<p>How do you think would it help Berkeley grow/prosper in the academic community in the long run?</p>
<p>Nope. It would be pretty screwed up if the first UC school became private.</p>
<p>why do you think it would be “screwed up”?</p>
<p>any alternative you can suggest?</p>
<p>I’ve seen previous topics about Berkeley going private, but what does that mean exactly? Is it even possible? The only differences in terms of funding I can think of is that a private school gets less government money and charges more for tuition.</p>
<p>I searched the forum and there was a topic about this a year ago.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/815607-great-article-cal-ph-d-candidate-about-privitization-uc.html?highlight=private[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/815607-great-article-cal-ph-d-candidate-about-privitization-uc.html?highlight=private</a></p>
<p>I just read through the thread again and thought post #3 was funny. I looked to see who the poster was and it was me. ^_^</p>
<p>Oh hey you’re in that topic too! Why are we going over this again anyway?</p>
<p>That makes it harder for the borderline kids (like myself) to get in. While semi-privatization might be good for increasing the general quality of the student population, it also prevents those who might have succeeded in college but weren’t stars in high school from coming to Cal.</p>
<p>For Berkeley to prosper as an elite educational institution, it needs to RAISE its undergrad admissions standards. Of course, the Legislature will never allow it to do so, even if semi-private. This is a blue-blue state where equality (of outcome) is much more important than maintaining a world-renowned college. Thus, raising the status of Merced and Riverside is more valuable to Sacramento than moving Cal and UCLA up a few notches. Indeed, it is easier to lower Cal and UCLA so that Merced is not so lonely.</p>
<p>^ Blue, you say this is a “blue-blue state”…wasn’t it the reds from Central Valley that wanted Merced?</p>
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<p>Borderline students, to put it bluntly, would actually benefit from not being admitted to Cal, as long as the term ‘borderline’ is carefully defined to be those students who won’t do well at Cal. Let’s be perfectly honest: any Cal student with less than, say, a 2.3 GPA - of which there are quite a few - would have been better off at another (easier) school. And certainly any student who flunks out completely - and there are some, especially in the more demanding majors such as engineering - would certainly have been better off at another school. These students not only lower the average quality of the student body, but more importantly, gravely damage their own futures by coming to Cal. After all, if you have less than a 2.3 GPA, you’re probably not going to be competitive for a decent job or a decent graduate program. </p>
<p>Berkeley could therefore benefit both itself and prospective students by revamping its admissions process to reject ‘borderline’ students, defined to be those students who were going to perform poorly at Cal. Nobody benefits when those students are admitted to Cal - not the school, not the other students, and certainly not the borderline students themselves. </p>
<p>As for how Cal would be able to predict who will perform poorly, that’s when a retrospective statistical analysis of prior admitted classes can be brought to bear. Cal can analyze old admissions records collated with student registrar grading data to see which types of admittees performed poorly, and then simply admit fewer such students in the future. Cal has a world-class statistics department, so surely a few statistics graduate students and faculty could easily devise a proper research design. {They could then likely publish their study in a top statistics/econometrics journal, so the project would benefit them.} The study would be able to predict, with a tight confidence interval, the expected GPA of every Cal applicant, and Cal would reject those who are predicted to perform poorly. </p>
<p>{Lest anybody find such an analysis to be methodologically chilling, I would argue that that’s no different from how, say, auto insurance firms are perfectly within their rights to refuse coverage or charge high premiums to those drivers who are predicted to cause accidents. For example, I know many auto insurance firms who refuse to provide coverage for any teenage male drivers, and those that do provide it will charge nosebleed premiums. Heck, when I first started driving, my yearly insurance premiums cost more than the actual price for the car itself.}</p>
<p>Frankly, I think it’s hard to devise a reasonable case as to why borderline students, defined to be those who are going to perform poorly at Cal, should be admitted. The only reasonable counterargument I can see is a technical one involving whether we can indeed reliably predict how well any particular admittee will perform, which is a counterargument that fundamentally rests on the quantitative validity and reliability of the statistical model. But let’s table that technical objection for the time being and assume that we can indeed predict that a particular applicant is going to earn a 2.0 GPA, with a confidence interval of +/- 0.1. Why should Cal admit that student?</p>
<p>Problem is, Sakky, that many departments in Berkeley try to cut down grade inflation. </p>
<p>If tail-end students were not admitted, then either 2 things must happen.
- Average GPA increases
- Average GPA remains the same, but most people are “shifted down.” So, people who would’ve gotten say a 2.5 will now get a 2.4 and etc. Essentially, the group of borderline people who are now rejected instead of accepted have been replaced and a new group of people are named as “borderline.” </p>
<p>Of course you could say give out less A’s and more B’s to make up for the lost amount of F’s, D’s, and C’s, but that point is not included in this argument since they could very well do that now.</p>
<p>By borderline, I meant people in my case, where they had a good GPA, EC’s, etc, but a bad SAT score, or something; just one thing that made them look bad on paper, but everything else was solid. </p>
<p>I’m doing fine in my classes (engineering major) and I know that I’m doing better than some people who had higher stats than I did when they were admitted here.</p>
<p>But I agree with what you said for your definition of “borderline kids” and that some people shouldn’t be admitted at all with how the system is now. Being a student here is tough, and they might be better off going to another school and doing well elsewhere. The system is messed up, with weeders and whatnot, like you’ve pointed out in other posts, which setup many for failure. So I think that’s the problem, and not who gets admitted.</p>
<p>No matter what, I think they should just lower the amount of people enrolling. One of the downsides of a state school is the amount of people.</p>
<p>I don’t mind large class sizes. I don’t mind the curves. But when I can’t graduate on time because all my classes are full even though I have 130+ units, I get kinda angry.</p>
<p>Saw thread title and immediately thought RML. You hashed this out about a year ago. Idea is not even rational.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/864920-would-you-agree-if-berkeley-would-become-semi-privatised.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/864920-would-you-agree-if-berkeley-would-become-semi-privatised.html</a></p>
<p>What does semi-private even mean, and how does it differ from what has been gradually happening to Berkeley over the past two decades?</p>
<p>It would supposedly involve the points in the topic you linked.</p>
<p>That’s just the thing; if it just means an increase in private sources of income, then how does it differ from what’s been happening during the past two decades?</p>
<p>The rest just deals with what the OP wants, but not with how to accomplish it.</p>
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This comment baffles me. The recent cuts in funding from the state were due to short-sighted fiscal policy, not some deranged concern for equality. All public universities in California lost funding.</p>
<p>Since 1990, UC Berkeley has been given less and less public funding and has had its tuition increase five fold. In effect, Berkeley has become more and more private as its dependence on private sources of income increased. This increased privatization has not significantly improved the quality of education. If anything, it has decreased.</p>
<p>Besides disallowing AA, the California legislature has roughly no say in admissions decisions, or tuition. I’m sorry if you don’t believe Berkeley is as good as few private universities (it’s still better than most of them), but this isn’t due to the fact that its a public university. It has not been the case that greater privatization has increased the quality of education. Why privatization is treated as some miracle panacea that will propel Berkeley to the top of the rankings perplexes me.</p>
<p>Still privatization may still be a good thing. Berkeley would benefit from not having to depend on a government that is so fickle and stupid.</p>
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<p>The problem is that the two issues are deeply interlinked by design: many departments institute grade deflation precisely because the admissions office takes in many students who, frankly, shouldn’t be there, and hence those departments feel obligated to act as a “supplementary admissions regime”. Only by raising admissions standards would those departments then be reasonably willing to negotiate raising grades. </p>
<p>I personally find it shocking that a school such as MIT - a school with an infamous reputation for rigor and where the overwhelming majority of students are majoring in engineering, science, math, or other difficult subjects - can nevertheless successfully graduate a higher percentage of its students than Cal can. Granted, I don’t know what percentage of students at MIT is earning less than 2.3/4.0 GPA’s, but I strongly suspect it’s no more than the percentage at Cal. MIT seems to do a better job of not admitting those students who are going to perform poorly.</p>
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<p>Until next Tuesday (when it may get changed), it takes 2/3rds to pass a budget in this State, and a handful of legislators in the CentalValley have zero power. (Indeed, they couldn’t even get the water turned on this past year when even the Central Valley Dems were 100% for water flow…) But more importantly, check out the history of Merced: Antonia Villaraigosa, former Speaker, now big city Mayor, has been a long proponent of the Merced campus.</p>
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<p>Just think how much money UC would have if it didn’t throw hundreds of millions into Merced? Building a law school at UCI (to increase its prestige? Building a med school at Riverside (ditto)? How much money would UC have if it didn’t just lower standards, thus making more students eligible for guaranteed admission to Merced? How much money would UC save if it wasn’t teaching remedial English and math? How much money would Cal save if it wasn’t teaching kids who then flunk out? How much money would Cal save if it didn’t offer a PT plan and thus got most kids out in four years? (Four years of full financial aid, instead of 6+ years of partial finaid?)</p>
<p>Frankly, does a 3.0 HS student really need to attend a major research Uni for college? Wouldn’t that borderline student be better off at a Cal State (or juco for two years to learn proper study skills)? (Both of the latter are much, much less expensive ways to educate students…)</p>
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<p>That is a politically naive statement. The State Legislature gives UC billions of dollars… Sacramento has a huge influence over the “independent” UC Regents…</p>
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<p>Isn’t that was UC is de facto doing by taking full pay out of state students intstead of instaters? (A policy with which I strongly disagree.)</p>
<p>To clarify my point, I will post my rough numerical stats: I had a ~4.2 GPA and SAT’s ~2000. This is what I meant by borderline. I never suggested Berkeley should continue to admit students with a 3.0 UC GPA because they assuredly would prosper by attending CC first or attending another University entirely. Since this is what you mean by borderline, then yes, I agree with you. I apologize for my poor diction.</p>
<p>I just wanted to point out that not everyone has to have a 2200+ SAT score to succeed at Berkeley. I didn’t, and I’m doing better than some that did.</p>
<p>Just how is 4.2 and 2000 borderline? Dude, don’t sell yourself short :)</p>
<p>I think what everyone means by borderline are the kids who come in with 1700 SATs and 3.5~. (and I’ve met these people here)</p>
<p>I agree that you don’t need a 2200+ SAT score (Berkeley’s average is only around 2000, I believe). But hopefully, you have at least around average or you make it up with excellent grades/ extra curricular.</p>