<p>Interesting/controversial proposal:</p>
<p>UC</a> San Diego profs come up with budget fixer: Close UC Merced - Local - Merced Sun-Star</p>
<p>I understand the need to save money, but should access to UC be further limited?</p>
<p>Amusing the grand heights they claim for themselves…</p>
<p>They claim four flagships:</p>
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<p>I just don’t see UCSD in that same light. I’d drop it down a full notch and put it in a cluster with Davis, UCSB, UCSC, and Irvine. </p>
<p>Merced and Riverside might be still a notch lower.</p>
<p>So the question to CC - are the UCSD profs guilty of grade inflation? 
And at what point will the UCSC profs come out with a “modest proposal” of their own to close UCSD?</p>
<p>Seriously, I see no reason to close any of the campuses at this point - while building Merced may have been a political decision, the UC system needed more capacity to meet the growing population of CA - and what is done is done.</p>
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<p>Otherwise known as throwing good money after bad.</p>
<p>It’s true we can’t get back the money we’ve already wasted on UC Merced, but that is hardly justification for wasting more.</p>
<p>I certainly WOULD include UCSD in the top tier of the UC System along with UCB, UCLA and UCSF. Davis might be in Tier 1.5 by itself and then UCSB, UCI. The rest would bring up the rear. UCSC had its day but that was 30 years ago and now it’s way down the list.</p>
<p>It’s interesting that they claim UC Merced, Santa Cruz and Riverside as essentially “teaching colleges” versus “research colleges”…</p>
<p>Perhaps there could be some cost savings by turning these three campuses into large LACs, instead of having ambitions/expenses of full fledged research institutions.</p>
<p>Regarding the flagship issue, the definition of flagship is this:
“the best or most important one of a group or system”
Berkeley is the only flagship of the UC system. ;)</p>
<p>I first read about this a few weeks ago (note that the article is dated July 9). </p>
<p>Maybe the professors at UCR, UCSC and Merced can suggest that as a cost-saving measure UCSD should shut down one or two of their residential colleges, because we should drop the pretence that all those colleges are equal. ;)</p>
<p>^ Yeah, I just heard about this on the news yesterday…didn’t see if it had been previously discussed on this board.</p>
<p>This is preposterous. The California State system is already impacted by too many students chasing too few spots. Eliminating these campuses would create additional pressures on the Cal State University system. Admission to the remaining UC campuses is already too competitive.</p>
<p>barrons (@4) or anyone else-</p>
<p>Could you elaborate about UCSC’s decline. Or, how it’s viewed now, either from someone in-state or out-of-state.</p>
<p>I remember the campus from the late 60s into the mid-70s. It would never have been associated with UCRiverside. It was considered a progressive experiment, especially for a public institution- intellectual-liberal arts emphasis, small classes, written evaluations…</p>
<p>They lost interest from most of the better students going to a UC. I think many of the top faculty they recruited in the 70’s are now retired and have not been replaced with equals. Their average SAT is very low for a UC.</p>
<p>I suspect that they lost student interest in the ‘greed is good’ 80’s. Teacher evaluations instead of grades and a more crunchy granola attitude didn’t mesh well with students who were aiming at being more pre-professional. Berkeley of course also has its crunchy granola side, but it has grades and flagship status and professional schools. </p>
<p>But that was then, and now students are getting turned away from UCs that used to be shoo-ins like Davis and Irvine. I’m seeing more students I know going up to Santa Cruz. One co-worker, who’s had children at Irvine and San Diego, is very impressed with the education and experience one of his kids is getting at UCSC.</p>
<p>I know, or know of, some profs at the UCs-SC, SD, Riverside, Irving, Davis. They are all authors of major publications in their fields.
I don’t know the quality of the students. But, given the increase in the number of students chasing slots at top colleges, I would assume that there would be a spillover effect, so that the quality of students at second or third-tier UCs would rise.</p>
<p>*Their average SAT is very low for a UC. *</p>
<p>Not really, UCSC is significantly above UCR and UCM and very close to the mid tier UCs.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/uc-transfers/743629-uc-ranking-3.html#post1062882472[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/uc-transfers/743629-uc-ranking-3.html#post1062882472</a></p>
<p>Well that says more about how really low UCR and UCM are. UCSC used to be around mid 1300’s M+V in the day. Now it’s mid 1100’s. Big drop.</p>
<p>Well keep in mind that is the enrolled SAT scores for the UCs. Using StatFinder, UCSC had a score of 1125 in 1994, peaked at 1159 in 2005, and has settled to 1141 at present. This still compares pretty favorably to the other UCs (Berkeley has grown from 1300 in 1994 to 1319 in 2008, LA has grown from 1210 to 1259, etc.) Of course that only goes back to 1994 and I don’t know how the school has done before.</p>
<p>At least in terms of enrolled students now, UCSC is comfortably in it’s own tier between the “mid tiers” and UCR and UCM.</p>
<p>When I was in high school, and I started thinking for myself a little – and before my parents made me storp – UCSC was the first college I ever wanted to go to.</p>
<p>Like any of the UCs (or any other college for that matter), UCSC has its stronger and weaker departments. In particular, professionally I have worked with professors from the Biology department at UCSC and they are first rate. Of course, Monterey Bay is a fantastic research playground that is essentially right at their front door.</p>
<p>I have also been very impressed with their Astronomy department professors and the work they are doing in Optics - as this is a hobby of mine.</p>
<p>Thanks for more recent info on UCSC. Unfortunate that “famous” founding faculty were not replaced with similar stock.</p>
<p>I hope Lick observatory is still affiliated with the campus… and, the elephant seal research.</p>
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The last I checked there were several UC campuses (I think UCM, UCR, UCSC at least) that still had room to accept UC eligible students - ie. the UC system didn’t run out of capacity for its charter (top 12.5% of California HS students). Given this, the system isn’t impacted and the idea of eliminating a campus might not be so preposterous. I think the spot chasing competition among UC-eligible students isn’t necessarily for admission to ANY UC but rather, admission to the most selective UCs (UCB, UCLA, UCSD with some others rising in selectivity). Maybe my info’s out of date.</p>
<p>I don’t think the commonly used (on CC anyway) term ‘flagship’ applies very well in California since there are several of the state school campuses that are quite highly ranked and competetive regarding admissions (UCB, UCLA, UCSD) with plenty of students accepted at one but not the other (i.e. UCB but not UCLA, UCSD but not UCLA, etc.) and turning down one for the other.</p>
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<p>FWIW, USNews ranks UCR at #89 and UCSC at #96 for national universities. The three mid-tier UCs are ranked in the mid-40s.</p>