<p>Obviously there are easy majors just for athletes at any school. But the question is, how easy? Be honest, do you think that the football team at Cal is on average, just as academically qualified as the football team at Williams? Or the Harvard football team? Be honest. </p>
<p>And the athlete angle is really a red herring. Cal has about 500 or so total scholarship athletes. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the entire undergraduate student body. The problem extends to far far more than just athletes. I think we can all agree that there are far far more than just 500 students at Berkeley who aren't particularly hard studiers. There are plenty of students in those easy majors who are not athletes or have any other special talent, and still don't want to study, or even to show up to class.</p>
<p>Let's say there are more than 500 students who are just going through the motions at Cal. How does this affect me as a student? If these slackers don't go to class, but I do, why should I care?</p>
<p>Sakky, I never said that I believed engineering classes were easy - in fact, I completely agree that because more hard sciences/engineering classes are curved, its much easier to "game" the system in the humanities and slide by without doing a whole lot. As far as skipping assigned work because its not necessary to do well in the class - I can't really comment on that as I have never tried to skip assigned readings/problem sets/anything and still get by.
I also don't think its completely Berkeley's fault that certain majors are easier than EECS or Chem E - undergraduate psychology anywhere is going to be considered easier than EECS at Cal. (Also, as an aside, from what I've heard, Bus Ad is notoriously easy to get through once students have been admitted to Haas. But I suppose the admissions process weeds out sub-par students in lieu of tough classes.)
Anyway, my issue was not with you saying that there are more slacker students in these majors than in the College of Engineering, because that is most certainly true, but with what I perceived as a blanket generalization of these classes as not as intellectually challenging or academically worthwhile. Those students who are genuinely interested in the material and wish to take advantage of Berkeley will take all of their classes seriously, regardless of department or the actions of other students in those classes.</p>
<p>Sakky, please explain to me why you call these "fluff" majors. And please don't base your reasoning on the students who typically major in them. Because if we go on that basis, I could just as easily call the sciences "S&M" majors.</p>