In response to the many debates on ugrad quality

sakky · July 20, 2006, 5:53pm

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2. Vicissitudes, Eudean, and their allies strongly oppose Sakky's recommendations on how to fix the undergraduate quality problem, because they think the problems are overstated and exaggerated. They do a decent job in pointing out the weaknesses in the other sides arguments, but fail to present effective solutions of their ownthey are more content to simply fend off attacks aimed at Berkeley. Some have agreed in part with Sakkys call for a revamp in the grading system, but there are no original ideas on this side of the fence.

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Well, I wouldn't exactly call vicissitudes an ally of Eudean.

But more to the point, I am proposing a bunch of ideas that I believe could improve Berkeley. Now, I am not saying that ALL of my ideas are the best ones. In fact, I freely agree that there may be even better ideas out there. All I am offering is a menu of POSSIBLE reforms. We can debate which reforms are better than others, and how to go about implementing reform, but I still believe that reform is necessary.

Personally, I think the ball is in the court of my opposition. I have spend time delineating various reforms. I think my opposition ought to counter with some reforms of their own. If they can come up with even better ideas, then I will acknowledge (as I have in the past) that they have better ideas.

But then there are people who quite simply DON'T WANT problems to be fixed. For example, eudean himself has said that he LIKES impaction. I take that to mean that even if we could fix impaction, he WOULD NOT WANT it to be fixed. He likes it this way. Hence, all this discussion of how reform isn't possible or how my reforms won't help are therefore completely beside the point, because he (and people like him) don't want reform anyway.

I consider that a highly provocative position to take and wonder why impaction is to be preferred.

sakky · July 20, 2006, 6:03pm

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Yes, its probably true that students who are admitted to impacted majors laught at those who don't. But what exactly is fundamentally wrong with a cutthroat academic environment? Isn't that the way academics are SUPPOSED to work?

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There is a difference between 'rigorous' and 'cutthroat'. Cutthroat implies highly negative, social suboptimal behavior. For example, intentionally telling other students wrong information so that they get a test question wrong. Hiding library books or tearing pages out of library course materials so that other students can't read them so that they get lower grades on the exam. Going to the bin where course homeworks are submitted and throwing away other student's homework sets so that they get zeros (which therefore lowers the curve). That is cutthroat behavior that I don't think has a place in any academic environment.

It also encourages the 'gaming' of grades. For example, a cutthroat environment simply encourages people to take extremely easy courses and/or courses on things that they already know, just so that they can rack up a bunch of easy A's. I know a guy at Berkeley who was completely fluent in a certain foreign language, but took all of the intro courses in that language anyway, simply because he knew it would give him a string of easy A's. He actually pretended to the prof that he knew nothing about the language. That is the sort of gamesmanship that cutthroatness encourages. Students begin to value high grades more than they value learning. That guy didn't learn anything in those language courses that he didn't already know. But he didn't care, because all he wanted were the A's.

sakky · July 20, 2006, 6:24pm

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You're using the analogy in a different way than I see it. In theory, if you get into a selective private that doesn't have impacted majors, then you've got a different, comparable world except that it doesn't have disease. If you have that option, it's a good option to take. If you're a good student, it won't matter.

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So you agree that this a reason for people to prefer HYPSM to Berkeley.

I also disagree about the notion that if you're a "good" student, it won't matter. That depends on what you mean by 'good'. Like I said, there are people who got 3.5's who can't get into CS. I would say that if you got a 3.5 in CS pre-reqs, you're pretty good. Hence, even some good students can't get into the major that they want. I believe that people with even higher grades have difficulty switching into EECS.

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Why ask only those that have been antagonized by impacted majors? Why not ask everybody? Certainly, those other students deserve to be heard on the issue because they attend Berkeley, too, and are also affected by impacted majors. Take a fair poll. I don't know what the results will be, but I do know what would happen if you asked a bunch of republicans if Bush is a good president or not--just like you know what people that didn't get in to their intended majors would say about impacted majors. But that statistic isn't relevant--just like mine wouldn't mean Bush is a good president, yours wouldn't mean impacted major are bad. It would mean it was bad for those students, but only if it is bad for the majority of students is it actually bad overall.

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No, the democratic political process is not a good analogy, because democracy is enshrined with the notion of 'one-man, one vote', despite the fact that in this case, the people who are affected by impaction feel far more intensely about the subject than those who are not affected.

To give you an historical analogy, slavery in the US South was a DEMOCRATIC notion in the sense that the majority of people in the South supported slavery. True, blacks were disenfranchised at the time, but even if they had complete suffrage, it would hardly have made any difference, because blacks were a minority in Southern states. Hence, if the question of slavery was put up to a vote within those states, slavery would have always won, because the majority (the whites) wanted slavery.

That's what happens when you have a one-man, one-vote system. The minority (the blacks) obviously feel far far more intensely about slavery than the whites did because they are the ones who became victimized by it. However, you cannot seriously argue that slavery was not a problem overall, just because the majority of people in the South not only did not suffer from slavery, but actually SUPPORTED the system of slavery . But the salient point is that the damage that slavery does to an individual slave is far far greater than the benefit it may provide to the non-enslaved. Yet in a one-man, one-vote system, these intensities of benefits/drawbacks cannot be expressed.

Similarly, what if a law was proposed today where men would have to become slaves of women? I suspect that this law might pass democratically, for the simple reason that there are (slightly) more women than men. But of course men would intensely oppose this idea.

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Yes, but I'm not arguing Berkeley's advisors are good. You're arguing that they're not. I'm arguing that you can't argue that without evidence (besides one or two anecdotes, because I've got my own anecdotes to counter those). Further, to argue that the advising is bad is vague. I agree, the college of engineering advisors are useless for telling you what classes to take, and are bad in that respect. But that's not their job. That's what your department advisor is for. That's what all the professors in your department are for. If the professors at Berkeley are significantly worse than the professors at other universities at telling students what classes to take, you'll have a strong point. But you can't just say it is so without real support.

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Huh? This is not a point of comparative analysis! Even if we presume that some other school has bad advising, that doesn't make it OK for Berkeley to also have bad advising. My point is, Berkeley advising needs to be improved REGARDLESS of what other schools may or may not be doing.

I said it before, I'll say it again. If Berkeley improves its programs and the other schools don't, then Berkeley will be better than those other schools. But of course that presumes that people here actually want Berkeley to be better than those other schools. I get the feeling that a lot of people don't really want that.

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Yes, those students would've been better off elsewhere. Too bad for those students. It's great for every single other student in the CS major that those students didn't get in, though. Unless there are more 3.5GPA students applying and getting rejected from the CS major than there are students in the CS major in total, I don't see how this is a bad thing for Berkeley education.

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It's not even a matter of 3.5 GPA students. I think any student who is getting a 3.0 in CS prereq classes is doing pretty well. Yet a LOT of them are getting rejected.

Besides, think about what you are saying. If impaction is good for CS, then why isn't it good for every other major. Why not have ALL majors be impacted? Like you said, it would be good for those students who actually get into those majors, right? Heck, if you could calibrate the situation such that 50.1% of students are able to get the major they want, then according to your logic, the majority of students are benefitting, and that lower 49.9% who didn't get in, they can basically go to hell, right?

sakky · July 20, 2006, 6:35pm

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How many times must I say this?

Each department at Berkeley chooses when and if it wants to declare itself impacted by undergraduates.

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Yep, greatesteyn, I suspect you are right. But that's not the point. The problem is that the departments will often times make excuses that they are not getting enough resources to take in more students. So I offer the idea of providing more resources to, if nothing else, take away these excuses.

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Because that's what it decided to do to itself. If undergraduate students do not like that, they should voice their concerns to

Stephen Hinshaw
Psychology Chair & Professor
<a href="mailto:hinshaw@berkeley.edu">hinshaw@berkeley.edu</a>

<a href="http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/psychol...s/shinshaw.html%5B/url%5D">http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/psychol...s/shinshaw.html</a>

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The problem with this idea is simple - why would Hinshaw care? So a bunch of undergrads couldn't get into the major and they protest. So what? That's no skin off him. It doesn't hurt him in any way.

That's why, if change is going to happen, it's going to have to involve the help of the administration at large. After all, you said it yourself, the psych department has plenty of space and plenty of profs and funding. But where does it get this space? It doesn't "own" the space that it has. And it certainly doesn't "own" all of its funding sources. The administration has the power to say that if the psych department doesn't want to take in more students, then the administration is going to take back some of the department's buildings. Like I said, those buildings are owned by Berkeley at large, not by the department. The administration can also yank whatever general funding and general university support the department is getting. For example, one simple example is that the administration can simply say that the psych department will no longer be allowed to use any of Berkeley's libraries like Doe or Moffitt. After all, the department is not "entitled" to use Doe/Moffitt. The department doesn't own those libraries. Berkeley psych profs will no longer get free parking and will no longer have access to the RSF. If they need computers, too bad, they will have to get their own, and they will have to support them by themselves as they no longer have access to Berkeley IST.

The point is, departments are not (or should not be) free to do whatever they want. They use plenty of general university resources, so they should be contributing to the welfare of the general university. If you're not going to do that, then you shouldn't be allowed to use general university resources.

greatestyen · July 20, 2006, 6:40pm

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Exactly! Greatesteyn, once again we find something that we agree on! I also agree that one of the main problems of impacted majors is not so much that Berkeley is lacking resources, but simply that they don't want to spend those resources to teach undergrads.

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Well, I don't necessary think that "they (the departments) don't want to spend those resources to teach undergrads." Once again, I believe that the only departments that need to spend monetary "resources" in teaching actual classes are departments which have demonstrations. Chemistry 1A demonstrations come to mind. But other than that, I would argue that the vast majority of resources of all departments which are spend on undergrads are spent on undergrad research. And I actually believe that most of the departments spend large amounts of "resources" on that. If that wasn't the case, Berkeley undergrads from all disciplines wouldn't be getting into so many graduate programs that require undergradaute research experience. (Basically all, with the arguable expection of Law and Business School.)

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I mean seriously - profs who just don't want to teach? Uh, pardon me, but isn't that your job? It's like saying that I want to be a cop, but I don't want to catch criminals. The job description of all professors is that they are supposed to undertake teaching responsibilities. If they refuse to do that, then I think that is one of the few grounds for revocation of tenure.

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I very much agree. But it's not just the professors in impacted department though, it's the chairs which allow these practices to occur in the first place.

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If you don't want to teach at all, then don't be a prof, simple as that. Go join one of those think tanks or research labs where you can spend all of your time researching and publishing. By becoming a prof, you agreed to take some teaching responsibilities. That's the deal that was made.

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I agree with what you're saying. What I have a problem with is one of the solutions which you propose. You seem to support a system in which the number of faculty in a given department is almost entirely dependent on the number of undergraduate students said department has. I believe that such a system would not only be difficult to legally institute, but that it would cripple Berkeley's reputation in the academic community. Why? Because once a university like Berkeley fires professors in otherwise "popular" or "influential" fields for anything other than academic incompetence or professional misdemeanors, it more or less destroys its credibility as an employer. (See ealier posts for more discussion on this.)

sakky · July 20, 2006, 6:42pm

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Again, I just think the proposed system is a waste of time and money. Students seem to have plenty of resources to find out about their professors. Not only is there ratemyprofessors.com, but there are other students, and numerous other websites. I mean, I've never heard of a student complaining about having no idea that their professor would be "horrible." What DOES tend to happen is that students complain about the horrible quality itself.

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Well, there's another aspect to this entirely, which is that students often times simply can't escape horrible profs. This happens most often in those majors that proceed in lockstep, where you have to take course A before course B, then course C, etc. etc., and furthermore, course A is only taught once a year, and by only one prof. ChemE 140 is a prime example of this. It's only taught once a year, and is the gateway to the rest of chemical engineering, to the point that you can't even take any more ChemE courses until you pass 140 (and profs in later courses will actually check to see if you passed 140, and if you haven't, your course registration will be cancelled). So if ChemE140 just happens to be taught by a horrible prof, what are you going to do? Your only other alternative is to wait for an entire year for the course to be taught again, which delays your graduation. And there's no guarantee that even if you did wait for a whole year, that it won't be taught by a horrible prof again.

So, really, ratemyprofessors.com and other evaluation sites can only help to a point. It doesn't really help to know if your profs are horrible if you have no choices anyway.

greatestyen · July 20, 2006, 7:24pm

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Hey, the vast majority of people in the world do not suffer from daily hunger, but that doesn't mean that daily hunger is not a problem. The vast majority of people in the world do not have malaria, yellow fever, tuberculousis, hepatitis, or AIDS, but that doesn't mean that these diseases are not a problem for those who have them.

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Stop making these ridiculous analogies. The situations are vastly different.

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Berkeley should be trying to eliminate the problem of impacted majors. Nobody at HYPSM has problems with impacted majors, because there is no such concept at those schools.

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Student activism has to demand it. The administration is certainly not going to do it all on its own.

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I would hardly say characterize the PHD program in AHMA, or any Berkeley PhD program, is 'watered-down'. As I have always said, the Berkeley PhD programs are among the most best in the world.

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Well, what I actually meant was that undergrads in NES are more or less being taught what AHMA studenres are being taught, though in a much more "watered-down" fashion. That should be obvious. It's like that in all fields.

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But this is all part of a STRATEGY. This is about taking away excuses. For example, right now, I suspect that the reason why economics is impacted has nothing to do with resources, but has to do with the fact that the econ department simply doesn't want to teach more undergrads. But how do we prove this? After all, if we tell them to drop their impaction policy, they will probably respond that they are lacking resources. Ok, fine, so how do we solve this? I think the way to do it is to simply offer them the resources in order to take away that excuse. If they STILL say that they can't teach more students, then we all know that they were just making excuses. But the key is to exhaust their excuses.

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Giving Econ more resources is not something I oppose at all. What I oppose is giving Econ the resources of smaller humanities departments because those smaller humanities departments barely have anything at all. Indeed, the smaller humanities departments basically have nothing other than faculty offices, departamental offices, and books in the central library. Do you want to do away any of those? If you do, do you actually think that will do much for Econ? Is taking away the small hallway of Dwinelle Hall that Film Studies uses to house itself and giving it over to Econ really going to do much for Econ? Remember that there's office space in Evans that is not being used.

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This is the way you solve interdepartmental political problems. You expose departmental excuses for the lies that they are.

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I actually think that a better way might be to create a Central Committee of Departamental Planning and Resource Allocation. THEN the departments could be held accountable.

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Think of it this way. We offer them resources. One of 2 things will happen. Either they will take those resources and drop impaction. Good, problem solved. Or, they will simply throw up another excuse. If they do that, then at least we are closer to knowing what we are really dealing with.

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Ok, give them resources. But not the resources of other departments.

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Oh, I HARDLY doubt that is the case, simply because there is barely an organization in the world that is completely optimized. Even organizations such as Toyota, Dell and Walmart that are famous for their operational efficiency are STILL finding more and more ways to optimize themselves. For example, Toyota has been on the vanguard of lean manufacturing initiatives within the auto industry for several decades now, and yet they are STILL increasing productivity and yield. If even an extremely tight ship like Toyota can still find ways to optimize themselves, then I have to imagine that a far looser organization like Berkeley can do so also.

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There may indeed be better ways for Berkeley to allocate its "resources." But I still don't believe that faculty numbers should be "shifted" or departments forced to give up the "space" they currently occupy. Money is probably the one "resource" that could be reallocated. However, I question the assumption that money needed by say, a massive department liek MCB can or should be taken from say, a smaller department like History-mainly because History just don't have much money. After all, MCB has plenty of money that it uses to train undergraduates in research labs and get large numbers of them into medical On the other hand, History has just ONE small grant available to undergraduates who desire to explore an original historical topic for which "resources" cannot be found in the Bay Area.

<a href="http://history.berkeley.edu/undergraduate/forms/UG_Research_Grant.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://history.berkeley.edu/undergraduate/forms/UG_Research_Grant.pdf</a>

I strongly believe that if History had the money to send its undergraduates to collect primary sources across the world, it would make its classes tougher and by doing so, better prepare (more) of its students for grad programs in History.

But let's leave History aside. Say you were to take from Chemistry, which obviously has LOTS of money. I think you would actually be hurting Chemistry. And that's of course, to be expected. It's expensive to do research in chemistry, probably just as much or more as it is to do research biology. So, these departments obviously cannot look towards small humanities departments to find money because that money just isn't there. Yet, that is exactly what it seems that people like sakky want to do.

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I'll give you an example. Not that long ago, Berkeley got rid of all of its undergrad mining engineering programs. These programs had long-standing histories within Berkeley, and specifically within the old College of Mining (which then became part of the CoE). But Berkeley got rid of them, even though they still had students, but just not enough students to justify the programs as ongoing concerns. I am quite certain that other programs like this exist at Berkeley.

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But as I already said, this example fails to take into account the changing nature of politics. Closing Mining was profitable to almost anybody. But that's no longer the case with many of the smaller departments. After all, let's say Berkeley were to close down Ethnic Studies. You really think radical political activists, especially in California, are going to stand for that? No, they are not. They will take it all the way to the Supreme Court if they have to and they will probably win. So why should Berkeley spend so much money on fighting legal battles when it can use that money to expand "resources"?

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Allright! Now we have gotten to the truth. So why are you even giving me reasons for why Berkeley has to be impacted? The fact is, you LIKE impaction, so to you, it wouldn't matter if I was able to come up with a way to fix impaction, because you don't want it fixed anyway. So now I think you ought to explain why impaction is good, and specifically, I would invite you to explain it to those students who couldn't get the major that they wanted. You may want to do that with some police protection, however, as I'm sure that their response to you won't exactly be positive.

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I'm not going to list my reasons unless you answer the question that you have now ignored three times.

sakky · July 20, 2006, 7:24pm

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Well, I don't necessary think that "they (the departments) don't want to spend those resources to teach undergrads." Once again, I believe that the only departments that need to spend monetary "resources" in teaching actual classes are departments which have demonstrations. Chemistry 1A demonstrations come to mind. But other than that, I would argue that the vast majority of resources of all departments which are spend on undergrads are spent on undergrad research. And I actually believe that most of the departments spend large amounts of "resources" on that. If that wasn't the case, Berkeley undergrads from all disciplines wouldn't be getting into so many graduate programs that require undergradaute research experience. (Basically all, with the arguable expection of Law and Business School.)

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I don't know about that. You seem to be implying that departments are constrained by their UG research budgets. Well, if that's the case, then the answer is to simply restrict the amount of UG research that is going on, so that you can teach more students. Even if your research budget is constrained, that doesn't mean that you can't teach more students. Let's be honest. Most Berkeley undergrads have no interest in research. They just want to get a job and work right after graduation.

Let me give you a statistic. Out of all schools, I believe Caltech has the highest percentage of its undergrads going on to receive PhD's, with something like 40% of them doing so. That means that even at a research-intensive school like Caltech, the majority of undergrads will not get a PhD. Granted, some of those that don't may get a master's degree and so forth, but the point is, even at Caltech, there are plenty of students who simply intend to go to work right after graduation, and/or (like you said) go to a grad school that doesn't need research experience.

Law and business are not the only examples. You don't need research experience to get into medical school, as clinical experience ( i.e. volunteering in a hospital) is sufficient. You don't need research experience to get a M.Ed (to become a teacher), or an MPA/MPP, or a M.S.W, or many other degrees. Heck, you don't really need research experience to get into a MS/MA program, as I have known plenty of people who got Master of Science/MEng degrees at MIT who had no research experience. Heck, even some Phd programs have taken people who have had no research experience. Even at MIT,there are some PhD students who had no prior research experience. What really matters is research POTENTIAL. For example, I know a guy pursuing his PhD at MIT who did no undergrad research before, but had profs who were willing to attest to the fact that he had excellent potential.

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I agree with what you're saying. What I have a problem with is one of the solutions which you propose. You seem to support a system in which the number of faculty in a given department is almost entirely dependent on the number of undergraduate students said department has. I believe that such a system would not only be difficult to legally institute, but that it would cripple Berkeley's reputation in the academic community. Why? Because once a university like Berkeley fires professors in otherwise "popular" or "influential" fields for anything other than academic incompetence or professional misdemeanors, it more or less destroys its credibility as an employer. (See ealier posts for more discussion on this.)

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First off, I never said that Berkeley NECESSARILY had to increase or decrease the number of faculty members to correspond with the number of undergrads it has. My reference was to resources IN GENERAL. You can simply just make existing courses bigger, if that's what it takes. It's not my preferred strategy, but it's better than nothing. After all, if you already have 200 students in a class, who really cares about bringing in another 50? The class is going to be big no matter what. It's not that hard to expand a class that is already big. You still only need 1 prof.

Another option is to simply bring in more of those adjunct/visiting profs/lecturers. Why not? Berkeley does it already. Plenty of people who teach classes are not "real" Berkeley profs, but are instead untenured adjunct lecturers or visiting profs from other institutions. So why not do more of this to handle the overfill? To give you an example, the guy who teaches ChemE 160 (the senior design course) is not a real Berkeley prof. P. Henrik Wallman is an untenured lecturer whose real job is at LBL. This is the capstone chemical engineering design course - and it is taught by a guy who isn't even really a prof at Berkeley! Nor is this unique. For over a decade, both ChemE 160 and ChemE 154 (the required unit ops lab) were taught by Fred Vorhis, who was also an adjunct untenured lecturer.

Other departments, particularly the largest ones like MCB and poli-sci, also use plenty of untenured lecturers and visiting profs. They are a cheap and easy way to expand and contract capacity. If you have a large influx of student demand, you can meet it temporarily by hiring lots of lecturers until such time as you can build a permanent faculty to support the demand. If demand drops, then the first thing you do is lay off all of those lecturers and stop bringing in visiting profs. After all, the department has no obligation to them because they were never granted tenure. For example, David Presti, who teaches MCB 61, 62, and 165 is not a real MCB prof. He's an untenured lecturer. {Interestingly, he's also considered one of the best teachers in the MCB department}. Amy Gurowitz, who teaches PoliSci 120A, 123, and 149 is not a real Berkeley prof. She's a research associate at the Institute of International Studies, and also a visiting assistant prof at Mills College, but she isn't a "real" Berkeley prof. Dan Schnur, who teaches PoliSci106, is also just a lecturer, holding the official title of "Visiting Instructor" at Berkeleys' Institute of Governmental Studies.

So why can't a department like econ or psych do the same? In fact, I know for a fact that the psych department has a whole slew of visiting profs and researchers. So having untenured lecturers and visiting profs teach courses would be nothing new to the Berkeley psych department.

To answer a possible objection, I don't think that Berkeley gets hurt at all by laying off unneeded untenured lecturers and researchers. I think it is widely understood within the academic community that those jobs bring no obligation to the university. In fact, that's the whole point of being untenured - that you don't have the kind of job security that regular faculty members have. Berkeley has thousands and thousands of employees, only a small fraction of whom are tenured profs. If you're a regular secretary at Berkeley, you don't presume to have a job for life. If Berkeley wants to lay you off, then they will lay you off. It's like any other regular job, in which you can get laid off at any time.

greatestyen · July 20, 2006, 7:26pm

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There is a difference between 'rigorous' and 'cutthroat'. Cutthroat implies highly negative, social suboptimal behavior. For example, intentionally telling other students wrong information so that they get a test question wrong. Hiding library books or tearing pages out of library course materials so that other students can't read them so that they get lower grades on the exam. Going to the bin where course homeworks are submitted and throwing away other student's homework sets so that they get zeros (which therefore lowers the curve). That is cutthroat behavior that I don't think has a place in any academic environment.

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Indeed, I should have used the word "rigorous" as opposed to "cutthroat."

greatestyen · July 20, 2006, 7:47pm

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The problem with this idea is simple - why would Hinshaw care? So a bunch of undergrads couldn't get into the major and they protest. So what? That's no skin off him. It doesn't hurt him in any way.

That's why, if change is going to happen, it's going to have to involve the help of the administration at large.

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The problem with YOUR idea is that the administration is simply not going to tell the departments what to do unless the STUDENTS demand that the administration tell the departments what to do.

Since I believe that it is highly unlikely that students will rise up against the administration in large intimidating numbers a la 60s, I honestly think that the best way to solve this "problem" might be to threaten impacted departments with large scale student mobilization. Although you are probably correct in that Hinshaw will not care. And for that matter, I think few psychology students will care because the reality of the situation is that psych prerecs for the major are extremely easy and inflated. It's not very tough to get the 3.2 that's required for admission into psych. (Same goes for Mass Comm....)

sakky · July 20, 2006, 7:49pm

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Stop making these ridiculous analogies. The situations are vastly different.

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I'm merely saying that it sucks to be one of those guys who couldn't get into the major they want. Eudean would have you believe that just because the majority get what they want, that everything is peachy. I do not see it this way.

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Well, what I actually meant was that undergrads in NES are more or less being taught what AHMA studenres are being taught, though in a much more "watered-down" fashion. That should be obvious. It's like that in all fields.

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If that's what you meant, then fine. But still, the point is, there is no necessary link between the number of undergrads you have and the quality of your graduate programs. Some Berkeley doctoral programs do just fine with NO undergrads. For example, the Ed.D. program in Berkeley's College of Education.

One can also simply think of an entirely different model of education. UCSF has some excellent PhD programs despite not having a true undergraduate program whatsoever.

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Ok, give them resources. But not the resources of other departments.

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Why not from other departments? No department has the "right" to the resources it currently has. It is entirely possible (indeed almost 100% certain) that some departments have been allocated too many resources, and thus should be made to return them. That is simply because, in any organization in the world (a company, a government, etc.), some resources have been allocated inefficiently, with certain subsectors being given too much and others too little. The entire field of Operations Management/Operations Research is all about identifying these areas and then rationalizing the resources.

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There may indeed be better ways for Berkeley to allocate its "resources." But I still don't believe that faculty numbers should be "shifted" or departments forced to give up the "space" they currently occupy.

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Why not? I am not saying that we HAVE to do that. But it should be on the table. All options should be on the table. Like I said, no department has the "right" to the space it has, or to the number of faculty it has. The Berkeley history department, for example, doesn't "own" the building space that it occupies. Neither does any other department.

To give you an example, Hearst Mining used to be occupied by, unsurprisingly, the Mining Engineering Department. Over the years, that department was forced to ceded more and more space within Hearst Mining to other departments, notably Materials Science. Now, I think Hearst Mining is ALL Materials Science (as well as part of CITRIS).

The point is, departments are forced to cede building space all the time, especially as enrollments decline. The Mining Engineering department couldn't just hold Hearst forever until the end of time. The department doesn't "own" Hearst Mining. UCBerkeley owns Hearst Mining.

[quote]
Money is probably the one "resource" that could be reallocated. However, I question the assumption that money needed by say, a massive department liek MCB can or should be taken from say, a smaller department like History-mainly because History just don't have much money. After all, MCB has plenty of money that it uses to train undergraduates in research labs and get large numbers of them into medical On the other hand, History has just ONE small grant available to undergraduates who desire to explore an original historical topic for which "resources" cannot be found in the Bay Area.

[/quote]

I never said anything about reallocating anything from MCB to History, because both of these majors are non-impacted.

I am saying that resources may have to be reallocated to impacted majors. If the majors are resources-constrained, then more resources would lift that constraint. Or if it is something else entirely, then at least the offer of more resources would expose that fact.

[quote]
But let's leave History aside. Say you were to take from Chemistry, which obviously has LOTS of money. I think you would actually be hurting Chemistry. And that's of course, to be expected. It's expensive to do research in chemistry, probably just as much or more as it is to do research biology. So, these departments obviously cannot look towards small humanities departments to find money because that money just isn't there. Yet, that is exactly what it seems that people like sakky want to do.

[/quote]

Like I said, Chemistry and history are not impacted.

But more to the point, obviously taking any money from any program will hurt that program. But RIGHT NOW, some programs don't (or at least, claim not to) have the resources they need. So RIGHT NOW, some programs are being hurt (or at least, are claiming so). Hence, we may have to create some pain in some departments in order to lessen the pain in others. That's what optimization is all about.

Again, look at all of the cancelled programs in the history of Berkeley. There is no more undergrad mining program at Berkeley. There used to be an Agricultural Engineering program. Not anymore. In fact, there even used to be a Nursing program at Berkeley. It got shut down in the 1960's despite being one of the most popular programs at Bekeley.

My point is, no department has the "right" to the resources that it is currently getting. Just because you have certain building space now doesn't mean that you get to have it forever.

[quote]
But as I already said, this example fails to take into account the changing nature of politics. Closing Mining was profitable to almost anybody. But that's no longer the case with many of the smaller departments. After all, let's say Berkeley were to close down Ethnic Studies. You really think radical political activists, especially in California, are going to stand for that? No, they are not. They will take it all the way to the Supreme Court if they have to and they will probably win. So why should Berkeley spend so much money on fighting legal battles when it can use that money to expand "resources"?

[/quote]

First off, on what grounds would they take it to the Supreme Court? Every university has the right to shut down whatever programs it wants. That breaks no laws.

Secondly, I never said anything about Ethnic Studies, except in the general sense that any department with extra resources ought to give them up in favor of departments that are resources constrained. If Ethnic Studies turns out to have extra resources, then they should have to give them up just like any other department with extra resources.

[quote]
I'm not going to list my reasons unless you answer the question that you have now ignored three times.

[/quote]

First off, I am under no obligation to answer anybody's question, or to do anything at all, for that matter. After all, plenty of my issues/questions have been ignored by plenty of people, and that doesn't phaze me. Perhaps we should go back and have you and others answer all of my questions that have been ignored?

But secondly, so what are these questions that I have been supposedly ignoring?

sakky · July 20, 2006, 7:53pm

[quote]
The problem with YOUR idea is that the administration is simply not going to tell the departments what to do unless the STUDENTS demand that the administration tell the departments what to do.

[/quote]

So then you are implicitly admitting that the administration DOES have some control over the departments, right?

[quote]
Since I believe that it is highly unlikely that students will rise up against the administration in large intimidating numbers a la 60s, I honestly think that the best way to solve this "problem" might be to threaten impacted departments with large scale student mobilization. Although you are probably correct in that Hinshaw will not care. And for that matter, I think few psychology students will care because the reality of the situation is that psych prerecs for the major are extremely easy and inflated. It's not very tough to get the 3.2 that's required for admission into psych. (Same goes for Mass Comm....)

[/quote]

I simply don't see what protesting Hinshaw is going to accomplish. After all, like I said, what does he care?

But you are right that getting a 3.2 in mass comm or psych is pretty darn easy and hence, I am not terribly incensed about those 2 subjects. My real concern is with Econ, and especially CS, and engineering, because all of these majors are both tough and heavily impacted. It's certainly no walk in the park to get the kind of grades you need to switch into CS or engineering.

greatestyen · July 20, 2006, 8:56pm

[quote]
I don't think that Berkeley gets hurt at all by laying off unneeded untenured lecturers and researchers. I think it is widely understood within the academic community that those jobs bring no obligation to the university. In fact, that's the whole point of being untenured - that you don't have the kind of job security that regular faculty members have. Berkeley has thousands and thousands of employees, only a small fraction of whom are tenured profs. If you're a regular secretary at Berkeley, you don't presume to have a job for life. If Berkeley wants to lay you off, then they will lay you off. It's like any other regular job, in which you can get laid off at any time.

[/quote]

Indeed, I am not opposed to most of the ideas you present and I am not opposed to "laying off unneeded untenured lecturers and researchers." What I AM opposed to is laying off untenured professors and that was what some posters were proposing.

[quote]
Why not from other departments?

[/quote]

Because if Berkeley took from other departments, Berkeley could potentially create even MORE problems for itself.

[quote]
No department has the "right" to the resources it currently has.

[/quote]

Well I think we need to think holistically. Berkeley wants the best for all of its current programs. That means that to the present Berkeley administration, every department CERTAINLY has a "right" to the resources it currently has. After all, if it wasn't for those resources, Berkeley couldn't pride itself on groundbreaking research.

[quote]
It is entirely possible (indeed almost 100% certain) that some departments have been allocated too many resources, and thus should be made to return them.

[/quote]

Could you list some other resources besides space, faculty numbers, and money which can actually be "returned"?

[quote]
The entire field of Operations Management/Operations Research is all about identifying these areas and then rationalizing the resources.

[/quote]

That is true. However, you must remember Berkeley's educational rhetoric. It's always about "expanding" educational resources, not "contracting" them. And sure you can point out that Berkeley contracts educational resources through impaction, but that's just not how Berkeley thinks about the issue. I've actually heard deans speak of impaction as an "unfortunate consequence" of increased enrollment. Since there is no way that any carreer-conscious UC dean would object to increases in enrollment, it appears as if they largely ignore the impaction issue.

[quote]
Why not? I am not saying that we HAVE to do that. But it should be on the table. All options should be on the table. Like I said, no department has the "right" to the space it has, or to the number of faculty it has. The Berkeley history department, for example, doesn't "own" the building space that it occupies. Neither does any other department.

[/quote]

Well, most of that is more or less true. However, you seem to forget that Berkeley junior faculty members in a tenure-track positions are very often hired under contracts guaranteeing eventual tenure, so long as they continue to publish excellent research. Berkeley will be in a sticky legal situation if it breaks those contracts.

[quote]
I never said anything about reallocating anything from MCB to History, because both of these majors are non-impacted.

I am saying that resources may have to be reallocated to impacted majors. If the majors are resources-constrained, then more resources would lift that constraint. Or if it is something else entirely, then at least the offer of more resources would expose that fact.

[/quote]

So, you only support reallocation for impacted departments?

[quote]
But more to the point, obviously taking any money from any program will hurt that program. But RIGHT NOW, some programs don't (or at least, claim not to) have the resources they need. So RIGHT NOW, some programs are being hurt (or at least, are claiming so). Hence, we may have to create some pain in some departments in order to lessen the pain in others. That's what optimization is all about.

[/quote]

If one department claims to not have all the resources it needs, why do you insist on harming other departments? Why can't Berkeley just set up a committee to investigate impacted departments and make a decisions on whether or not to reallocate resources? That would be a much better option in my opinion.

[quote]
To give you an example, Hearst Mining used to be occupied by, unsurprisingly, the Mining Engineering Department. Over the years, that department was forced to ceded more and more space within Hearst Mining to other departments, notably Materials Science. Now, I think Hearst Mining is ALL Materials Science (as well as part of CITRIS).

[/quote]

I am not an expert on this example. However, let's discuss it. Mining gets kicked out. But didn't it come back? And wasn't there a lot of friction when it came back? Isn't it gone again? How much money did the department lose in this process?

Is that what you want for Berkeley in general to do? You want resources to be "shifted" every given period of time?

[quote]
The point is, departments are forced to cede building space all the time, especially as enrollments decline. The Mining Engineering department couldn't just hold Hearst forever until the end of time. The department doesn't "own" Hearst Mining. UCBerkeley owns Hearst Mining.

[/quote]

OK, I agree with that concept. However, it's my general impression that enrollment has not decreased in many non-impacted, non-large department at all. Indeed, enrollment numbers have largely either stayed constant or increased with admission numbers. So would such departments be except from your "shift" plan? If they are, which departments do you want to hit? The large ones that aren't impacted?

[quote]
So then you are implicitly admitting that the administration DOES have some control over the departments, right?

[/quote]

Of course, but the administration does not seem to care enough about impaction as to force departments to unimpact themselves.

vicissitudes · July 20, 2006, 10:25pm

Well, if the departments really do have enough resources then why does shifting need to occur at all?

sakky · July 24, 2006, 10:27pm

[quote]
Indeed, I am not opposed to most of the ideas you present and I am not opposed to "laying off unneeded untenured lecturers and researchers." What I AM opposed to is laying off untenured professors and that was what some posters were proposing.

[/quote]

Why are you opposed to that? That's what happens all the time anyway! After all, that's the WHOLE POINT of being untenured - that you can be laid off.

Perhaps you don't understand how the tenure system works, not just at Berkeley, but at any school. A new guy gets brought in as an untenured assistant prof. If he proves himself to be good, using whatever criteria the school demands (i.e. research, teaching ,etc.), then that school will grant tenure. However, at many schools, especially the top ones, the the attrition rate is high. For example, I know that the tenure-rate at Harvard Business School is about 50% - meaning that about half of all new assistant profs at HBS are denied tenure and have to go work somewhere else (and usually end up in a consulting firm like McKinsey). At the MIT Sloan School, it's probably more like 2/3, meaning that only 1/3 of new assistant profs will get tenure. There are other departments at MIT and Harvard that hardly ever grant tenure. In fact, I believe there is one department at MIT that hasn't granted tenure to anybody in over a decade.

But the point is, it is perfectly NORMAL for many academics to not be granted tenure, whether it's at Berkeley or any other school. This is NOT an uncommon thing. So I ask again, why can't Berkeley lay off untenured assistant profs? This happens all the time in academia. That's all part of the game of tenure, and every aspiring academic understands it. That's why tenure is considered to be the brass ring. If you don't want to play the tenure game, then don't become an academic.

[quote]
Because if Berkeley took from other departments, Berkeley could potentially create even MORE problems for itself.

[/quote]

That's where optimization comes in. Companes use optimization models all the time. In fact, that's why the whole field of Operations Management came into being. In fact, Berkeley itself even TEACHES operations management to students within the IEOR department. So why can't Berkeley use these same optimization techniques? Why should Berkeley be so unwilling to use the techniques on itself that it is teaching to its students?

[quote]
Well I think we need to think holistically. Berkeley wants the best for all of its current programs. That means that to the present Berkeley administration, every department CERTAINLY has a "right" to the resources it currently has. After all, if it wasn't for those resources, Berkeley couldn't pride itself on groundbreaking research.

[/quote]

[quote]
That is true. However, you must remember Berkeley's educational rhetoric. It's always about "expanding" educational resources, not "contracting" them. And sure you can point out that Berkeley contracts educational resources through impaction, but that's just not how Berkeley thinks about the issue. I've actually heard deans speak of impaction as an "unfortunate consequence" of increased enrollment. Since there is no way that any carreer-conscious UC dean would object to increases in enrollment, it appears as if they largely ignore the impaction issue.

[/quote]

Rhetoric aside, Berkeley has engaged in 'contraction' before. For example, what happened to the Berkeley nursing program? According to the alumni database, Berkeley used to confer a LOT of BS degrees in nursing in the old days. So what happened to that? What happened to the mining engineering programs? The Hearst Mining Building doesn't even house any mining engineering anymore.

So isn't that contraction right there? Didn't Berkeley basically "contract" resources in mining engineering? If Berkeley can contract these programs, then why is it so impossible to contract others?

[quote]
Well, most of that is more or less true. However, you seem to forget that Berkeley junior faculty members in a tenure-track positions are very often hired under contracts guaranteeing eventual tenure, so long as they continue to publish excellent research. Berkeley will be in a sticky legal situation if it breaks those contracts.

[/quote]

No no no! Again, there is NO guarantee of tenure. If there was a guarantee of tenure, then that would be tantamount to tenure itself. After all, what is the difference between actual tenure and guarantee of tenure? Nothing. You either have tenure, or you don't. This is the same tenure system that is used by ALL universities. In every department at every school, a significant percentage of new assistant profs will not get tenure. In fact, that's why they have the entire tenure-placement system in the first place. The idea is to have these assistant profs duke it out to see who is the best, and the best will get tenure, and the rest will be dismissed.

I encourage you to actually talk to some of the new Berkeley assistant profs, and they will confirm that they are not guaranteed anything. Tenure-track does not mean that they are guaranteed tenure. In fact, I would surmise that there are some departments at Berkeley that almost never grant tenure.

[quote]
If one department claims to not have all the resources it needs, why do you insist on harming other departments? Why can't Berkeley just set up a committee to investigate impacted departments and make a decisions on whether or not to reallocate resources? That would be a much better option in my opinion.

[/quote]

That would be the next step. But the key is that we have to put reallocation on the table.

[quote]
I am not an expert on this example. However, let's discuss it. Mining gets kicked out. But didn't it come back? And wasn't there a lot of friction when it came back? Isn't it gone again? How much money did the department lose in this process?

Is that what you want for Berkeley in general to do? You want resources to be "shifted" every given period of time?

[/quote]

Uh, mining never came back. Once it was gone, it was gone. Some of it morphed to become part of the CEE department. But it never 'came back'.

But on a general note, what is so bad about shifting resources from time to time? All schools do that. All schools shut down programs that are unpopular or do not otherwise fit the mission of the school. MIT also shut down all of its old mining programs. MIT shut down its old meteorology program. Harvard used to have myriad programs that no longer exist.

Look, what I am saying is that impaction is a problem that ought to be solved. But solving it will take willpower and the willingness to shift resources. People keep talking about how shifting resources will hurt some students, yet neglecting the fact that currently students are ALREADY being hurt by the impaction. Why is a guy who wants to major in CS but cannot because of impaction any less deserving of help than any other student at Berkeley?

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