<p>under which condition would involved the ff:</p>
<ol>
<li>the undergrad student body would decrease significantly (from 25k to 8k maximum)</li>
<li>tuition rate would increase but won't be as high as those of the private schools' </li>
<li>the number and amount of scholarship grants would increase</li>
<li>the poor, but deserving, "underprivileged" students would automatically get a scholarship</li>
<li>tutorial system would become a must (mostly TAs conducting the tutor however)</li>
</ol>
<p>I know I will get slammed for this by the junior socialists we have around here, but this would absolutely be THE BEST way to guarantee a positive future for the University–academically, socially, etc. </p>
<p>I’m down for it assuming it’s still affordable…I believe it’s the middle-class that would be most adversely affected by such a change. The too-rich are never in a pickle, and the too-poor have institutional support (ie. need-based scholarships). The middle class doesn’t get support from either.</p>
<p>Reduction to 8K would be a bit much. Reduction to the size of USC, approx. 16K undergrad, would be a better alternative. I wonder how crowded the RSF would be from 6-9pm if that were the pop?.. Things to ponder…</p>
<p>I forgot. along with the decrease of the undergrad population is the increase of postgrad population. a number of professional qualifications such as MBA, law, engineering and postgrad would expand, increasing the number of postgrad population. </p>
<p>8k undergrad population would be something like 1,800 students admitted every year, making a Cal diploma a much sought-after and highly valuable diploma to get.</p>
<p>It’s hugely important to consider how admission criteria will change and adapt to a highly selective process. Quite frankly, many good schools have become a complete crapshoot to get into, and I am in favor of extremely strong students being able to consistently make it into Cal, and partake in the wonderful academics it offers – this is one of the principal advantages to it right now, given its lower selectivity (of course, some terrific students do get “screwed” in the current system). You’ll notice at least anecdotally that many of Cal’s devoted students either applied to few out of state schools or got into few others they’d consider to be wonderful enough.</p>
<p>To maintain the current somewhat numbers-based criteria and have things be more selective, simply the only way I can think to do things adequately would be for standardized curricula in high schools to be significantly more reflective of Cal-level academics. For instance, if AP exams were really Cal-level, and the classes were run in accordance to prepare for those exams, and things were normalized against standardized tests.</p>
<p>@RML - It already IS a sought-after and highly valuable diploma…outside of California. The problem, of course, is that California is currently the place to be for a large number of technical professions.</p>
<p>@mathboy - I agree…well, up to a point. Part of the issue here is that the negotiations with non-California-specific organizations to actually get this kind of thing put through would be far more trouble than the University would be willing to put forth. I would also say that the present methods of actually determining the numbers is flawed - I know plenty of people who have great numbers under the current system and boast absolutely no skills at all outside of them. I’m personally of the opinion that this is a pretty significant problem…but then again, I might just be getting butthurt over having a lower GPA than I would like.</p>
<p>I’d also want to see a somewhat higher level of balance of the departments if enrollment cuts go through - e.g. I’d prefer it if Haas received no cuts whatsoever and CoE had, at minimum, 20% of the student population after 4 years. I don’t intend this as a bash against humanities and arts, but Berkeley is largely known for its technical/science majors, and I agree with the assessment of some graduates I’ve talked to who feel that the slide away from a dominantly technical student population is a bad thing.</p>
<p>Sure, actually we agree on every count from what you’ve stated. What I’m saying is that the numbers-based system at least gets those who hold their breath and do what’s necessary a relatively stable way to get admission. If we’re to refine things, of course we should note that the numbers-based system in place right now is flawed because the numbers do measure the wrong thing – the way to fix this is at a high level. High school teachers don’t really have an incentive to teach the “real stuff” in many courses, such as AP Physics or Calculus, because it takes such little sophistication to do well on these exams as compared to what many solid college courses teach. A high level fix means making the standardized curricula more reflective of real stuff and not a bunch of frills. </p>
<p>In conclusion, I think making things a little more elitist helps, because the school is overcrowded, but we should make sure the selectivity means something.</p>
<p>The College of Natural Resources gets lots of funding from private sources (roughly half of its total), which explains why the faculty and culture in that department is so left-wing compared to the rest of the campus.</p>
<p>Strykur beat me to it, but yeah only about 30% of the funding is from the state. UC Berkeley is mostly private in practice.</p>
<ol>
<li>Berkeley is planning on admitting fewer in-state students. Not as drastic as what you’re proposing, but remember there are large private schools, even elite ones like Cornell.</li>
<li>Tuition rate is increasing.</li>
<li>Most common grants are from the state. Elite privates such as Harvard, Yale or Stanford can afford to give out more financial aid because of their enormous endowment, not because they’re private.</li>
<li>This already happens. Btw, under your proposal #1 these students wouldn’t even get in.</li>
<li>Not sure what this even means. There are many tutoring services on campus though.</li>
</ol>
<h1>2: I would hardly call the last tuition increase a significant move towards privatization. Do it a few times more and I’ll concede this, but for the time being, we’re pretty…well, average.</h1>
<h1>4 “btw”: Given the admissions policies of most private universities in the U.S., I would expect either no change or exactly the opposite of what you’re proposing. It seems very unlikely that a reduction in absolute student numbers would have bias the population percentages away from underprivileged applicants.</h1>
<p>No, jonno, he’s right. “Over one-third of [Berkeley’s] large student body of 25,000 undergraduates receives Federal Pell Grants, that is, their family income is under $45,000 per year. This is more than the number of Pell Grant recipients in all of the Ivy League universities combined.”</p>
<p>The notion that private universities accept and educate large numbers of deserving but underprivileged youths is a myth, albeit a persistent one. Public universities, not private, are the bulwarks that enable social mobility through education.</p>
<p>The issue, at least to me, is not that the private universities educate large numbers of underprivileged youths - for I think we can all agree that they do not - but rather that of the ones they do educate, they receive aid packages that are often times better than what the state schools will offer. Put another way, it is often times cheaper for a poor or middle class Californian to attend Harvard or another top private school than it is to attend UC, once financial aid is factored in, a point implicitly conceded by Robert Birgeneau.</p>
<p>The unfortunate implication is then that the private school financial aid programs only serve to increase the segmentation of higher education in which public schools serve only those poor students who, frankly, simply weren’t good enough to get into a top private school.</p>
<p>^^ Well, frankly top privates are such a crapshoot these days that a strong student’s best bets for finances are the many other schools with the capability to fund them. To your standard decent to very strong student in California, the best bets still definitely seem Cal and LA. Not to mention how many of these students occur as transfers from a community college.</p>
<p>I guess the one batch of student that really gets helped by top privates is the one winning the lottery of admissions, while being financially needy and hopefully above a decent student.</p>
<p>I actually view this to be the core of the problem and probably what instigated RML to start this thread in the first place. I don’t think UCLA and certainly not Cal should be settling for the ‘standard decent’ students, or even the ‘very strong’ students. They should be competing for the absolutely very best students, however defined. But as we all sadly know, that’s not really happening at the undergraduate level; the very best students generally don’t really want to go to UCLA or Cal as their first choice, instead strongly preferring schools such as HYPSM. Yet interestingly, Cal certainly doesn’t settle for merely ‘standard decent’ PhD students - it successfully competes for and entices the very best such students in the entire world. </p>
<p>As I’ve always said, Cal’s greatest weakness is its long tail-end of undergraduates who, to put it bluntly, aren’t particularly studious or talented. Cal doesn’t benefit from their presence, and nor do they benefit from Cal. Let’s face it: if you’re earning less than a 2.5 GPA - of which there are quite a few such students - you would have been better off at a different school. I always thought that the opening of UCMerced was to cater to those students.</p>
<p>Sakky, are you suggesting from your rather bewildering post that Cal simply become more selective to increase the collective caliber of undergraduate students admitted? Or are you blasting the Cal undergraduate population in general.</p>