<p>Not sure if this has been discussed yet:</p>
<p>Currently, the top 5% of every California HS class (or some percentage like that) is guaranteed admission to a UC -- if this UCs went private, the top 5% would no longer recieve that guarantee. Some of the top 5% are poor or can't apply to other schools for whatever reason. Regardless of whether or not the UCs are fiscally capable of becoming a private consortium, is it a moral thing to do?</p>
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Currently, the top 5% of every California HS class (or some percentage like that) is guaranteed admission to a UC
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<p>Top 4%, yes, of participating high schools (most do).</p>
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the top 5% would no longer recieve that guarantee.
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<p>Why not? (I'm not doubting you -- I want to know the logic behind it.)</p>
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Regardless of whether or not the UCs are fiscally capable of becoming a private consortium, is it a moral thing to do?
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<p>Of course it isn't. But the "moral thing" often isn't reality.</p>
<p>would this help out of staters? or will they still be discriminated against.</p>
<p>It would most likely help Out of State applicants.</p>
<p>i still don't understand where you all are coming from. no where did it say UC is going private. it said that the state was going to stop funding it. that doesn't make it not a state school. california has invested billions of dollars in the UC system, and it is highly unlikely that they would just say "okay, you can have everything and do what you want with it." there will still be all the little rules about instate applicants and such. all this would do--if it actually were to happen--is make penny pinching even tighter at these schools.</p>
<p>re: transfers: the California Master Plan for Higher Ed set this system up back in 1960. The Master Plan included reps from the UC, and Cal specifically, if I recall. Today's politicians have little to do with it.</p>
<p>UCBChem: Prop 13 has absolutely nothing to do with education spending today. When Prop 13 passed, the state had a $7 billion dollar surplus (inflate that to 2007!). Total tax collections (income, sales, property) in this state are still way above the national average. The state just chooses to spend its money elsewhere. </p>
<p>Incidentally, even if Prop 13 had not passed and local ed was under local control, Beverly Hills could not legally spend hundreds of times more dollars on local ed than could LAUSD (see Serrano v Priest).</p>
<p>It's never going to happen. It was just a trial balloon that will go nowhere in out lifetime. Governments hatch all sorts of schemes that go nowhere once they hit the public.</p>
<p>It won't go private, of course, but the state will continue to decrease funding to the point that many UCs will take on private-like characteristics (expensive, high endowment-hoarding, etc.).</p>
<p>The state funding to the major UC schools is very similar or more than any of the other major state schools. They have lots of $$$. Are they efficient with it?</p>
<p>super.nova, you're assuming that the quality of education at California's community colleges is necessarily lower. That is highly disputable, especially for lower-division courses.</p>
<p>Stuff which would be taught in 400-student lecture halls by TAs at Cal Berkeley is taught in 30-student classrooms by professors with Ph.Ds or MAs at community colleges. I've never been in a class larger than 50 students and most are in their 20s, or even smaller.</p>
<p>I'm biased, because I am a transfer student, but I'm <em>glad</em> I'm getting all my lower-division stuff done at a two-year college, paying a tiny fraction of what I'll be paying next year at a four-year public university. I paid $260 total for 13 units this semester. The textbooks cost more than the classes do.</p>
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the top 5% would no longer recieve that guarantee.
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Why not? (I'm not doubting you -- I want to know the logic behind it.)
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<p>Private uni's typically don't guarantee admission to a percent of their state's graduating population.</p>
<p>Public schools suck because they have to answer to the ridiculous mob known as the state Gov't. Private schools are better so I hope that UC-system goes "private" (not truly private but essentially just that).</p>
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There is more than one way to "serve." One way is to provide opportunities for state residents to earn degrees (with state support). States are certainly concerned about that, but they generally seem most concerned about degrees at the baccalaureate level. </p>
<p>Other ways to serve include the production of knowledge and technology, and states seem less concerned with who universities recruit to do that at the graduate level. Maybe they should be more concerned; maybe they should be thinking about the state's supply of PhDs and other advanced degree holders, and look harder into whether state institutions are failing to meet resident demand. I dunno. I just have not seen this be a hot-button issue in my state.
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<p>Well, then I think you can see why this is a paradox. </p>
<p>For example, if if is perfectly fine for a state school bring in plenty of OOS or foreign students for graduate studies, then one could make a perfectly logicl argument for why you should do the same for undergraduate studies. For example, undergrads also produce knowledge and technology, just like graduate students do. Maybe undergrads produce less such knowledge/technology per capita, but I think we can all agree that they do produce some. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if state universities should provide opportunities for state residents to earn bachelor's degrees, then one could construct a perfectly logical argument as to why state universities should also provide opportunities for residents to earn graduate degrees. </p>
<p>But the point is, either way you want to argue the logic, what state schools are doing right now is inconsistent. State schools provide preference to resident undergrads but not to many graduate students, especially PhD students. </p>
<p>Furthermore, we can consider the notion of how exactly do state universities produce greater knowledge/technology within their own states. I know quite a few Asian students who got their PhD's in engineering or science at state universities and then immediately went right back to Asia to become professors in Asian universities or to work in industry. Similarly, I know some people who earned PhD's engineering and CS at top state schools like Illinois, Michigan, Georgia Tech, and others who then upon graduation, immediately took a job in a high-tech cluster in another state (i.e. Silicon Valley in California or the "Technology Highway" area in Massachusetts). It's not clear to me how these people really helped to produce greater knowledge/technology within the state in which their PhD-granting state university is located, as these people not only took their high-powered educations, but also their entire research projects with them. But does that mean that that state university should not have admitted these students in the first place? </p>
<p>On the other hand, one could argue that if these schools did not admit these students, then they would be denying themselves the opportunity to bring in the best PhD candidates in the world. Not only that, but you would also inevitably lose top faculty, as top professors want to be able to run research projects with top graduate students. For example, if Berkeley one day declared a policy that they would only admit (or provide strong preference to) California state residents to their PhD programs, then I think it is inevitable that a lot of top professors would not want to join the Berkeley faculty, instead preferring to work at schools like Stanford, Harvard, MIT, etc. that don't have any such restrictions on the PhD students they admit. It would be a matter of career self-interest. Professors want to publish top research papers in order to advance their own professional standing, and they know that having top graduate students will help them do that.</p>
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Also, CC transfer students have strong college scholarship records...they aren't admitting the bottom of the barrel here. UC says the graduation rates of transfer students are comparable to freshman admits.
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<p>Yeah, because as I have pointed out on other threads, CC transfer students, unfairly, get to skip over some (or in certain cases, all) weeders. A large (I think most) freshmen-admit flunkouts are due to the early weeders. Hence, the statistic that transfer student graduation rates are comparable to freshman admit graduate rates is a highly misleading statistic.</p>
<p>A fair statistic would be to compare the graduation rates of transfer students vs. those freshman admits * who are at a comparable class level to the incoming transfers*. Hence, you don't count those freshman admits who flunked out during those early weeders that the transfer students don't have to survive.</p>
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Should it matter? Well, if you're wondering whether taxpayers get their money's worth, I think it's a factor, but not the only one. For instance, an agricultural school provides a number of benefits to the state, its citizens, and taxes collected that don't show up only in tuition rates. States with top notch public higher education systems tend to attract and retain businesses better than those with average ones. In addition, keeping good students in-state helps shore up a state's talent pool.
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<p>Yeah, but this is not an argument for public * universities specifically, but rather for *all universities, public or private. </p>
<p>For example, I think it is the consensus opinion that THE instrumental driving force of higher education in the founding and development of Silicon Valley is Stanford University, far more so than Berkeley or any of the other state schools in California. Even to this day, Stanford occupies a dominant place at the nexus of the world's most innovative technology dynamo in the world, driving immense economic benefits for not just the state of California, but the rest of the country and the rest of the world. Similarly, the technology and business climate in Massachusetts (which is the #2 most innovative region in the country and arguably in the world) is dominated by 2 private universities - MIT and Harvard. The economy of NYC is greatly aided by the presence of Columbia and NYU, which are both private. </p>
<p>Hence, to follow your logic, if economic benefits to the state are the goal, then there is no reason for states to privatize its public schools and then provide a voucher system for any of its taxpayers to attend any school in that state, even if that school is private. For example, if I'm a California taxpayer, why should I only get a state tuition subsidy if I go to a UC? Why can't I get that subsidy if I go to Stanford? As I said above, Stanford produces immense benefits to the economy of California too, in fact, arguably just as many benefits as have any of the individual UC's, including Berkeley. Hence, there seems to be no economic reason not to subsidize me. Similarly, if I'm a Massachusetts taxpayer, why should I get a state subsidy only if I attend UMass or one of the Massachusetts state schools? Why can't I get it if I go to Harvard or MIT? Again, let's be honest, who has been more instrumental in the development of the economy of Massachusetts - Harvard/MIT, or UMass?</p>
<p>The point is, public universities do not have a monopoly in the production of regional economic benefits. Private universities also produce regional economic benefits. Hence, the citing of such benefits is not a good reason for a state to fund only public schools. It is a good reason to fund all schools, public or private.</p>
<p>Actually there is an example of a public university going private out there. The University of Louisiana was essentially turned over lock stock and barrel to the Tulane Educational Fund in 1884, a trust with a self-perpetuating board and a large portfolio of real estate holdings the gift of Paul Tulane. The school became the Tulane University of Louisiana.</p>
<p>The states funding had always been sporadic and inadequate and that was coupled with a greay deal of administrative feuding between the medical and other faculties (the school started with a med school and added other disciplines over the years). The privatization finally put the school on a firm financial footing and the rest as they say has been history. There were a couple of strings attached by the state legislature but they were pretty minimal.</p>
<p>There are a number of examples of states taking over private schools but I believe Tulane is the only example of the reverse. Cornell University is of course a hybrid, part private and part public. The state of New York funds several of the schools.</p>
<p>Many states subsidize private universities within their borders in various, most commonly through state issued bonds for capital projects and state sponsored research, and state subsidized hospitals. In Louisiana the state also directly endows some chairs at private and public schools. I believe these are usually through matching funds for privately raised money but am not entirely sure of the details.</p>
<p>UC's going private has no negative effect on me considering that I already pay out of state tuition. I actually like the idea of them being private...</p>
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considering that I already pay out of state tuition.
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<p>The out-of-state tuition would increase, too.</p>
<p>^ Likely, but his utility from having more in-state students pay a similar tuition would increase.</p>
<p>The state makes a lot of revenue off the UCs, especially those with researchers patenting new ideas. Those ideas are owned by the Regents. Cutting funding would definitely ruin the UCs motto of cheap prices, great education.</p>