant topics.

My question is, why isn't EVERYBODY in engineering placed into the EU category? Why not? At least that would allow engineering students the privilege of shopping around within engineering, and that's better than nothing.

davisengineer · January 6, 2007, 7:18pm

Sorry to barge into this massive discussion like this, but does an unimpacted CS mean it will be easier to transfer into berkeley after declaring L&S CS as my major?

See here: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=285581%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=285581</a>

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