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And Berkeley grads also seem to be doing extremely well for themselves, so it looks like having a tail end doesn't hurt us.
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<p>That depends on how you define 'extremely well'. Better than the average college graduate? Of course. Better than the average UC graduate (from all of the UC's)? Sure. But better than the average graduate of the top private schools? That's a stretch. </p>
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Again, if someone chooses school A over school B, heck, if the vast majority choose school A over school B, that does not show school A provides a better education than school B. That's what you're arguing, and it's a false premise.
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<p>I never said that it necessarily proved that it provided a better * education *. But it clearly does prove that it proves a better * something *, whatever that something is. </p>
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If you think about it logically, though, Berkeley does deliver what the public wants.
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<p>Uh, no, I think I proved that Berkeley does not provide what the public wants. If that were really true, the the public would prefer Berkeley over all other schools. This is clearly not happening. </p>
<p>I think it's more accurate to say that for those particular members of the public who are just not good enough to get admitted to those other school, then Berkeley provides what these people want. But that's a far cry from saying that Berkeley truly provides what the public wants. If I want to see Xmen3, and the theater is sold out, I may choose to see Mission Impossible 3 instead, but that doesn't mean that I stop wanting to see Xmen 3. I still want it, I just can't get it. </p>
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This is a terrible argument. Find the proportion of Harvard Business School alums that are Chinese or Indian.
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<p>Uh, actually, no, I think you are proving my point. The fact is, on the whole, the average levels of education within China and India are worse than that in the US. Obviously the very best Chinese and Indian students can compete with anybody. But there are vast millions of poorly educated Chinese and Indians. India, for example, has only a 65% adult literacy rate, where literacy is defined to be literacy in any language, including their native language. </p>
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However, even ignoring that argument, this statement needs more to mean something useful. You need to provide some statistics from more than just one business school. If Berkeley has more students than Stanford at another top business school, then it's a wash. If you can get data from the top 10 business schools showing that Stanford has significantly more students in those schools than Berkeley, then I'll concede the point, because you'll have one.
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<p>Ok - let me tell you that at Kellogg, Sloan and Wharton, again, there are more Stanford grads than Berkeley grads on a per-capita basis, as well as an absolute basis. While I can't prove it, I strongly strongly suspect that at Stanford GSB, there will be more Stanford grads than Berkeley grads. In fact, of the top 10 B-schools, I think the only one where this will not be true is at Berkeley itself (Haas), and even there, I'm not entirely sure that it's not true. </p>
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The fact that this didn't happen shows that we don't and/or didn't have the money to do this. If we could educate an equivalent number of students that are already receiving some college-level education in California at a campus with a faculty and resources equivalent to UC Berkeley's, we would. That's a "no duh". If you think we have that money, prove it. Think of it this way: to do that, we'd have to convert every non-UC Berkeley school in California (i.e. all community colleges, Cal state schools, and other UCs) into UC Berkeley equivalents. That doesn't sound like an affordable task to me, and it shouldn't to you, either.
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<p>But you just proved my point! Don't you see what happened? It basically meant that California segregated its students and stated that certain students are 'special' and therefore worthy of the best public education in the state, and they get to go to UCBerkeley. Others are 'less special', and they end up in the lower UC's. The ones who are even less special than that are shunted to the CalStates, and the rest are bundled into the community colleges.</p>
<p>Hence, your notions of 'fairness' and equality have not been adhered to by the state of California. California has in fact behaved in a rather 'elitist' manner in that certain students are provided with a better college education than others are. Hence the state is * already * behaving in a non-egalitarian manner. Not everybody who wants to study at Berkeley gets to go. You have to apply to Berkeley, and only the best applicants are admitted. </p>
<p>Hence, my point is, Berkeley is already quite selective and exclusive. Hence, if Berkeley is selective and exclusive already, then I don't see anything wrong with being even more selective and exclusive. It's not like Berkeley is open-admissions today. </p>
<p>You said that the worse students at Berkeley can learn from the better students. Well, by the same token, Berkeley could have simply expanded its seats so that the even worse students (the ones who couldn't get in and had to go to other UC's), could be admitted, and these students could also learn from the better students. But the state of California decided not to do that. Instead, the state created other, weaker, UC's for them. Why? Because the state realized that doing so would inevitably dilute Berkeley's academic resources and the state wanted to reserve those resources for its better students. </p>
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I've known plenty of people that can play video games, drink, smoke weed, watch TV, go to SF (not every day, but weekly), and still want to learn. These things are not mutually exclusive. You're saying there are people at UC Berkeley that genuinely don't want to learn. You don't have to tie it to any other habits
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<p>By the same token, I know a guy who smoked 3 packs a day and still lived to be over 90. But that doesn't mean that smoking isn't dangerous. There are no binary decision factors here. This is not a yes/no categorization. This is simply a matter of correlation. The more you smoke, the less healthy you tend to be. Similarly, the more leisure activities you tend to enjoy, the less you tend to enjoy learning. </p>
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The people you describe, that have no desire to learn anything--I don't know them. I don't know anybody that truely does not want knowledge. The people I know that ditch class find they don't learn much by going to lecture, and will review the material on their own later. I mean, the type of person you're talking about would have to actively sign up for the classes with no type of educational value, not buy any books, not study, not do anything that may involve learning. That doesn't happen.
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<p>The question is not about whether they don't have any desire to learn anything * at all*. Rather, it's a spectrum. It's about how much of your leisure time and enjoyment are you willing to forgo to learn something. For some people, the answer is 'not much'. In other words, they may want to learn a subject until it actually gets hard, and then they simply don't want to push through the difficult sections. If something is easy, sure, they'll learn it. But they don't want to invest a lot of their time into learning something. </p>
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Even if a student such as this WERE to exist, we can agree that almost EVERY student wants to pass a class. That means that they must want to learn at least that bare minimum. That's enough to make it worth your time to help him/her out.
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<p>And do you learn a lot by helping such a student learn the bare minimum to pass the class? </p>
<p>I'll put it to you this way. I remember back in high school how some of the jocks basically paid other people to do all their homework for them. Do you consider this a positive learning environment? </p>
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People live in the dorms to make friends. Otherwise, dorm food sucks, the rent is expensive, and you don't have a great choice of locations (although they are generall close to campus, which is nice). The first thing people do when they move in is introduce themselves to their neighbors. That doesn't happen when you're an adult moving into a new apartment because, well, people lose that college mentality. I have no problem knocking on the door of someone that lives 10 feet from me and asking if they want to go do something, because that's how college works. If you have a floor of antisocial freaks, then you have a problem, but again, the likelihood of that is nil.
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<p>Again, you're talking about the ideal. Maybe it's easy for you. Maybe you're a highly social guy. But trust me, there are a lot of Berkeley students who are shy, who don't have the self-confidence to just go up to strangers and talk to them. Come on, you know what I'm talking about. </p>
<p>Look, if you really don't think there are any antisocial people at Berkeley, why don't you visit the computer labs at Soda Hall at around midnight during the regular semester. You will see some VERY antisocial people. Heck, some of them haven't even bathed for several months. </p>
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What I want and what is best for me are not always the same. I'll admit, I hated having that partner last semester. I would avoid it again if possible. I also concede that doing the project myself and having to explain what I was doing to my partner helped me really understand what the heck I was doing.
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<p>Yeah, but wouldn't it have been better to have had a partner who was on-the-ball and could have taught you something?</p>