I thought it meant “your friend’s undies”.
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Cal is for all! Hope your kid gets accepted irrespective of whatever is going on.
Good luck!
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As a Cal grad from 30 years ago, I think it’s about time for this to happen. Housing was a major pain back then, and it’s worse today. The dorms are so cramped and outdated it truly tarnishes the college experience. There needs to be a hard stop on growth unless something can be done about housing and effects on the neighborhood. Yes, enrollment needs to be cut back and admission rate will be lower; however, if you compare UCB to Stanford, admission rate is still quite reasonable. Stanford admits far fewer students and has significantly more land.
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This is true. But Cal’s mission as a great public institution is very different from Stanford’s. Cal has the mission and power to elevate significant numbers of students who aren’t hooked in some way. Stanford doesn’t do that. Stanford is great and all, but credit is due to Cal for playing a very important role in promoting the greater good in a way that Stanford is not. In my dreams, Cal somehow expands to build or acquire campuses in SF, San Jose or Santa Cruz. I mean, why not?
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UCB should have bought Mills College. Seems like complacency and incompetence that the state wasn’t able to make this happen.
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And,……… having land in California does not translate into the easy ability to build on it. Ask Stanford…….
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Agreed. Perhaps they didn’t think they had any competition?
If the UCs can’t satisfy in-state demand, it appears that other schools are willing to act…e.g., NEU by acquiring Mills College, ASU by launching ASU Local in LA. There could be more I don’t know about.
Couldn’t disagree more. The Mills land offered little value to Cal. Sure, it’s “only” nine miles away, but easily could be 45-60 minute drive/shuttle during rush hour. There is no direct public transportation, so Cal would have to incur the cost of running shuttles. The one AC transit bus goes downtown Oakland. The Mills campus is in residential area. There is literally no place to go off campus without a car. No pizza place, no movie theater… Safety has been an issue for Mills for years.
From an educational standpoint, Mills wanted to continue its legacy, so what could Cal do there? Keep it as a liberal arts college under the wrapper of a R1? Put a few hundred freshman there for two years of GE courses and then transfer to main campus? That could possibly work, but then it squeezes out juco transfers.
Build a bunch of housing? Perhaps, but then Mills would not want to just sell the land for student housing. They’d prefer to keep teh academic legacy so would sell to someone else. (Hello, NEU.)
Not a good fit, IMO.
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Also, you don’t need more land to expand housing. Just build residential high rise dorms next to campus. It will cut down commute, keep students in a close knit community while requiring less land.
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Easier said than done……NIMBY
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I found this a helpful thread on CEQA by a Berkeley city council member, clearly there’s some local pushback too:
https://twitter.com/taplinterry/status/1494833253294899202
That thread nails it exactly. People complain about traffic and lack of housing all the while fighting dense housing that could help consolidate commuters closer to their daily destinations.
More housing could reduce the growth of existing homeowners’ property values. So that may be another motivation for NIMBY attitudes against more housing. Of course, if more housing might be occupied by what the NIMBYs consider undesirables (e.g. where there are designated units for low income people), opposition increases. It looks like the SBN group people consider students to be undesirables, at least in terms of living in the neighborhood.
Hmmm… Berkeley city non-student population and UCB students are quite different demographically in terms of race/ethnicity. Could that be another thing in the background of the conflict?
This same thing happened in Boulder. For many years Boulder had, basically, a no growth policy they enforced by limiting the sewer taps granted by the building dept. They also have a law limiting the number of unrelated people who can live in the same house. Some larger houses are divided into 3 apartment units so there are still 12 to 15 people living in them (and parking at them) but they could not have that if it were only one unit. Throw up some walls, put in 2 more kitchens and voila, triple the occupancy.
The sorority house I lived in was rented out to a fraternity for a few years. During that time the occupancy went down to 18 and the ‘grandfather clause’ allowing about 60 to live in the house was reduced to 18. For a ~25 bedroom house. The sorority decided to sell it and did - to a non-profit who used it for a half-way house. The neighbors (very wealthy area, where Jon-Benet Ramsey’s house was) no longer had sorority girls living there but now had those on parole. Pick your poison.
There seems to have been some compromises made in the last 10-15 years. Many more apartments built down by the highway/mall area, more dorms built in the remote area where they need to take a shuttle bus to campus. Rich people’s homes protected, student get their exercise walking uphill to campus.
I thought this was a really neat write-up that shows how intertwined and multi-dimensional this issue really is.
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it is reasonably well done, but I think he over-blames the greediness of existing homeowners (from Prop 13). I know plenty of renters in the BA who are also NIMBY’s – they are just not fans of increased traffic and additional folks placing more stress on the local parks, schools and the like.
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I hate what this will do to kids’ dreams to attend UCB, but the university has let this problem go addressed far too long. (and the Berkeley city and residents haven’t made their efforts to build housing any easier either.) The problem is that the UC system almost has to grow if the population of CA grows. Already many many top CA students are rejected at the better UCs. The best solution is to reduce the cap on OOS/international students and raise the tuition for OOS/international simultaneously. Treat them as a cash cow. UVA does this. UMI too. I don’t see any other way. Easy to say “build housing” but Berkeley is already very very dense and very hilly. There’s not a much room. My twins are juniors in HS so we are watching this closely. They aren’t much interested in UCB but their classmates definitely are.
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No question.
It’s been the rare Berkeley Chancellor that wanted to take on the community interests to expand housing. Fortunately, the current Chancellor is one of those rare people. (Perhaps bcos she recognizes that given her age and where she is in her career, this job is a not a stepping stone?)
After 50+ years of fighting and local politics, Chancellor Christ has been able to obtain approval to build dorms on land that the University has owned for practically forever.
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According to the Common Data Sets, UVA admits a significantly higher percentage of OOS first-year applicants than UCB.
Also, college administrators keep warning about what will happen when we hit the demographic cliff in 2026 and the number of high school grads nationally plummets.
I think UCB needs more housing regardless. But shutting the door on nonresident applicants too hard or further lowering the cap may not be a great long-term strategy.
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I was mostly referring to their OOS price tag. Well over $70k/year.