<p>^ Actually, it’s 2085 for enrolled students or just 10 points higher than USC’s.</p>
<p>^^THAT…can’t…be…correct.</p>
<p>Everyone KNOWS that 'SC’s scores are higher than Cal’s. Just ask ANY member of the Trojan FAmily. :D</p>
<p>^^ my sources say 2033</p>
<p>bluebayou, it’s the governor that proposes budgets. It was Schwarzenegger who cut funding to education, once in 2004 and 2009 and probably a few times in between which I don’t remember. It was Schwarzenegger who floated 15 billion dollars in state bonds while at the same time reducing the VLF ensuring that the state debt would be maintained at record levels, and payments on interest would continue unabated. I’m not saying it’s all the governors fault, but you seem pretty determined to vilify Democrats without much concern for evidence.</p>
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Just show me the law that requires Berkeley to accept dumb students, and I’ll eat my words.</p>
<p>“influence” does not equal laws.</p>
<p>And, last time I checked, it’s the State Legislature that approves budgets with a 2/3rds majority. The Governor does not get a vote, just a veto authority, including line item. Yes, the Governor proposes a budget, but it is voted on by both houses, after Comte review or, as a Democratic budget document states: “The Assembly and Senate vote to pass thier version of the Budget Bill…”</p>
<p><a href=“http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a42/pdf/BudgetGuide.pdf[/url]”>http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a42/pdf/BudgetGuide.pdf</a></p>
<p>The State Treasurer (Bill Locker today) floats bonds, not the Governor.</p>
<p>Where in my post did I mention ‘Democrat’? Please point to it. </p>
<p>(btw doing the math, approval of state budget by the Legislature requires Republican support, so please support your claim of ‘vilification.’)</p>
<p>I was a spring admit, thus I was intrinsically a borderline student, and I am pulling a 3.60, so cutting off borderline students is going to be difficult</p>
<p>RML,</p>
<p>I know you are a huge Cal fan - so why in your mind does Private = Better Education?</p>
<p>Unless you have something concrete to go on, you have no business asserting that the legislature is purposefully lowering Cal’s admission standards.</p>
<p>The 15 billion in bonds was part of Schwarzenegger’s plan to solve the budget problem.
<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_57_(2004[/url])”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_57_(2004)</a></p>
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You seem to believe that the decline in Berkeley’s prestige is due to California liberalism. This is the assertion I take issue with.</p>
<p>Negative, cavilier… </p>
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<p>Please show me when I posted such a thing???</p>
<p>All I posted was that the folks in power (which by definition must include the Republicans who vote for the budget and the Regents some of which are appointed by the Republican Governor) do not care if they maintain Cal’s (or UCLA’s) prestige relative to their other legislative priorities. Indeed, that is what they get paid to do – make priorities. The fact that Cal gets neglected in favor of pumping money into Merced (or the prisons) is not a “purposeful” lowering of Cal’s standards…it is more one of unintended consequences (or benign neglect); but not “purposeful” per se. :)</p>
<p>In my opinion, ELC is just AA in disguise.</p>
<p>People who don’t have the scores/background are getting into state schools easier because of ELC. If ELC didn’t exist, certain “diverse” school districts would not be sending students to Cal…</p>
<p>And nobody says that borderline students don’t do well, cause there’s plenty of who do very well. But it’s more LIKELY that high achieving student continue to do well. (at least in my opinion)</p>
<p>Also, GPA isn’t a good measure. Low achieving students might flock to majors like Media Studies while high achieving ones are more likely to be in Engineering or Pre-med etc. </p>
<p>And being a spring admit has NOTHING to do with being borderline etc. There are plenty of people in Spring who has better scores etc than people that were fall admits. I just think that Spring admission is kinda arbitrary.</p>
<p>While Merced is right now a total waste, when they first started the school we weren’t in as much of a budget hole, so taking anger out on Merced is kind of pointless.</p>
<p>Second, UCM is a necessarily evil, sort of. California’s population is moving inland. With the exceptions of Riverside and Davis (which are both just barely fair to call inland), all the UCs are in coast regions. They wanted a UC in the Central Valley to account for the population shift, and that is why they had to build UCM. Why couldn’t they have picked a place that isn’t in the middle of nowhere (e.g. Fresno, Modesto) where “lower-tier” students wouldn’t prefer UCSC, UCR, or a CSU over, go figure?</p>
<p>UC Merced is here now, you can’t just jettison it because of the budget problems.</p>
<p>It’s great that they’re targeting inland student…</p>
<p>But if you were an inland student, would you prefer to go to a college near the beach… or a college near home in middle of no where… =___=</p>
<p>Why won’t the legislators of the State of California pass a bill recognizing UC Berkeley as the premiere State University of California (similar to NATIONAL UNIVERSITIES in other countries) and thus would receive its own budget separated from the rest of the UCs? The new UC Berkeley would also have a full autonomy from the State and can make decisions based on its own. </p>
<p>The purpose, of course, is so that California would have another university that’s truly world-class and a true rival of HYPM, apart from Stanford and Caltech. </p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
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<p>To answer your question, why would they? What do those legislators gain from doing so? </p>
<p>What legislators ultimately want is re-election, and, unfortunately, no public political groundswell exists to build Berkeley’s status and, especially, its admissions standards. If anything, the opposite is true: the public would like to lower the admissions standards so as to accord a better chance for their own children to be admitted. Whether their children then flunk out or perform poorly at Berkeley, or whether such admissions standards would contribute to the long-term erosion of Berkeley’s quality seems not to be a concern to the voting public, just like how the voting public feigns concern for the long-term deficit but then eviscerates any politician who moots serious entitlements reform, despite the fact that entitlements represents the largest chunk of the long-term deficit. {To quote Prime Minister of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Junker: “We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.”} </p>
<p>Besides, look at it from the voters point of view. What exactly do they gain by having a public world-class university located in the state? As you pointed out, California already has 2 world-class universities, albeit private universities. The voters of California may be perfectly satisfied with that, just as the voters of the Northeast seem to be satisfied with not having any elite state universities, but are content with a bevy of top private universities such as the Ivies and MIT.</p>
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<p>Well, I’m not aware of too many desirable beaches near Berkeley. Heck, at any such beach, the water would be frigid for most of the year anyway. Yet Berkeley still manages to draw plenty of students from around the state, including boatloads from regions in Southern California that has some of the best beaches in the world. </p>
<p>If you could build a vibrant university, students will come no matter how boring the location may be. For example, of all of the places in California one could live in as a young adult, Palo Alto has to rank rather low on the list. Let’s face it: Palo Alto is a boring suburb. Yet that doesn’t seem to stop Stanford from winning the cross-admit battle with every state school in California.</p>
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<p>No anger here, but I was against Merced back when it was a dream in the Legislature’s eye. And, something to note for cavillier, the UC Regents never wanted to build an inland campus; read all the minutes of thier meetings, and they were dead-set against it. The Legislature forced the issue, using the power of the purse. :rolleyes:</p>
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<p>Umm, not what they teach in Finance 101 (hint: look up ‘sunk cost’). :)</p>
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<p>That is the point I have been trying to make: the Regents/Legislature are doing just the opposite. They do not believe in merit as good public policy.</p>