<p>Again, Berkeley is not headed for ‘crap’, and to assert that it is is overhyped hyperbole. You even said it yourself - even in the worst possible situation, Berkeley will still be better than the “University of the Middle of Nowhere (UMN)”. So if Berkeley is crap, what does that say about UMN? It must mean that UMN is really crap. </p>
<p>Let me put it to you this way. Berkeley’s total annual budget from all sources is ~$1.8 billion. Sacramento is talking about cutting $500 million from the annual appropriation from the entire UC system, of which Berkeley’s share would be, at most, $100-150 million. Hence, the overall reduction in entire budget would be less than 9%. </p>
<p>Now, would a budget reduction of up to 9% be painful? Yes. Would it reduce the overall quality of the school? Probably. But that’s still hardly the same as saying that the school will have turned to ‘crap’ or that it would be a ‘crisis of the first magnitude’ or be ‘perilously close to a shipwreck’ or any sort of excessive verbiage. Berkeley would still have one of the largest budgets of any university in the country. Berkeley would still have one of the best brands in higher education. {Let’s face it - out of the thousands of schools in the country, practically all of them hold insignificant brand power.}</p>
Equally troubling, grad students and potential grad students are deeply dissatisfied with the state of affairs in California. Many of the best and brightest are justifiably deciding that equally good or slightly inferior programs can be found elsewhere with much greater prospects for funding. </p>
<p>I am a huge fan of the academics at Berkeley – but I see problems when some departments at Berkeley are not sure if they even have enough money to have admissions at all this year (as I know has been the case with art history, classics, and Near Eastern studies).</p>
<p>Well, as much as people such as us might not want to believe it, the truth of the matter is that faculty drain doesn’t really matter for most undergrads. Let’s face it - most undergrads don’t really care about research or higher academia. They don’t really care whether they’re taught by a superstar researcher or a mediocre one. They’re in college to get the sheepskin so that they can obtain a decent job, or are heading for professional school (i.e. law, medicine, etc.) in order to then obtain a decent job. That’s all that really matters to them. </p>
<p>Heck, most of them won’t even be pursuing careers that are associated with their majors anyway. For example, most poli-sci majors are not going to become professional political scientists, most molecular/cellular biology majors are not going to become professional biologists, and most psychology majors are not going to become professional psychologists. Hence, they care very little about the academic milieu attached to their field of study. Again, what actually matters to most of them is having their snippet of paper stamped allowing them to proceed with the rest of their lives.</p>
<p>Why is it so bad to weed out some faculty and researchers? Top students across the world still want to go there. I haven’t heard of any top faculty defections. Berkeley will come out the stronger for the focus and prioritization that comes from budget cuts. Tell me about any business or org in the US of A that’s not facing similar cuts!</p>
<p>Then perhaps they shouldn’t be admitting people for now. From where and why did this rule come about - that every program has to admit graduate students every year, especially niche programs such as Near Eastern Studies? Be honest - is Berkeley really going to be hurt if, in 5-7 years, a few less PhD’s in Near Eastern Studies are conferred? Would that really warrant a ‘crisis of the first magnitude’ or being ‘perilously close to a shipwreck’? </p>
<p>Now, to be clear, I wish Berkeley didn’t have budget problems. I wish that Berkeley could pay for everything it used to be able to do in the past. But if it can’t, would it really be such a terrible thing? After all, MIT never admits any students into PhD programs in Near Eastern Studies because it doesn’t even have those programs at all, yet nobody describes that as a ‘crisis of the first magnitude’.</p>
<p>bclintonk,
So tell me, as a professor, would you uproot your family and move to a different part of the country because they threw more money at you? Perhaps if it were a plum Ivy League or 'furd appointment you might consider…or would you want to be associated on a faculty at a school with less stellar academic credentials? I bet most academics would wet their pants if they got a full tenure position at Berkeley.</p>
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Uh huh…so I guess they’re ending up in North Carolina, the land of milk and honey…or wait, is it the land of old tobacco money?</p>
<p>Sure, fine. The point is whether you say “headed for crap” or some less hyperbolic phrase, UC Berkeley is facing budgetary constraints that are not allowing it to offer the same education it offered a few years ago. Maybe it’s still a good university, but the prestige it has gained over the years is overstating its capabilities during the budget crisis. End of story.</p>
<p>^ Not offering the “same education”? I’ve talked to several current students, some in the ChemE program. We talked about the same classes and profs.</p>
Hardly. Privates – and wealthy privates at that – are the only schools faring at all well right now in terms of graduate admissions. The only wealthy private in NC is Duke, and I’ve heard rumors of cuts there as well.</p>
<p>It’s more complicated than just money. But there’s a lot of lateral movement in many academic fields these days—at least there was before the current economic downturn. Very few people at top institutions like Berkeley would trade down to lesser academic prestige, though a few might depending on family circumstances. But there are a lot of academic stars on the Berkeley faculty who have held out against better-paying and otherwise handsome offers or inquiries from Ivies or comparably prestigious institutions (e.g., MIT, Chicago, Stanford, and sometimes other schools depending on the academic discipline) because they like the climate or the lifestyle, or out of loyalty to the university, or out of sheer inertia given the complexities of moving a family, or some combination of these. Berkeley faculty have been underpaid relative to their peers at comparably prestigious institutions for a long time now, especially when you consider the high cost of living in the Bay Area (housing and state income taxes, especially). In a sense the school has been living on borrowed time, compensating people with prestige and lifestyle in lieu of cash. But the “furloughs” they’re going through now are basically just a 10% across-the-board pay cut on top of a long history of skimpy compensation relative to their peer group, and a lot of resentment is boiling up. People are deeply unhappy and even angry, feeling they’ve already been sacrificing for the greater good and are now taking a kick in the teeth. So a lot of people are starting to look around, and are increasingly receptive to overtures from other institutions. There’s not a lot of trust in the UC administration, and even less in the legislature which has always paid a lot of the bills but clearly has run out of cash. My guess is a lot of old lions will ride it out until retirement. But many younger rising stars will see greener pastures elsewhere—not only more money, but they’ll worry about how long Berkeley can maintain its present level of prestige unless the financial fundamentals change far more drastically than anyone’s talking about right now, how long Berkeley can remain even remotely competitive in salaries and benefits, etc. And Berkeley may have trouble recruiting and retaining the top entry-level and untenured tenure-track people who will be worried about the university’s medium- and long-range prestige prospects, future financial prospects, and what that means about their own prospects for tenure and financial security. </p>
<p>You’re absolutely right, many academics, probably most, would “wet their pants” for a tenured position at Berkeley. They’ll never have trouble filling their faculty rosters. But unless something big changes relatively soon, they’re going to have increasing trouble recruiting and retaining the top people. And that makes all the difference.</p>
<p>^ I agree with your post…As a donating alumni, I am bombarded with literature stating Berkeley profs are under paid compared to their elite private peers.</p>
<p>It’s kind of sad that the best resources are slowly being privatized. </p>
<p>California’s government is a mess…with a lot of misguided priorities. We get to vote in November 2010 on a constitutional convention. Hopefully, California can reinvent itself.</p>
<p>^ I agree that it’s sad that the best resources are being privatized. I’m a big believer in the public model of education for the masses and not just the privileged few. I’m an especially big believer in the Berkeley/Michigan/UVA model of high quality education for the sons and daughters of the taxpaying public. But Michigan and UVA are already pretty far down the road toward quasi-privatization. I fear Berkeley will find it has no choice but to head down that road as well. I hope I’m wrong. But I just don’t see the alternatives.</p>
<p>If you think private is so great, why is the public bailing out the private in insurance, finance, real estate, and soon healthcare? What’s so different about education? The majority of education is public and free, right? </p>
<p>Have you seen this USNWR picture of the public high schools?
I bet the number of college ready seniors coming out of the top 100 public schools dwarf comparable privates.</p>
<p>Like I said before - does it make much difference? What percentage of undergrads really care whether they’re taught by a academic superstar or not? Let’s be honest: what most undergrads truly care about is garnering a decent job, or perhaps admission to a decent professional school as a waypoint to a decent job. They don’t care about the world of academia and never will. </p>
<p>What that also means is that most of the prestige and acumen of the faculty at Berkeley - or nearly any other prestigious research university for that matter - is, frankly, wasted on the undergrads. You don’t really need a world-renowned theoretical mathematician to teach the simple utility calculus course that is taken by those students who aren’t even going to be math/engineering/physical-science majors and just need to know basic calculus concepts for their relatively non-mathematical majors (i.e. biology). You don’t really need a highly published and cutting-edge EECS prof to teach the utility intro course to circuits that the EECS department provides for non-EECS majors. There’s nothing particularly profound or advanced about the curricula of those courses. Having star faculty teach those courses is a dispensable luxury. I suspect most Berkeley alumni who weren’t math majors would struggle to remember exactly who taught their lower-division math courses, even if they were top mathematicians. If you’re not going to be a math major, you don’t know who the top math faculty in the world are, and you probably don’t care. You won’t understand the mathematics research that makes them stars, and you never will. </p>
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<p>And how exactly does Berkeley provide education for the masses, rather than the privileged few? The overwhelming majority of Berkeley applicants are rejected. Berkeley is harder to be admitted into than is the vast vast majority of schools out there, including most private schools. Only a tiny fraction of the sons and daughters of the taxpayers of California will ever be allowed to study at Berkeley. Similarly, a clear majority of applicants to Michigan and Virginia are not admitted. </p>
<p>The discrepancy is even more stark for the PhD programs which which would actually be hurt by star faculty defections spurred by budget cutbacks. {As mentioned above, most undergrads are indifferent to being taught by star faculty, especially outside of their major.} The fact is, only an infinitesimal share of the children of California taxpayers, or any other applicant pool for that matter, will ever be admitted to a Berkeley PhD program. Whatever type of education the Berkeley PhD programs are providing, it certainly isn’t an education ‘for the masses’. The same could be said regarding Michigan/Virginia taxpayers and the Michigan/Virginia PhD programs.</p>
<p>I don’t this is true at colleges and universities that aspire to be top tier. Certainly not true across the board. And the top tier schools are definitely not looking for applicants with this attitude. I doubt many applicants to Harvard are writing application essays saying “I want to be a [banker, surgeon, lawyer] and make lots of money”. Some kids with this attitude are sneaking through–good college counselors I guess-- but they don’t wear it on their sleeve.</p>
<p>bclintonk, are any top schools hiring right now? Maybe Chicago? Aren’t most schools partaking in hiring freezes… or cutbacks?</p>
<p>I’m sure UC Professors are upset…but the whole country is cutting back…so …the professors should look at context. It’s not like other areas are flush. The private sector isn’t flush and that’s where the school gets its money in the end.</p>
<p>“Harvard University will halt further construction on a massive expansion project in the nearby Boston neighborhood of Allston, reflecting the storied school’s ongoing struggle to deal with a steep decline in the value of its endowment”</p>
<p>"While setting no precise timetable, Harvard officials said the university plans to appoint a committee to study the future course of the project, which could include a redesign or co-development with another investor.</p>
<p>Harvard’s operating budget relies heavily on the university’s endowment. The nation’s largest among colleges and universities, its value plunged 30% for the fiscal year ended June 30, to $26 billion from $36.9 billion a year earlier.</p>
<p>Even before the announcement, Harvard had been preparing for the expected decline, laying off 275 employees and reducing hours for others, offering retirement to 127 professors and reducing meal-service offerings for students. In February, Dr. Faust said the university would slowdown the pace of construction at Allston, although she didn’t announce an outright halt at that time."</p>
<p>Some top schools are hiring, though the pace of hiring has certainly slowed. Many have imposed hiring freezes or slowdowns which might shrink their faculties a little through attrition, but I haven’t heard of widespread faculty layoffs, though some schools are laying off a lot of (non-faculty) staff. There’s still a fair amount of entry-level hiring going on; the lateral market is smaller and slow, but not completely moribund. Schools that are hiring see the current market as an opportunity, with some of their usual competitors sidelined. Those that are currently sitting it out are getting itchy to get back in the game lest they see their own position start to deteriorate.</p>
<p>It’s certainly true that the UC system is not the only one hurting, but it’s all relative. Some schools are in much worse financial shape than others. I think the general perception is that the UC system is bleeding badly and its faculty is ripe for the plucking, not just this year but over the next several years. The State of California is facing the prospect of chronic budget deficits in the $20 billion/year range, huge for a state. Inevitably, that structural deficit will need to be met with a combination of tax increases and further spending cuts. That doesn’t bode well for higher education.</p>