<p>I'm not sure how the budget allocation works in California, as well as, in the UC System, but in what percentage of the UC System budget do Cal and UCSF receive? Assuming both institutions receive $1 billion a year from the UC System, would it be a good idea if these two institutions - the crowns of the UC schools - be separated from the system and just receive funding directly from the state? I think that's less bureaucratic - budget is released directly to Cal president thus less departments and people are involved before the money is spent for the university purposes. </p>
<p>The positive side of this is that - there would be less bureaucracy. Another is Cal would have an autonomous rights. It can implement what they want and don't have to subject themselves to the regulations and restrictions of the UC System. Cal, together with UCSF, can draw their own curricula and implement them when they want.</p>
<p>The merging of Cal and UCSF would boost both institutions images. Cal would now have a legit, bona fide med school of their own and would primarily cater to their premed students. Together, they could offer an integrated curriculum which accepts students fresh from HS and offer the slots to the best candidates, saving a year and MCAT, in case the students don't perform in the MCAT pretty well.</p>
<p>There are a lot of positives I can think of, but let's just save them for now.</p>
<p>As for the negatives, it would probably lost their name as both Cal and UCSF wouldn't be able to use the name UC anymore. </p>
<p>What's your take on this Cal and UCSF people?</p>
<p>UCSF has an endowment of about 1.3 billion and UC Berkeley is given 2.3 billion. If they were to merge…wow it would be a major powerhouse even rivaling the Ivy schools. The thing is the UC system would probably not let their two best institutions leave.</p>
<p>Why did you bundle in a bunch of separate items?</p>
<p>I rather we simply discuss detaching Cal and UCSF from the rest of the UC’s and keeping them separate institutions.
Or we could talk about why you would want to combine the two schools.
Or you could do the BS/MD joint admissions.</p>
<p>But none of these are really necessary with the others, so why did you lump them together?</p>
<p>I thought of bonding them together so that Berkeley would have a medical school of its own. A school as powerful and as established as Berkeley wouldn’t look or sound complete without a medical school, and it’s not a good idea that Berkeley would make one for its own since UCSF is already there, very near Cal and serving the same locality - Bay area.</p>
<p>While I can see numerous reasons for why Berkeley would want to merge with UCSF, I’m afraid that the rationale for reverse is wanting. Why exactly would UCSF want to merge with Berkeley; what would they gain from such a maneuver? As Calbear2012 pointed out, UCSF is one of the most richly endowed medical schools in the world, with an endowment that is more than half of what Berkeley has and which supports a far smaller student base. UCSF’s PhD programs are mostly on par with, and in many cases are actually superior to, their Berkeley counterparts. </p>
<p>True, by merging with Berkeley, UCSF would be able to offer a broader and richer set of PhD programs, especially within disciplines that UCSF doesn’t even have right now. A merged organization might also foster superior research cross-collaboration and cross-innovation between the two schools than would be available otherwise. {The watchword is ‘might’ because cross-collaboration tends to be a matter of proper organizational design and not a simple outcome of merger itself: numerous firms & NGO’s who have merged exhibit silo’ed subdivisions that do not collaborate with each other, and loose research consortia and confederations are often times able to instigate significant collaboration amongst unmerged parties.} </p>
<p>Nevertheless, whatever benefits UCSF might enjoy from such a merger seem quite minor relative to the costs and risks that would be assumed. So while I support a merger for Berkeley’s sake, I struggle to see why UCSF would approve.</p>
<p>I actually couldn’t see many benefits for UCSF from merging with Berkeley, that’s why I’m collecting opinions from people who know more than I do so that the merging plan would be able to convince both schools to agree with the proposal. </p>
<p>The thing you’ve mentioned about postgrad collaboration between the two schools is a fantastic selling point for Berkeley. (I actually haven’t thought of that until you mentioned it.) Aside from that, what else?</p>
<p>UCSF stands to gain quite a bit from a merger with Berkeley, since UCSF is a research powerhouse in the biological/health sciences and Berkeley’s ranking in the biological sciences is only surpassed by Stanford and MIT (according).</p>
<p>However, what UCSF stands to gain from this merger is mostly attributed to Berkeley’s departments in biological sciences and a scattering of other programs in chemistry and engineering. Hence, there is very little rationale for a complete merger from UCSF’s standpoint. If it were just a tighter partnership of these programs with UCSF, then it might be a more attractive proposal for UCSF.</p>
<p>Similarly, Berkeley stands to gain a lot from this merger. The MCB department has been losing prominent researchers over the years. As Prof. Thorner used to put it, they are “attracted to the bright and flashing lights at Harvard.” One example is Marc Kirschner, who used to be a researcher in the MCB department but is now the founding chair of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. This merger with UCSF would help Berkeley retain its best researchers, even if they choose to move to UCSF after the merger.</p>
<p>Kirschner got his PhD and did a postdoc at Berkeley, which is why I refrained from saying “losing prominent faculty” since he never was one at Berkeley.</p>
<p>The example I used muddled the point I was trying to get at, but besides Kirschner, many MCB faculty have been sniped away by other institutions due to financial reasons and this may be ameliorated with a merger with UCSF.</p>
<p>Like I said, I still don’t see what benefits would accrue to UCSF, beyond tighter research collaboration connections - which can and should be developed anyway even if the schools don’t merge. Harvard and MIT enjoy numerous tight joint alliances and ‘cooptition’ despite never merging (although such mergers have been attempted in the past). </p>
<p>The fact is, UCSF has been extraordinarily successful as a stand-alone entity and therefore does not need Berkeley’s infrastructure, which is the usual rationale for a merger of a medical school and a greater university: witness the merger of Cooper Medical College into what we now know as Stanford University Medical School. I wish it wasn’t true, but it is true. Hence, unless a hostile takeover is in the works (which I wouldn’t exactly bet on succeeding), I struggle to see why UCSF would acquiesce to a merge.</p>