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Do me a favor, Sakky, and name 3 things, or 5 if you want, that Berkeley could do to better manage itself and make it have as good as undergrad as its graduate programs.
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<p>Well, given the political situation, I don't think it's ever going to have as good of an undergrad program as its grad program, unless the school is willing to run its undergrad program like its grad program - i.e., to greatly heighten selectivity. What really hurts Berkeley is, frankly, the long tail end of mediocre undergrads who just don't care very much about their education and are more interested in partying than in their studies, coupled with the fact that the very best high school students tend to prefer to go elsewhere. </p>
<p>However, Berkeley can do numerous things to make the program better. You could have searched for them through my old posts, where I have talked about this subject in great detail. But since you asked, I'll give you 3. </p>
<p>1) Offer perks to compete for the best undergrad applicants. Right now, the best high school seniors strongly tend to prefer schools like HYPSM over Berkeley. This is especially true for OOS applicants for which Berkeley can't even offer a state-funded tuition subsidy. But this could be changed. For example, Berkeley could offer some combined graduate programs, i.e. BA/MD programs (with UCSF or UCD), BA/JD, or BA/MBA programs, etc. The BS/MD program would be especially attractive given the heightened competition to get into med school nowadays - many students will turn down even HYPSM for a no-name school that offers them a guaranteed MD slot. Instituting such a program with UCSF would instantly give Berkeley arguably the most desirable undergraduate program in the country. </p>
<p>2)Get rid of impaction immediately, or if you cannot, then at least attempt to reduce its scope. I still don't understand why impaction is such a problem. You don't need to hire actual professors - lecturers would suffice. Many Berkeley departments already hire lecturers. So why can't you hire a bunch more so that you can offer more classes and hence reduce impaction? For example, I'm quite sure that many of Berkeley's postdocs would like to serve as lecturers for a semester or 2. You could probably also find some research scientists at LBL or Livermore who would also be interested in serving as lecturers for a few semesters, or even just for the summer part-time (to give you an example of how this works, Henrik Wallman of the ChemE department is a lecturer in ChemE and also a research scientist at LBL). You could also offer lecturer positions for a few semesters to those Berkeley assistant profs who failed to get tenure. </p>
<p>These guys probably wouldn't ask for a lot of money. Many of them would be very happy to do it on the cheap in order to build theie resume - i.e., to just "say" that they taught at Berkeley. Heck, I would do it for a semester, and you wouldn't have to pay me much, just so that I could say that I taught a class at Berkeley. </p>
<p>Now of course it is true that it is better for students to be taught by actual profs than by a bunch of lecturers. But that's not what's on the table. What's on the table is being taught by a bunch of lecturers vs. not even being able to get into the major at all (because it's impacted). </p>
<p>Reducing impaction may also require proper rationalization of Berkeley's resources. Why is it that MCB, which has by far the most undergrads of any major on campus, is not impacted, but smaller majors are impacted? Why is it that the MCB department has been able to organize itself to handle all interested students, but the other departments are unable to do so? </p>
<p>By removing impaction, Berkeley would become a more attractive undergrad school. In particular, it would remove one of the major advantages that a school like Stanford has over Berkeley. One of Stanford's great perks is the ability to switch to any major you want at any time. If you come in thinking you want to major in Art, but find out later that you actually want to major in EE, you just go right ahead. Nobody is going to stop you. Not so at Berkeley. The upshot is then twofold - you have Berkeley students who end up having to complete majors that they don't really want (because they couldn't get their first-choice major). You also have students who ex-ante decide to go to another school (i.e. Stanford) rather than Berkeley in order to preserve their freedom to choose their major. </p>
<p>3) Consonant with point #2 above, Berkeley needs to get rid of the 'engineering major trap' right now. In fact, it should have gotten rid of it years ago. The 'engineering major trap' is the phenomenom where engineering students who are doing poorly want to switch out of engineering but cannot because none of Berkeley's other colleges want to take them. For example, L&S advises that you need around a 3.0 to successfully switch in. Trust me, there are * plenty * of Berkeley engineering students who have nowhere near a 3.0. Not even close. There are plenty of eng students who are doing poorly, * and are forced to stay in engineering*. </p>
<p>What is ironic is that there are also plenty of students in L&S who are also doing poorly. Yet they are allowed to stay in L&S. So if they are allowed to stay, then why is it so bad for L&S to allow those engineering students who are doing poorly to switch in? </p>
<p>The upshot is, once again, you have students who end up having to major in something they don't want. A lot of those poorly performing engineering students desperately need to change majors. But they cannot, unless they want to take the drastic step of transferring to another university entirely (which then begs the question of which reputable school is going to admit you as a transfer if you're doing poorly at your home university). Incidentally, this is why so many engineers flunk out. After all, if you're doing poorly in a major, * and you're forced to stay in that major*, is it really so surprising that you may end up flunking out? </p>
<p>Incidentally, this leads to the notion of the 'swap'. There are some students in L&S who have done relatively well in engineering prereqs and want to switch into engineering, but were denied. At the same time, there are engineering students who are doing poorly and want to switch to L&S and were denied. Why can't you just let these 2 students swap places? Both students are then better off. It's a win-win. In contrast, by denying both students, they're both worse off as they both end up in majors they don't really want. That's a clear lose-lose. </p>
<p>4) Make Berkeley more competitive for the major international scholarships like the Rhodes. It's striking to me that a school as large as Berkeley (23,000 undergrads) has produced only 25 total Rhodes Scholars in the entire 100+ year history of the Rhodes program. Berkeley hasn't had a Rhodes winner since 2002-2003. This year alone, Harvard had TEN, despite having less than 1/3 of the undergrads that Berkeley does. Stanford had 4, again, despite having less than 1/3 of the undergrads. </p>
<p>Here is what the last Berkeley Rhodes winner, Ankur Luthra, had to say about it. </p>
<p>*Luthra thinks it’s great that he won, but less admirable that “an elite institution” like Berkeley makes such a poor showing in the Rhodes competition year after year.</p>
<p>....according to Luthra,...Berkeley faculty aren’t doing as much as they could to encourage qualified students to apply. </p>
<p>...while subcommittee members are deeply involved in the process of identifying and aiding the most motivated candidates, other faculty, Lukra believes, aren’t taking the key initial step in the process: encouraging qualified candidates to apply in the first place.</p>
<p>“The level of faculty awareness about the scholarship itself is tremendous, obviously,” Luthra says, “but it’s at the next level — where a faculty member decides to actually nominate a student or two, or to approach qualified students and tell them about the scholarship — that the steps aren’t being taken. They have a huge role to play, probably the biggest role in the process — since so many students will never hear about the Rhodes in the first place if a faculty member doesn’t tell them about it and encourage them to apply.”</p>
<p>There’s more to faculty involvement in Rhodes candidacies than that, of course — including the writing of letters of recommendation , which to be effective must show a more detailed familiarity with a student’s academic skills than is acquired at the podium in a 600-seat lecture hall. But it’s a vitalpart of the process, and one that, according to Alicia Hayes, program coordinator of the Scholarship Connection Office, contributes more than Luthra acknowledges to the reluctance of Berkeley students to follow through on their impulse to apply for a Rhodes or other prestigious scholarship. </p>
<p>One faculty member with extensive experience in the Rhodes application process agrees with Hayes. Steven Botterill, associate professor of Italian Studies, chaired the Rhodes/Mitchell/Marshall subcommittee this past year. “At Ivy League colleges, with their smaller student bodies and more intimate faculty/student ratios,” he observes, “the process of grooming potential Rhodes Scholars begins early on in a student’s undergraduate career. By the time students at Berkeley make closer contact with faculty, it’s often their junior year – and that’s a bit late to be building the kind of close intellectual relationship with a faculty member that supports the recommendation the Rhodes committees want to see. We’ve seen it year after year here: With the best will in the world, Berkeley faculty don’t get to know students as individuals when they’re teaching large lower-division courses with 700 or 800 students.” *</p>
<p>I happen to know personally several former Berkeley students who I think probably could have won the Rhodes, or at least been strong Rhodes finalists, if they had gone to other schools. But putting them aside, consider the University Medalists. Adrian Down, this year's Medalist, didn't win a single high-prestige scholarship (i.e. Rhodes, Truman, Marshall, Soros). Neither did any of this year's finalists. Why not? Obviously these students are not lacking in ability. So why can't they win these schoarships?</p>