<p>I hope you're not referring to statistics about how many Californians are or are not good people.</p>
<p>Did you give up, Liberal? Did you figure out that the cost isn't that different than other large schools? I'm not sure if it's cheaper or the same, but the differences for food+housing aren't that big, and considering that living in California (particularly housing) costs a lot, you must concede that Cal's dorm prices are near other schools and not outrageous (unless you think many school's dorms + food princes are outrageous).</p>
<p>Housing and Dining made a profit of $2 million last year, according to a flyer on the elevator advocating higher wages for custodians.</p>
<p>THis thread is interesting and I will post more stuff from Thomas Sowell's book and reform stuff that I mentioned.</p>
<p>Sorry to Calkidd for hijacking this thread; most of his initial posts were pretty good and spot on. An honors curriculum would be great and serve to create specialization within the university rather than specialization with more trade schools as I suggested.</p>
<p>TTT</p>
<p>Liberalcensor and polite antagonis sure has many similarities in terms of opinions.. you two should meet up and become great friends!
liberal's last post was 3/8.. polite antagonis joined 3/17..</p>
<p>Indeed, we are the same person ...</p>
<p>Yep. 10 char</p>
<p>To address drab's previous points:</p>
<p>1) 1/3 of all high school students drop out in california. I read this in a fairly recent article and thats a pretty poor standard. I've also read about how difficult it is for parents to find good schools for their children in California. Sakky's anecodotes about how people who were sterling students in high school suddenly started doing badly at Berkeley also leads me to believe that the secondary schools of california do a bad job of teaching people and aren't very demanding (at least on average, I'm sure there are good schools). When I say Californian's aren't very intelligent, I mean that a big part of this comes from how poorly many secondary schools prepare students for the rigours of a college education.</p>
<p>2) "Again, say you open up more vocational schools. How would that release pressure on the UC system? The same sorts of people would attend the UC system. How is California in the hands of Democratic special interest groups when our friend Arnold is the governor? Also, propositions are hard to get on the ballot."</p>
<p>Other states don't even have propositions, which seems to make for more stable governance. Propositions seem a way to just create wedge issues to get voters to come and vote in general elections. And the state is in the hand of democratic special interests. It still takes several hundred thousand dollars to fire a teacher in the LA school district. Public and private unions still have a stranglehold on policy because their money is so powerful in manipulating issues through tv ads, and electing officials. You have to admit, many of Arnold's ballot iniatives were good ideas. Had the unions not run a 200 million dollar campaign to defeat them, I believe they would have won, especially the gerrymandering proposition (gerrymandering has created extreme senators and representatives, thus creating gridlock). There's a lot bad about California governance, but the effect on the UC systems is simple. The more government is representative of only a few interests, the more likely it is to ignore pressing concerns that relate to the general popualation.</p>
<p>Much of california's infrastructure is falling apart due to lack of investment, and as I noted, there hasn't been a new UC until recently. Also, despite spending more money on students, californians get a poor return on their investment due to structural flaws, such as the inability to fire incompotent teachers. As I said, this has real effects; 1/3 of all high school students drop out. There are less resources to increase the quality of secondary education. And as we know, the inability to resolve budget problems by raising taxes or controlling costs caused a decrease in the quality of the UC's, and will likely continue to do so in the future.</p>
<p>Term limits are also a big problem because many representatives are inexperienced and are thus more easily manipulated by special interests. There's a lot of impetus to increase spending, but once spending gets locked into place its impossible to get rid of it. This is what I mean by "freshmen" legislators being unprepared to deal with all the special interests and their money. There is quite a bit more wrong with the governance of California but you get the idea.</p>
<p>3) I'll give you the point that UC housing probably costs as much as UCLA housing and other UC's which are in large metropolitan areas. Part of the extreme price of rent is due to the proposition which limits raises in property taxes. This inflates the value of land, because people are paying such low taxes on property compared to other states. Rescinding the archaic property tax law would actually decrease taxes for californians in the long run. Local governments would no longer be starved for money and wouldn't have to waste millions of dollars in taxpayer money to lobby the state government each year (since the state government controls all the cash). Since property taxes will now be higher, the state income tax can be lower and on a whole californians will pay less (because there are less resources being wasted). This doesn't happen because the cost of such a tax repeal has concentrated effects.</p>
<p>But the net result of this property tax is that rent is extremely high, and general tax levels are higher too. It's really lose-lose for everyone. The rent cost in berkeley might be alleviated, and property development would be a lot easier if land prices weren't so inflated. Once again, this is a problem unique to California, if not necessarily the UC's.</p>
<p>4) Backstabbing can be limited by organizational changes. If you have to deal with people on a constant basis, you will be more afraid of the consequences of being impolite or a jerk. If you are annonymous, then it is much easier to develop anti-social behavior. Sure, there will still be people that are jerks but there will be more incentives to be nice. I feel that this problem is unique to california because I don't see such happenings on at big southern universities. With freedom is a tradeoff in a common moral framework and lower standards, and I believe this is a negative for UCB in comparison to other big public schools outside the state. Tolerance is great and all, but tolerating impoliteness is just too much.</p>
<p>I forgot my point about doctor's and lawyers, maybe I was just ranting at how much I hate premeds, sorry about that. </p>
<p>As I said a lot of things can fix that, more housing so you can guarantee housing for 4 years. There are a lot of things you can do to make the berkeley experience better without spending a lot or trying a lot; just by focusing on it. Making certain campus events free on certain days. A buddy/mentor system you can sign up for. I've heard this happens at other schools, it would go a long way towards fostering a better sense of community. It just seems like the administrators at berkeley simply take the undergraduates for granted. I imagnie its because of the democratic governance and the fact professors are by their nature busy and prolific publishers at berkeley, so they have a bias to not see what's wrong with the undergraduate experience. A lot of people are kind of apathetic too at Berkeley since its such a big school and so there's not much of a movement for change either way. I see it is a big coordination failure by the free marketplace. You can create a better campus environment without that much work or time invested. I imagine it will take a visionary chancellor to get things kick-started in that direction. </p>
<p>3) My point about there not being enough schools in California is meant to point out that, as a consequence, the existing UC's must pick up the slack and become even more overcrowded. I think there has been a significant increase in the number of students attending at all the UC's in the last few years. A lot of this has negative consequences on the Berkeley experience. Rent is higher because there are more students concentrated in a small area. Majors are impacted. People are more likely to be anti-social when they are annonymous to one another. The student-faculty ratio is still pretty low compared to many public schools but this number may be misleading; many people are drawn to the larger majors, such as economics, mcb, and whatnot, and this leads pretty large class sizes, larger if you accept more people. Yes, this is a feature at many public universities, but the relative pressure on professor's to publish combined with large classes of unmotivated students is not a good combination. Why would professor want to teach premed students that just want the grade? </p>
<p>An honors system can be a pareto-dominant situation. Having an honors program means a professor can look foward to working with motivated, undergraduates who care, and are the cream of the crop. These undergraduates would likely benefit from the more intimate learning environment and be better prepared for further academic pursuits in grad school and whatnot. The professor gains a more interested and educated group of students who know more than just a standardized curriculum and can be drawn on to be future grad students. </p>
<p>Students who just want the grade will have fewer "smart" students to compete with and an easier curriculum, even if they have to remain on a quota system for grades.</p>
<p>A weaker student body has a few advantages. It makes it easier to get good grades ... if the grading is fair and creates normal distributions. However, as we know, many times at Berkeley (depending on major and professor), many professors opt not to create a test that forms a normal distribution for various reasons. This makes competition even more cut-throat because everyone can score high on an absolute scale. It also degrades the value of a Berkeley diploma because people know that you may not be getting a top quality student. The only way to counter this is by judging by gpa. Of course there are ways to game gpa's by taking fewer classes or easier profs, so even this may be an uneven standard. I feel there is only so many students you can accept before it cheapens the experience for everyone due the various ways I've stated (you don't say hi to people you know anymore, less peopel participate in discussions, etc). </p>
<p>A multi-tiered system would help alleviate some of these concerns. It's a wonder to me why Berkeley doesn't have an honors program for such a prestigous school, maybe its because they believed everyone who got into berkeley must be smart and that such a program is unnecessary? I have a feeling the "democratic" governance of the school leads to a lot of inertia in the system as well. Since faculty can vote on broad changes, I bet most professors would scorn having to do more work teaching while they are also trying to keep up their research and publication rate in order to get tenure.</p>
<p>Sure there have been a few release valves; seminars and the new "cool" lectures which fill breadth requirements. But seminars are usually not taught by eminent faculty, and the "Cool" lectures while fun are more introductory courses, wheras many students would prefer meatier courses in their major.</p>
<p>An honors program could be developed with higher standards and a more comprehensive learning experience of learning by doing. This curriculum could be developed over time to be more arduous, but be graded on a very high absolute scale as to reward effort and promote cooperation. Such a scale would demand a lot out of students but also promote cooperation and a good learning environment. I've had one very good professor who was especially adept at this. He created difficult but fair tests that were equal parts memorization and equal parts analysis with generous partial credit. The means were around the low 80's at best and the test created a fairly standard gaussian distribution despite an absolute grading scale. Such a scale would require you to do the work but not put as much pressure as a quota system which forces people to fail.</p>
<p>Since the honors program would demand higher standards, students coudl be tested more (take home exams, long writing assignments), without worrying about grades as much. Professors would be glad to teach students that are motivated and can challenge them as well, increasing their teaching ability and publication potential. Also these students can be used as a ready pool of grunts for graduate-type research.</p>
<p>The corrolary to this is that the normal classes would be much easier but graded by a quota system. If you want an absolute scale you need to do the work and also compete with the most motivated and brightest students, creating self-selection where motivated smart students would be in honors, wheras people more concerned of their grade will gravitate downwards. Also, the curriculum from the honors program coudld be modified and dumbed down for the standard curriculum creating another way for teachers to "test" a curriculum without having to fail students to do so.</p>
<p>I guess I agree with Calkidd's original post about limiting admittances will still let in premeds and whatnot, so maybe a tiered system is just better.</p>
<p>I agree with all of Calkidd's original comments with some added focus on increasing the personal aspect and creating a closer knit community. I also focus on the statistical aspect of grading more; an honors system would make it easier to develop a gaussian distribution of grades without having to screw people over. In this way professors can also get more feedback on how truly difficult their course is. Since they know most of the honor students they will likely be able to tell whether the complaints are legitimate inquiries about whether testing has an appropriate mix of memorization and analysis necessary to learn and delve into key concepts, and not some whiney premed kid begging for a good grade. A curriculum developed in this manner is more safe from the biases of disinterested grad students and disinterested professors.</p>
<p>I don't believe an honors system would cost that much either; maybe offer it only to out of state students and regent's scholar's (one group pays much more, and both groups tend to have higher stats on average than the normal ucb'er) with opportunties to test in for people at the school. </p>
<p>Everyone gets something and is happier.</p>
<p>PA, I agree with alot of what you said, however this quote--"When I say Californian's aren't very intelligent, I mean that a big part of this comes from how poorly many secondary schools prepare students for the rigours of a college education."--struck me as a tad bit absolute. If the high schools in California are so bad, how are schools like stanford able to fill 50% of their student body with California high school students? Or are you saying that 50% of Stanford's student body is unintelligent? The percentage is probably even higher than that, come to think of it. I'm sure there are a couple of kids at stanford who come from the public schools or such fine states as Idaho, Mississippi and Alabama. So what are we at now, 55-60% of stanford's student body is stupid?</p>
<p>Even as a bitter Berkeley undergrad I would say yes, but adding 40-45 percentage points :P</p>
<p>Don't you know Stanford students are dumb? A few Berkeley profs pulled out their grad student grades one time and all the Stanford students were at the bottom of the scale.</p>
<p>At any rate, I'm saying that seems to be a general tendency. There seems to be a lot of smart kids I guess but a lot of California kids seem unprepared for college? I guess I'm a bit harsh since I went to such a competitive high school. I'm not saying there aren't a lot of good high schools, but it seems that a lot of students just aren't cut out for Berkeley despite otherwise good stats from HS.</p>
<p>For example my college roommate made 1 b and was 10th in his class for his high school career. Yet, he made had a solid B minus gpa for his first year at Berkeley and had terrible, terrible study habits. I now have the lyrics from Aviril Lavigne and Good Charlotte's albums etched into my mind because of his incessant need to listen to music while working. He also never read and was completely and utterly vapid in conversations. I don't know how he made such good grades in high school. So yeah, I feel the high school experience is a bit weaker and uneven compared to my experiences in high school and what some of my friends went through. California's school system is ranked 43rd after all.</p>
<p>"I now have the lyrics from Aviril Lavigne and Good Charlotte's albums etched into my mind."</p>
<p>I think I'd jump out of a window if I had to listent to either of these even once. But anyway, yeah, of course there are people that are unprepared for Berkeley, but these people are everywhere! Many of the students that populate Cal are 20-60 sat points away from being at Harvard or Yale or stanford, so you can imagine that those schools face the same problem. You have a good test taking day and you're at Harvard. You have a mediocre test taking day and you're at Cal, but in the end its the same people. Even 100 sat points doesn't all of the sudden mean you're smarter or a better student, and really that's the only difference between the students at Cal and those at other top schools.</p>
<p>Look, I never said they weren't any smart students (if I did so, sorry then), I just said they are a lot of not-so-smart unmotivated students here and it distracts from the experience. There are a lot of not-so-smart, highly motivated, jerk students too which also distracts from the experience because they are sooooo desperate for the A.</p>
<p>SAT's are not that heavily weighed at admission; I believe I heard in another forum that it is only 15% of your academic index. </p>
<p>That being said the difference between Berk and Harvard students can be quite acute. Many harvard students are brilliant and have olympiads and stuff. It is rare for a Berkeley student to have this level of achievement. I met a regent's scholar and I was like, "whaaaa?" This is anecdotal but you get the idea. </p>
<p>Though to be safe lets assume that Berkeley has a pretty smart population the same size as at Harvard and whatnot. So thats about guestimating 500 people out of a thousand at harvard (or yale or wherever, this is the amount of people that get in the right way versus the legacies and the affirmative action people). </p>
<p>Even if Berkeley has that size population its spread out over 8000 students. Which is basically something like 6% of the student body. So I doubt the distribution is the same even though I will agree with you that many of the top students at Berkeley can probably compete with the top students at HYS or wherever (and this does not mean GPA wise). Now for the remaining majority of the student body, since they are not quite as bright, their "intelligence" would be more dependent on the quality of their secondary education, which as we both know is uneven.</p>
<p>People develop a lot of habits early on and keep them forever. Berkeley doesn't seem to challenge a lot of people to come together and meet with diffrerent groups so a lot of the social aspect can feel like high school all over again which isn't all bad. Its also hard to tell what you can do that can challenge yourself this way. I thought clubs and student organizations were the way to go, but I was wrong. Without professor oversight many of these things tend to be badly run. </p>
<p>Anyways my point is, smart people all be spread out yo. And stupid people all be ruining da experience pho reals.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If the high schools in California are so bad, how are schools like stanford able to fill 50% of their student body with California high school students? Or are you saying that 50% of Stanford's student body is unintelligent? The percentage is probably even higher than that, come to think of it. I'm sure there are a couple of kids at stanford who come from the public schools or such fine states as Idaho, Mississippi and Alabama. So what are we at now, 55-60% of stanford's student body is stupid?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I think you'd find that a substantial portion of the Stanford student body comes from elite private schools. It seems to me that PA is only talking about the California public high school system. These elite private schools don't even necessarily have to be located in California (although some, like the Harvard-Westlake school in Los Angeles are physically located in California). Many of the top "Californian" students go to East Coast private boarding schools like Phillips Exeter, Choate Rosemary, Hotchkiss, Phillips Andover, St. Paul's, Sidwell Friends, and the like {Chelsea Clinton went to Sidwell Friends for high school before going to Stanford}. So these "California" students may be classified as from California because that is where their permanent home is (i.e. that is where their parent's house is), but they certainly are not subject to the vagaries of the California public high school system.</p>
<p>Interesting theory. Can you find data? Also, I wonder how many Cal students went to private schools? From very unscientific search, facebook shows groups for many of the private schools that you mentioned above.</p>
<p>Sakky got it right.</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure most people at Berkeley came from public schools. And private school attendance is not necessarily an indicator of quality in California ... especially when it comes to churning out kids with solid protestant moral values.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Look, I never said they weren't any smart students (if I did so, sorry then), I just said they are a lot of not-so-smart unmotivated students here and it distracts from the experience. There are a lot of not-so-smart, highly motivated, jerk students too which also distracts from the experience because they are sooooo desperate for the A.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You should post that on pretty much any thread where you talk about Cal. I like the not-absolute nature of it. But y'know what I hear, PA? Some people say this about Stanford, Harvard, you name it.</p>
<p>Yeah, but the brand name is more powerful at harvard.</p>
<p>I've done some further analysis of the number's from boalt. <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20000829094953/http://www.pcmagic.net/abe/gradeadj.htm%5B/url%5D">http://web.archive.org/web/20000829094953/http://www.pcmagic.net/abe/gradeadj.htm</a></p>
<p>"Under the Boalt formula, each college is ranked according to how its students perform on the standardized law board exam, the LSAT, and how common a certain G.P.A. is at that school."</p>
<p>Berkeley evidently suffers from grade inflation too with an average gpa of 3.25 (versus 3.7 (not so sure on this number)). </p>
<p>Since the average gpa at berkely is 3.25 (much higher for humanities according to the article) and Stanford's only about a 3.7, this would be about 3.5 LSAT points worth of difference. Stanford's average LSAT is 165 versus Berkeley's 161. This is a 4 point LSAT difference. Berkeley's index in that list is 78.5 versus stanford's 80.5. </p>
<p>Considering I think my knowledge of Stanford's average GPA may wrong, this is actually a fair comparison; Stanford's body of law school applicants are about 2 index points better than Berkeley's as per se the student body.</p>
<p>But, since Berkeley is a huge school, this aggregate average GPA of 3.25 obviously does not hold well for the entire population. According to the article there will be a bimodal distribution with science students tending to do worst and humanities students tending to fare much better.</p>
<p>The average GPA for most science/engineering programs is far below 3.25. The average GPA for most humanities programs is well above 3.25. There is an inherent bias in this statistic which Berkeley students can take advantage of by taking humanities classes, but not getting hurt for the grade inflation that occurs in them.</p>
<p>I also realized that the career center's info is for GRADUATING seniors. <a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/Law/lawStats.stm%5B/url%5D">http://career.berkeley.edu/Law/lawStats.stm</a></p>
<p>Since the information is aggregated, Berkeley seems to fare as well as it should considering that the numbers of graduating seniors must be stronger than general applicants who often have several year's work experience. In absolute numbers berkeley sends about 9, on average from the seniors, kids to harvard law which seems to be about in line with Stanford which sends an unknown number of 35 (35 is the number attending with non-senior Stanfordians in the mix) considering Stanford's stronger student body.</p>
<p>So I take it back, in absolute numbers, lets say you have a student you give a smartness index of 150 out of 150. At Stanford you will have about 20. At Berkeley you will have about 10. Overall, thats not bad, but considering at Berkeley you have like 8 times the amount of people,and I would daresay the bottom of Berkeley can get pretty low, it makes it seem like everyone is not Joe Smart.</p>
<p>In short, it seems wrong to say that Berkeley students tend to do wrost; they tend to do about as well as their stats would imply in absolute numbers, but since Berkeley iis so big, their numbers will be greatly diluted to smaller schools relatively.</p>
<p>That's my distinction, I daresay the relative numbers proportions of annoying people are far, far greater at Berkeley than Stanford or most small schools</p>
<p>
[quote]
The average GPA for most science/engineering programs is far below 3.25. The average GPA for most humanities programs is well above 3.25. There is an inherent bias in this statistic which Berkeley students can take advantage of by taking humanities classes, but not getting hurt for the grade inflation that occurs in them.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Wait wait wait, these science vs. humanties social science trends are Berkeley only? Welcome to the world of higher education.</p>
<p>Also, let's not speak about most schools. I know of very few, maybe 150 out of the 3000 or more that exist in America. How about you?</p>
<p>I think Stanford's average GPA is at least a 3.5, maybe even a 3.6 or so, but your number doesn't seem far off.</p>
<p><a href="http://gradeinflation.com/stanford.html%5B/url%5D">http://gradeinflation.com/stanford.html</a></p>
<p>I should stop writing my posts as stream of consciousness type deals.</p>
<p>Since smart people are so dispersed, sometimes it seems like everyone is dumb. (for the joe smart comment)*</p>
<p>An unknown number that is less than 35 (since 35 total attended and some are nongraduating seniors).*</p>
<p>The bias may exist at other schools, but as Sakky has pointed out, MIT lets people who don't do well in engineering to start over and do something else. In addition, I don't know if the average grades are quite so dramatically different at other schools, but it seems berkeley is harsher since it fails so many people wheras the private schools do not.</p>