<p>To elaborate on the point about public transit, it looks like it doesn’t have the Santa Monica or Culver City bus lines in the system. Since MTA doesn’t really have many services in West LA, the public transit travel times around here are vastly inflated. If you’re able to drive though, you should probably tack on ~50% to the expected times.</p>
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ThisCouldBeHeavn: The stats I posted earlier (3.9 for UCB, 4.22 for UCLA; and UCB SAT higher than UCLA SAT) were for incoming freshmen for 2008 from the Common Data Set for the colleges. If you want to see stats for these colleges, or most colleges, go to the college website and search for ‘Common Data Set’. You’ll see all kinds of stats. In addition, you could look at the similar stats from several or more years ago to get an idea if the campus is getting more or less selective.</p>
<p>There are currently around 4000 students at Merced and just a few buildings. Now would be a perfect time to either privatize, convert to CSU or move the students to other campuses. Building it was a political decision and that’s why it will be so hard to make any changes there.</p>
<p>Unlikely a private college would be of interest to anyone and would making it a CSU help? This would be a nightmare to the town that has been developing around it and the school serves mostly low income minorities. I can’t see the People’ Republic of CA shutting it down.</p>
<p>I’m surprised we’ve gone this long without a millionaire’s tax on an emergency ballot like the ones CA has used in the past and we’ll be using for health insurance.</p>
<p>I don’t get the obsession with Merced either. There are other projects which seem a little more questionable. For example, UC Irvine is opening a new law school with it’s first class this fall. In order to recruit students (who would probably otherwise be weary towards applying to a brand new law school), it’s covering the tuition for all 68 students from the first class. Law school tuition at the other UCs is around $30,000. $30k x 68 x 3 years = $6.12 million. Even if the school gave full grants to half of the students, that’s still $3 million they’re not making. Not to mention the huge amount of money they must have spent to recruit these kind of professors:</p>
<p>[New</a> UC Law School at Irvine is Ranked in Top 10, Based on Faculty | ABA Journal - Law News Now](<a href=“Latest News - ABA Journal”>Latest News - ABA Journal)</p>
<p>It seems like starting an all expenses paid law school with top faculty in the midst of a financial crisis isn’t a very good idea. How come I haven’t heard a peep out of anyone for this?</p>
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<p>Then UCLA is not following CDS directions, which clearly state that the GPA is supposed to be reported as unweighted, 4.0 scale.</p>
<p>^^ Bluebayou:
That makes sense then because I would have expected UCB’s GPA to be just about the same as UCLA’s and probably just slightly higher.</p>
<p>hmom, you have very elitist views.</p>
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How will money be saved by relocating an existing university to an inland location? Research and education expenses are hardly location dependent. The only thing that is certain is you’ll likely have higher utility costs.</p>
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<p>You are right that we shouldn’t focus solely on Merced. Other expensive new UC initiatives should be questioned as well. However, Merced is an easy target because it is such an obvious and egregious waste. Merced will be the rock bottom of the UCs for the foreseeable future. Until they build an even crappier UC in an even less desirable location (UC Death Valley?), Merced will remain the “penalty box” that UC applicants get assigned to against their will. Did California really need another crappy college, especially when we havent got enough money to fund the good ones?</p>
<p>But it is fair to also ask whether California needed another law school. But I’ll give Irvine credit - they are planning for success by starting with a high-end faculty and a desirable location, neither of which can be said for UC Merced. Also, it’s much cheaper to found and run a law school than it is an entire new university. But it’s still a good question to ask. I’d favor cancelling or postponing the Irvine law school over imposing big cuts on the existing UCs, especially the top UCs. I’m certain we don’t need UC Merced, and my sense is we don’t need a bunch more lawyers either.</p>
<p>I’ll second the vote for not needing more lawyers - the ones we have in Sacramento are more than enough thanks…</p>
<p>To those looking up transit times to UCLA on Google Transit Planner, it is in the very early stages of implementation. It’s pretty crappy to say the least now. Use MTA’s Trip Planner. Far more convenient:
mta.net</p>
<p>It’s on your right side.</p>
<p>There’ve been suggestions that UC cut remedial coursework and/or bounce out students who don’t start pulling their academic weight quickly. Those students would be displaced to Cal States or CCs. There could be something similar at the CSUs, displacing students to CCs. The entire idea only works if there’s money put in to support the additional burden on the CCs. </p>
<p>The “save money by putting UCs on cheap land” idea works when you’ve got to start a campus. As I’ve pointed out before in this thread, that’s exactly how the campuses got started. They were located in the boonies, or on land donated by cities or the federal government. Surrounding land values climbed due to the presence of the campus. Would the state truly make money by cashing out a campus, selling the land and relocating the campus elsewhere? Merced development and construction so far is $500 million. Total nrollment is expected to be around 3200 this fall. There are 39,000 students at UCLA, 10 times what’s at Merced. How much will it still cost to build up Merced to accomodate a UCLA-sized population? A conservative WAG (wild-assed guess) would be $1 billion at a minimum. Probably more like $2 billion. </p>
<p>The UCLA campus is 419 acres with 174 buildings. The cheap houses on the east side of campus are being offered for around $1.5 million for a 2k sq foot house on a 10k sq foot lot. More WAGging: ;et’s say the lot could sell for $400k, which corresponds to $1.7 million per acre for land in the Westwood area. Then UCLA would be worth around $730 million in land costs alone. Double that, because the UCLA property is special. Triple it, even. $2.2 billion.</p>
<p>Add in moving costs, and I don’t see the UC system realizing any serious monetary savings for going downmarket.</p>
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Do the UCs even offer remedial coursework? My experience with Berkeley is that no remedial courses are offered…Math 1A is full fledged calculus. No “college algebra” and “consumer math” courses are offered.</p>
<p>Looking at UCLA’s catalog, there isn’t much in the way of remedial math, but there are a fair number of small remedial English courses.</p>
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<p>The reason you haven’t heard more about this is because…all the scholarships (as well as a much of the law school) were paid for by a $20 million private donation, not by the taxpayer.</p>
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<p>The reason they came to Irvine actually had quite little to do with money. Erwin Chemerinsky, who is one of the most respected legal academics in the country, was probably largely the reason they came. In addition, I would guess many of these faculty members are idealists, and Chemerinsky has promised to build a new model of law school, one with a strong basis in public service.</p>
<p>^Thanks, looks like I was off on my analysis on that.</p>
<p>Until they build an even crappier UC in an even less desirable location</p>
<p>I still think that it has a chance to slightly improve (I know, it will take time…) And for example, Irvine and San Diego, both in “coveted” locations, were at the bottom of my list when I was applying as an undergrad. While they may be great for families and adults, they struck me as pretty undesirable locations for young undergrads with a lack of a central student community. My choices were between Davis (a central valley UC but with a great college town) and UCSB (also ritzy like Irvine and San Diego, but at least the students had their own playground).</p>
<p>hmom5–you make my point about SV very well if unintentionally. SV is now home to the thinker and leaders of the tech industry. Same as the leading thinkers at our colleges. and The manufacturing and call centers can be anywhere as those people are fungible and fairly easy to find just about anywhere form the housewives of South Dakota to the young people of India–or maybe Bakersfield.
As to the office market–it will have peaks and valleys–so what? A few short years ago during the tech boom the market was nuts with rents going sky high. It will be back in short order with the next great tech idea.</p>
<p>As to Chicago, Penn, and Columbia—all enjoyed much improved acceptance by both students and faculty as their surroundings improved and the once bad areas scared away many in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s until things were markedly improved. Even Yale had New Haven as a great anchor around reaching its full potential. And none of those areas even at their worst is as culturally vacant and barren as places like Merced. At least Chicago was just minutes away from a great city downtown. Same for Penn and Columbia. Even in the worst of times for those cities.</p>
<p>pathetic that UCSD professors would have the nerve to put another fine UC into jeopardization and attack another UC. Budget cuts are sadly meant to affect all of us and atleast I can be a dignified UCSC student and say that I’m willing to make the unfair sacrifices the government is throwing at my UC experience. But I would never dream of putting thousands of students in jeopardy of losing their school or even proposing the idea for my own benefits. I would be selfish and embarassed to be a UCSD student. whats the matter the triton scared of the banana slug?</p>
<p>I think UCSD grew a little too fast, but that was just like everything in CA over the past few years. I also agree these profs should have kept there mouths shut.</p>
<p>But the notion that everything will be solved by tearing UCSD down and erecting high priced sea-side housing is ridiculous and short sighted. Who the heck is going to buy this housing? That’s the whole point. If the economy and real estate market hadn’t hit CA so hard we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. I live in a very affluent sea-side CA area and there are tons of “mcmansions” sitting empty. They constructed a huge “resort” here and almost couldn’t open it because nobody would buy their little murilmillion dollar “casitas.” </p>
<p>And I don’t think it is an accident that a huge bio-tech industry grew up around UCSD that wouldn’t necessarily have happened anyplace else. Not to mention Qualcomm.</p>