<p>Thread Bump Episode V: The Attention Whore Comes Back</p>
<p>Part 3: The ■■■■■ Continues to Torture Innocents with Bad Writing</p>
<p>■■■■■ Bump 567564534</p>
<p>[The</a> Daily Bruin | Economics/international area studies major canceled because of lack of demand and development of new, similar majors](<a href=“http://www.dailybruin.com/articles/2010/4/15/international-econ-major-canceled/]The”>http://www.dailybruin.com/articles/2010/4/15/international-econ-major-canceled/)</p>
<p>This is deterioration… how?</p>
<p>Majors come and go all the time. Find me a Soviet Studies major at a major university today. It sounds to me like the major ran its course and other programs overlapped, so they let it go.</p>
<p>Move along, people… nothing to see here.</p>
<p>the fact that you’re trying SO hard to put this school down, shows how majorly you’re obsessed with this UCLA.</p>
<p>California’s university system: What went wrong?
Posted: 04/18/2010 6:42 AM</p>
<p>Fifty years ago this month, California promised a low-cost, high-quality university education for every qualified high school graduate in the state. But that promise inflated by growing populations and academic aspirations expanded beyond the state’s willingness to pay for it.</p>
<p>What went wrong? How did the university system that was long the envy of the world suddenly become the focus of angry street protests, overcrowded classrooms, soaring tuition and a monumental debate over whether the state can ever make good again on its groundbreaking mission?</p>
<p>While the recession turned a slow-brewing problem into an instant crisis, a Mercury News analysis of California’s higher-education mess reveals that many factors drove the inevitable and ugly collision between the university system’s ambitious and uncoordinated growth and the state’s declining ability and desire to pay for it. Among the most critical:</p>
<h1>Plummeting state support: Since 1990, state spending per student has dropped by half in inflation-adjusted dollars. While the state paid about 90 percent of a student’s education 40 years ago, it now pays 69 percent for California State University students and 62 percent for those in the University of California system.</h1>
<h1>No guaranteed funding: Unlike K-12 education, universities are not guaranteed a steady stream of funding. In the last 40 years, higher education’s piece of the state’s spending pie has been sliced in half even while enrollment has jumped 2 1/2 times.</h1>
<h1>Continued expansion: In the past eight years, despite declining state support, UC added a new campus, seven new schools and at least 45 new programs. Cal State added a campus, many new science centers and even a Ph.D. program adding a research emphasis that was not part of its original mission.</h1>
<h1>Little coordination: While university systems in several other states must seek approval for spending and expansion plans, there is no oversight body in California with the formal authority to play such a role. UC and Cal State are often self-advocates with competing interests instead of partners that share and coordinate the state’s higher education needs, according to the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.</h1>
<p>"It’s very disappointing because California is supposed to be the great innovator,‘’ said Pat Callan of the San Jose-based National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. “These university systems have become so big and so complicated. So now, at a time of economic crisis, we suddenly need to be nimble and innovative but it’s very hard.”</p>
<p>Birth of the Master Plan</p>
<p>In April 1960, when California first made its higher-education promise, educators faced a clear challenge: The children of World War II GIs craved college degrees.</p>
<p>There was no tax-limiting Proposition 13, and the state was flush with cash from rising house prices. Demands on the state’s pension, prison, welfare and health care systems were modest. Well-funded high schools were predominantly graduating white, middle-class kids prepared for college.</p>
<p>And so the state produced the Master Plan for Higher Education, which promised low fees and easy access to a well-defined network of campuses.</p>
<p>“There were new campuses that had to be built, faculty members that had to be hired, and so forth,” the late
UC president and Master Plan architect Clark Kerr recalled in a 1999 interview. “It was a commitment that called for billions and billions of dollars of investment,” he said. “It was the first time in the history of any state in the United States, or any nation in the world, where such a commitment was made.”</p>
<p>Fast-forward to the present, and a greatly changed landscape.</p>
<p>The student population has nearly tripled since the creation of the Master Plan and students are far less college-ready, with many needing remedial classes. Yet the share of the state budget going to universities has fallen from 13.4 percent in 1967 to 5.7 percent this year.</p>
<p>“In boom times, the state gave us more, but it came with strings take more students, invest in centers of research or build a new campus,” said Nathan Brostrom, UC’s vice president for business operations.</p>
<p>"Imagine you have a house. Instead of taking that windfall and building up the foundation, it was used to build a nice new addition.</p>
<p>“Then funding was largely cut off.”</p>
<p>Now, caught in the squeeze, students and their families are stuck paying the steep price. UC is predicted to hike fees 15 percent a year for the next two years, then 7 percent annually in subsequent years, on top of this year’s 30 percent rise. The cost to attend San Jose State will likely shoot up 10 percent next year with 2,500 fewer spots for incoming freshmen.</p>
<p>But more student money is not translating into a higher level of service; it’s not even enough to close the funding gap. In rushed downsizing, classes are cut, faculty are reduced and libraries are closed. UC Davis, facing a $1.4 million athletics department deficit, announced last week Friday it is eliminating four sports.</p>
<p>The impacts of the funding gap are also felt in other ways: UC this year dramatically increased the number of out-of-state students it admitted at UC Berkeley, non-California admissions doubled with officials saying the higher fees those students pay will help offset budget cuts and preserve programs.</p>
<p>Compared with their parents, though, the current crop of students, are paying more and getting less.</p>
<p>Competition for courses and dollars</p>
<p>Lauren Hall, a freshman at UC Santa Cruz, loves the campus and her professors. But she’s frustrated because six important classes for her psychology major are full and closed to her. She was also denied entry to a half-dozen courses in literature and creative writing, her other passions. Yet her tuition and campus fees, adjusted for inflation, are seven times higher than when her father attended UC Santa Cruz 40 years ago. Next year, the bill will jump another 20 percent, surpassing $11,000.</p>
<p>“It’s harder to make a relationship with a professor,” Hall said. “And I settled with classes that fulfill requirements but I have no interest in” such as the Natural History of Dinosaurs.</p>
<p>Over the years, universities, too, have seen fierce competition for something they desperately need: state dollars. The anti-tax rebellion of Proposition 13 cut local government revenues, so the state gave schools, cities and counties funds that used to go to higher education.</p>
<p>In recent years, an array of ballot measures, federal restrictions, lawsuits and court rulings have tied up the state’s general fund further, greatly limiting the Legislature’s flexibility to send money to universities. Instead, millions have gone to transportation, mental health and other programs. Proposition 98 earmarked about 40 percent of the general fund to K-12 education.</p>
<p>“Big parts of the budget are already locked up. And these other priorities are sucking up more money these days,” said Steve Boilard of the Legislative Analyst’s Office. “In bad times, higher education is one of the few remaining places to go after to achieve savings.”</p>
<p>Even federal policy inadvertently provides disincentives for California to support higher education. State spending on Medicaid but not universities comes with federal matching funds.</p>
<p>Despite budget woes, growth continued</p>
<p>Despite unstable state support, the 10 UC and 23 Cal State campuses were slow to contract. Much of their budget is tied up in labor costs, protected by union agreements. The universities also have contractual commitments to fund health and retirement plans.</p>
<p>And the autonomous universities continued to expand and develop unchecked. State voters pay for most of the facilities through bond projects. Other projects, such as student unions, are financed by students. At UC, the regents decided in 1994 that student fees could be used to bankroll day-to-day operations, supplementing the state’s payments. That unregulated use of student fees worries Kevin Woolfork of the California Postsecondary Education Commission: “They shouldn’t be viewed as an ATM.”</p>
<p>Some construction seismic updating and disability compliance is essential. Other growth is necessary because of new fields of scientific study and their high-tech improvements. "How many computers did we have in the ‘60s? None,’’ Woolfork said. “Do you want a nurse who was trained in the 1960s? Do you want your roads engineered to the standards of the 1960s?”</p>
<p>But other projects were urged by private donors, or politicians with pet passions. Research campuses, in particular, require extraordinarily expensive facilities and support for graduate students.</p>
<p>In 1988, when UC faced enrollment pressures but stiff resistance to growth from the communities like Santa Cruz, the state, university and Central Valley leaders together pushed for the development of UC Merced. UC invested $425 million into the rural campus that was supposed to spur regional economic growth “UC Owes the Valley,” asserted a Fresno Bee editorial. Today, the geographically isolated campus holds about 3,414 students, below the 5,000 UC had projected.</p>
<p>And yet, last month, the UC Board of Regents approved a $1.13 billion capital improvement campaign for the campus, which now seeks a new medical school.</p>
<p>A different set of forces combined to create Cal State Monterey Bay. The university was offered, free, $65 million in land and buildings from the U.S. Army what had been Fort Ord. Congressman Leon Panetta and regional community leaders desperately sought revenue to replace the closed military facility. But while it cost $141 million to convert from military use and $61 million a year to operate, after 16 years the campus holds only one-third of its capacity, below projections.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, costly new programs and professional schools that boost prestige are still being planned. CSU now offers a doctoral degree in education at seven campuses, including both Cal State East Bay and San Francisco State only 27 miles apart. Cal State also wants to offer nursing doctorates. This means that Cal State needs money to do what UC is already doing.</p>
<p>“No one has taken a statewide view of these problems and made system-level efficiency and integration together with more funding a political priority,” said William Zumeta, professor of educational leadership at the University of Washington in Seattle. "Nobody is home at the state level to say ‘no.’ ‘’</p>
<p>Promise for future generations?</p>
<p>Research, while important, is expensive and inadequately supported by grants from the state and federal government. So research needs subsidies. For instance, the Governor Gray Davis Institutes for Science and Innovation, conceived by then-Governor Davis in the boom year of 2000, got $400 million over four years for building construction at UC Santa Cruz, UCSF and other campuses. Within a few years, much of the money, and Davis, were gone. Day-to-day operational funding is now a major concern.</p>
<p>Spending has also climbed in nonacademic programs, such as athletic teams, dorms, fitness centers and museums. One dorm at San Jose State sits empty, yet the university’s Student Union is undergoing a $91 million student-approved makeover. At Cal State East Bay, a future $32 million Recreation and Wellness Center will offer an indoor jogging track and fitness center, also supported by student fees.</p>
<p>At UC Berkeley, intercollegiate athletics run a deficit, needing infusions of campus support. Although the school’s new Student Athlete High Performance Center and stadium retrofit will be financed out of athletic revenues, faculty fear that the program won’t have enough money to pay off the construction debt and will need further support.</p>
<p>"The goal of any university is to be as good as they can, and provide the most services they can,‘’ said economist Ron Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. "Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of what the resources will be for support.‘’</p>
<p>In the 1960s, when Lauren Hall’s father, Paul, attended UC Santa Cruz, it was an intimate intellectual village of small seminars and dinners with professors who laid an academic foundation that led to his career as a prominent San Francisco attorney and former regent.</p>
<p>Lauren Hall loves UC Santa Cruz as much as her father does, but it’s a changed campus. Together, they wonder what promises California will offer the next generation when it comes to a college education.</p>
<p>"As for the future, I’m worried sick,‘’ Paul Hall said. "Imagine having created unquestionably the greatest public university in the whole world and then killing it because we don’t have the collective civic consciousness to pay for it.‘’</p>
<p>[MercuryNews.com</a> : California’s university system: What went wrong?](<a href=“The Mercury News - Bay Area news, sports, business, entertainment, lifestyle and commentary”>The Mercury News - Bay Area news, sports, business, entertainment, lifestyle and commentary)</p>
<p>from first page, " arts are overrated anyways. " </p>
<p>arrogant words</p>
<p>[UCB</a> RIP - National - The Atlantic](<a href=“All Stories by Erik Tarloff - The Atlantic”>All Stories by Erik Tarloff - The Atlantic)</p>
<p>UCB is dying</p>
<ol>
<li>[Daily</a> Bruin :: ON THE RECORD](<a href=“http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2010/09/on_the_record]Daily”>http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2010/09/on_the_record)</li>
</ol>
<p>“…based on my observations over the years and regular contact with staff, faculty and students, I dont believe that the academic quality of UCLA is on the decline.”</p>
<p>"Of course instructional quality is declining. Its a matter of arithmetic. Last years huge budget cuts followed on smaller, cumulative cuts for at least a decade. Fee increases cant fill the whole gap; students rightly complain that classes are closing just as fees are increasing. While its hard to get hard numbers (which might prove very embarrassing), few deny that our per-pupil spending on undergraduate instruction, once roughly in the ballpark of top private universities, has by now fallen to a fraction of theirs. We are certainly used to doing more with less. But we cant do several times more.</p>
<p>Resource gaps bite hardest in teaching critical thinking and writing, which is by nature labor intensive. Social science and humanities departments used to offer many small, writing-intensive seminars: no longer. Lecture classes used to have teaching assistants who led discussion sections and helped students with papers. In almost all courses, these have long since yielded to readers, paid too little to do either. As a result, UCLA students no longer get rigorous instruction in these areas. And employers know it."</p>
<p>"For a long time and particularly during the past two years, UCLA has suffered huge financial blows from Californias depleted coffers, despite administrative and academic leadership to mitigate their harm.</p>
<p>Our campus has suffered in various ways.</p>
<p>For example, services that complement our academic mission have eroded or disappeared. Students have faced the brunt of these cuts, paying more in tuition for fewer services.</p>
<p>Students from low-income families in particular are disproportionately impacted, forcing many to withdraw.</p>
<p>Resources to support graduate students have been reduced or eliminated.</p>
<p>Many other examples exist.</p>
<p>No doubt, the academic quality that we offer to our student body, in a broader context, has suffered."</p>
<p>2.[National</a> University Rankings 2010 | Washington Monthly](<a href=“http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2010/national_university_rank.php]National”>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2010/national_university_rank.php)</p>
<p>Washington Monthly</p>
<p>-1 Univ. of California, San Diego
-2 University of California, Berkeley
-3 Univ. of California, Los Angeles</p>
<ol>
<li>[National</a> Universities Rankings - Best College - Education - US News](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-universities-rankings]National”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-universities-rankings)</li>
</ol>
<p>US NEWS</p>
<p>-22. University of California
-23. University of Southern California / Carnegie Mellon University
-25. University of California at Los Angeles / Wake Forest / University of Virginia</p>
<ol>
<li>[Times</a> Festival of Books will move to USC The popular annual literary event was held at UCLA for 15 years. But talks between the newspaper and university foundered on cost and logistical issues. - Los Angeles Times](<a href=“http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/23/local/la-me-0923-book-festival-20100923]Times”>Times Festival of Books will move to USC)</li>
</ol>
<p>LA Times Festival of Books Moves to USC</p>
<ol>
<li>[The</a> 25 Most Desirable Urban Schools - Newsweek - Education](<a href=“http://education.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/the-25-most-desirable-urban-schools.all.html]The”>http://education.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/the-25-most-desirable-urban-schools.all.html)</li>
</ol>
<p>25 Most Desirable Urban Schools</p>
<p>-15. University of Southern California
-16. University of California, Berkeley
-20. University of California, Los Angeles</p>
<ol>
<li>[The</a> 25 Most Desirable Large Schools - Newsweek - Education](<a href=“http://education.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/the-25-most-desirable-large-schools.all.html]The”>http://education.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/the-25-most-desirable-large-schools.all.html)</li>
</ol>
<p>25 Most Desirable Large Schools</p>
<p>-4. University of Southern California
-5. University of California, Berkeley
-8. University of California, Los Angeles</p>
<ol>
<li>[UC</a> San Diego?s Doctoral Programs Win High Marks in Prestigious NRC Study](<a href=“http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/awards/09-28DoctoralPrograms.asp]UC”>http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/awards/09-28DoctoralPrograms.asp)</li>
</ol>
<p>NRC Top Publics</p>
<ol>
<li>University of California, Berkeley</li>
<li>University of California, San Diego</li>
<li>University of California, Los Angeles</li>
</ol>
<p>NRC Top Universities (Public and Private)</p>
<ol>
<li>University of California, Berkeley</li>
<li>Stanford University</li>
<li>California Institute of Technology</li>
<li>University of California, San Diego</li>
<li>University of California, Los Angeles</li>
</ol>
<p>You can post a host of rankings saying UCLA is below UCSD or USC but there’s a reason why UCLA is the most applied to school in the nation. (And its admit rate is more competitive than both).</p>
<p>I guess the village idiot was feeling bad after Cal’s financial problems forced it to cancel several sports yesterday.</p>
<p>btw, the NRC one is funny. Ranking by the median is great. Nevermind the fact that UCSD has 25 ranked programs and UCLA has 59.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thank god I’m graduating this year (or at least I hope so).
Generalized rankings don’t mean crap, only ones for specific majors do.
And UCLA has the most applicants because L.A. is a huge city (can’t really explain why New York doesn’t have more though).</p>
<p>[Daily</a> Bruin :: Opinion : Poll : The value of a UCLA education](<a href=“404: This page could not be found”>- Daily Bruin)</p>
<p>60% of bruins agree…</p>
<p>what a shame.</p>
<p>That’s a rather old poll, BayBoi. You just searched it in the poll archive and it has no relevance in reflecting the current state of UCLA. What more, even when it was current, it was “voluntary selection”.</p>
<p>lol, every time I see this thread resurrected, I know it can only be BayBoi…</p>
<p>I’m not even gonna bother arguing. A ■■■■■ is ■■■■■.</p>
<p>sentimentGX4, by rather old, do mean 24 hours? They closed it today. You really do just spout out nonsense.</p>
<p>Did you really just vote 124 times?</p>
<p>survey by the National Research Council rated 48 of Cal’s 52 ranked Ph.D. programs in the top 10 in the country. At Harvard University, second on the NRC’s list, 46 of 52 programs ranked in the top 10.</p>
<p>The University of California, Los Angeles, was third with 40 of 59 programs in the top 10.</p>
<p>It’s been 15 years since the NRC did this type of ranking study. In 1995, U.C. Berkeley made the top 10 in 35 of 36 fields. Cal also ranked at the top in a 1982 study by the NRC.</p>
<p>Andrew Szeri, dean of the graduate division at U.C. Berkeley, said the results confirmed that Cal “is the nation’s preeminent public university for doctoral studies.”</p>
<p>More important for blue-and-gold boosters, though, Cal whomped archrival Stanford University in NRC’s study of the nation’s best graduate programs. Where U.C. Berkeley had 40 of its programs ranked in the top 5, just 30 of Stanford’s were. And 14 of Cal’s graduate programs were ranked in first place, whereas just 11 were at the rival across the bay.</p>
<p>Read more: U.C. Berkeley’s Ph.D. programs ranked high in report | San Francisco Business Times</p>
<p>^^^Go Bears!^^^</p>
<p>10char</p>
<p>UCLA ranks high in comprehensive assessment of doctoral research programs
By Claudia Luther The National Research Council, which compiles the premier assessment of the nation’s doctoral research programs, today placed many of UCLA’s graduate programs in its highest ranks. Of the 59 UCLA programs evaluated by the NRC, 40 placed within a range that extended to the top 10. Only two other universities — UC Berkeley, with 48, and Harvard University, with 46 — had more programs that extended to the top 10. </p>
<p>In 1995, of the 36 UCLA doctoral programs examined, 24 ranked in the top quartile. In the just-released report, 21 of those programs remained in the top 25 percent nationally, one existing program broke into the top quartile, and 11 new programs made it into the top quartile, bringing to 33 the number of programs in the top 25 percent.</p>
<p>The increase to 59 UCLA programs examined for today’s report represents not just the growth in the university’s program offerings but also the richer array of programs included in the study.</p>