<p>This article from the Yale Daily News is a few months old now, but it describes Yale’s approach to faculty hiring as basically full speed ahead. Yale faculty and administrators view this recession as an opportunity to pick off the people they want with less competition from their peers.</p>
<p>Over at Princeton, meanwhile, the university is taking a more cautious approach, reducing faculty searches by 2/3 while not eliminating them entirely. This recent Daily Princetonian editorial is critical of Princeton’s cautious approach, arguing Princeton may be blowing a golden opportunity to make gains through lateral hires:</p>
<p>You’d better believe some top academics at Berkeley and the other UCs are being approached by the likes of Yale and Princeton which notwithstanding their recent financial reversals can still put attractive offers on the table for the right candidates.</p>
<p>Sakky says it doesn’t matter to most undergraduates. That’s probably right. Many Californians, possibly most, would settle for a flagship public university that is merely better than average rather than, arguably, the best in the world—the neighborhood Berkeley has been in for many decades now. That may be where things are headed. I think that’s a shame.</p>
<p>^ Berkeley would have to fall or others would have to rise far…I don’t see that happening. </p>
<p>Tuition increases and increased fundraising efforts should help. Even with a 33% fee increase, Berkeley is cheaper than other top public universities AND much cheaper than privates.</p>
<p>Uh, of course they won’t write it on their applications or wear it on their sleeves, for that’s what proper self-marketing is about. You learn what adcoms don’t want to hear, and you then refrain from making those statements. </p>
<p>The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and Harvard is the archetypal example. During the boom, around half of all Harvard undergrads who entered the workforce took jobs in …wait for it… strategy consulting and investment banking, profession that are notable for their high pay as well as (frankly) their rather questionable value add to society. That’s not to single out Harvard, for the siren song of consulting & banking has proved irresistible to students at all of the top schools. For example, half of all MIT students who entered the workforce also took jobs in consulting and banking, and MIT is a majority engineering school. </p>
<p>Nor is such behavior irrational in any way. Let’s face it: college, even as an instate student at a public school, is expensive. Students therefore rationally desire to retire their debt quickly, and the fact is, most regular jobs don’t pay particularly well. Furthermore, regular jobs also don’t seem to offer the fast career track to further opportunities that consulting and banking jobs offer. Hence, while it may not have been rational for the system to have giant hordes of newly minted college graduates with zero work experience become consultants and bankers, it was entirely rational for each of them as individuals. </p>
<p>I said it before and I’ll say it again: the projected cutbacks for Berkeley represent at most 9-10% of the school’s annual budget, and even much of that cutback will be replaced by either other revenue sources (i.e. hikes in tuition, but still only to around the instate tuition levels of UMichigan and UVirginia), and reductions in noncore programs. For example, Berkeley’s athletic program has been ordered to be financially self-sufficient, which might eventually mean the elimination of certain sports - but I hardly see that as a tragic event, for the only 2 profitable Cal sports are, unsurprisingly, football and men’s basketball. Other sports are nice to have, but I don’t know that a school really needs to provide financial support for them to retain a strong academic atmosphere. The Ivies, Chicago, MIT and Caltech don’t provide athletic scholarships of any kind - not even to the money sports - yet their academic reputations don’t seem to have suffered in the event. </p>
<p>{Furthermore, it should be pointed out that by far the highest paid employee in the entire UC system is not any of the administrators or the faculty - not even any of the Nobel Laureates - but rather is football coach Jeff Tedford, who is paid nearly $3mn a year, compared to the ~$9million being paid the entire 130,000 strong faculty/staff of the entire UC system combined. Moreover, the Cal budgetary cutbacks resulted in Jeff Tedford voluntarily forfeiting a mere $22.5k a year, which he probably had in loose change in his sofa. Cal football wasn’t even that good this year, finishing well outside the top 25 and heading for a mediocre bowl}</p>
<p>I didn’t say that it didn’t matter to me. Heck, I explicitly stated several times that I wished the budgetary problems were not happening. </p>
<p>Yet at the same time, I don’t see any cause for hyperbole. Even a 10% reduction of annual salary will still mean that Berkeley will be one of the most formidable research universities in the world. Granted, maybe they won’t have as many programs as they had before - although I’m still not sure that that really matters (i.e. does it really matter if Berkeley drops its Near Eastern Studies PhD program? Schools such as MIT have never had such a program and nobody seems to care.) Maybe Berkeley will have to - gasp - drop certain sports or even hike football ticket prices. Maybe Berkeley will have to learn to become as adroit at unleashing a river of alumni donations as UMichigan has become, which is frankly something Berkeley should have been doing anyway, budget crisis or no. Maybe Berkeley will have to bring in full-fare-paying OOS from states that lack a decent flagship public school, which is most such states. Maybe Berkeley will have to bring in full or even 2 or 3x paying nouveau-riche international students who are looking to associate themselves with the internationally-recognized Berkeley brand name. </p>
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<p>While I’m not entirely comfortable with claiming that Berkeley is necessarily the best public university in the world - as I’ve always suspected that Ox-bridge were the true claimants to that crown - I’m comfortable in proclaiming that Berkeley will still be the best public university in the nation, even if it were to decline because of budgetary cutbacks. After all, who would be a serious challenger? UCLA, as UC brethren, obviously faces just as many budgetary problems as Berkeley does. The University of Virginia would require decades to upgrade its PhD programs and research reputation, especially in the natural sciences & engineering, to approach even a post-decline Berkeley, as opposed to being simply the admittedly high quality undergraduate and professional student-oriented program that it is now. </p>
<p>Which leaves only Michigan as a viable contender, yet if anything, the state of Michigan clearly faces far greater long-term economic challenges than does the state of California. To be fair, UMichigan seems to be more efficiently run, Ann Arbor is a nice city, and the ability of UM administrators to raise funds from alumni has been nothing short of ingenious. However, the overall travails of the state seem to be too much to overcome. Not only is Berkeley a nice city to live in, but the Bay Area in general, and San Francisco especially, will prove to be magnetic draws for years to come. Michigan, on the other hand, has Detroit, a city that has been rapidly losing population for years. {I say that unhappily, for Detroit used to be a great American city.}</p>
<p>^ Michigan is far less dependent on state legislative appropriations than Berkeley is, and at least in the near term, the state of California’s budget gap is far worse than Michigan’s, and California’s cuts to public higher education far deeper. Now you could argue all that cuts both ways. Michigan is much farther down the road to quasi-privatization: in-state tuition is higher, OOS tuition is a little higher, and it already takes a far higher percentage of OOS students, a very significant revenue source. Michigan also has a very substantial endowment, one of the biggest in the country. And partly because it has a medical school, its total research budget is larger; most of that medical money needs to stay in the medical school and allied disciplines, but there’s a bigger pot from which to draw Indirect Cost Recovery dollars to support the central university. I don’t say everything’s coming up roses in Ann Arbor, but fiscally they’re in much better shape right now; they’re not making 10% cuts or dinging faculty on their salaries.</p>
<p>Now you could see all that as a positive for Berkeley in the sense that they have more room to grow their revenue base by making the same moves Michigan has already made (as has UVA). But a lot of that is going to face fierce resistance. Students are already nearly rioting over tuition hikes; there’s intense public opposition to even the modest increases in OOS admissions the UCs are talking about; and no way does UC San Francisco agree to merge its medical center into Berkeley, or accept new competition across the Bay. So it’s going to be a rocky period before Berkeley can get its fiscal house in order, and it could bleed a lot of top faculty in that time. In fact, Michigan will almost certainly be among the schools making a run at Berkeley faculty in areas where the two schools are of comparable strength.</p>
<p>I’m not necessarily predicting Michigan will overtake Berkeley anytime soon. I’m just saying Berkeley is in for some very rough sledding, as are all the UCs.</p>
<p>Sakky, isn’t this kind of an embarassment to Cal, especially in light of its budget crisis? While it’s true that most of Jeff Tedford’s salary comes from private funding, the perception is that Cal does not have its (academic) priorities straight. The faculty at Cal seems to agree.</p>
<p>Ha! At least Cal posted a winning record and are headed for a bowl game, albeit a mediocre one. Heck, even Central Michigan was invited to a bowl game. </p>
<p>{To be fair, I think the real problem is that Michigan dumped Lloyd Carr for Rich Rodriguez, one of the worst decisions in college football history. There is little doubt that Michigan football’s entire history is clearly superior to Cal’s. But as long as Michigan continues to permit Rodriguez to run the ship aground, I think that Cal will actually be better than Michigan. }</p>
<p>But isn’t the main selling point of Cal and the other “public ivies” their academics (read: strength of their departments)? </p>
<p>Smaller private schools can probably better help students attain their professional school and career placement goals. See, for example, the WSJ feeder school study.</p>
<p>Well, like I said, it’s still better than Rich Rodriguez and Michigan. At least Jeff Tedford has posted a winning record every season. That’s more than Rodriguez can say.</p>
Don’t forget UT Austin. While it too has been hit hard by the economy, it’s still sitting fairly comfortably with the largest endowment and operating budget among the publics. It has the potential to do very well, especially if it wasn’t hampered by the 10% rule.</p>
<p>Sakky, why do you keep framing this as a Cal vs. Michigan argument???</p>
<p>FWIW, I do NOT have any affiliation with Michigan. (For crying out loud, what about the term “football factory” could’ve possibly suggested to you that I am a Michigan fan?) In fact, I think it’s an embarassment for any “public ivies” (Cal, Michigan, etc.) to prioritize sports over academics and sacrifice admissions standards to the extent that they do. </p>