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I'm a senior from Pennsylvania and my first choice right now is UPenn. Penn has been my top choice for a while, but now I'm having second doubts. I feel like I'm always going to regret not going out to California to look at Berkeley and Stanford.
Now, I'm looking to major in political science but academics are really not an overriding factor for me. I believe college is a place where you live life for 4 years, so I want a place without overly competitive students and a ridiculously hard courseload (this is why I didn't really seriously consider the HYP schools). I want a good social scene, but a place where I can still get a top education with opportunities in the future. I am intrigued by California's chill attitude and great weather. So do you think I should seriously consider Berkeley?

Thanks

P.S. I am moderately liberal (a democrat) but I was scared off at Brown by their extremely liberal reputation. Will I encounter this at Berkeley?

By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 10:14 pm: Edit

It sounds like neither Berkeley nor Stanford will be a good fit. Both schools are far from laid back, and they both have reputations for having a more grueling and unforgiving courseload than the HYP triumverate - certainly more than UPenn. The students at both schools are also hyper-competitive. They're both amazing schools, however, but if you're looking for 'easy' or a place where academics can be balanced well with a social life - neither school will satisfy your needs. You might actually have a more enjoyable time at HYP, where rampant grade inflation actually gives students a bit more breathing room.

I'm not familiar with Brown's political environment, but I would wager that it's a safe claim that Berkeley is the most liberal campus in the country.

By Jared (Jared) on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 10:23 pm: Edit

wow I had no idea. I thought all the schools in California had a much more laid back attitude than those on the east coast. Does everybody agree with this about Stanford and Berkeley?

By Anxious_Mom (Anxious_Mom) on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 02:15 am: Edit

Actually, I had heard (including from Stanford graduates) that the workload at Stanford is not grueling, that most students get As and it is much easier to do well than it is to get in.

Several of my older son's friends that went to Berkeley thought that the workload was much easier than the high school coursework at their public high school. Granted, the HS is extremely competitive.

By Jon (Jon) on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 03:08 am: Edit

berkeley and stanford are not as competitive and cutthroat as people say it is, unless you're premed or engineering or something.

By Cornellgrad02 (Cornellgrad02) on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 09:30 am: Edit

I think you'll find that berkeley is far from the most liberal campus in the country. While Cal certainly does retain some of it's radical roots from the 60's and 70's, most of berkeley's left leaning reputation comes from the surrounding city and area...the bay area (including santa cruz) being among the most liberal places in the country by far. One of the things that makes berkeley great is that through its size you'll find an incredible array of views and oppinions. In fact, berkeley has one of the most active and professional college republican groups in the country. Of course, this is not to say that the majority of students are not liberal, but you'll probably find this at just about every single major university out there (with exceptions). There's dialouge and discourse on every topic possible...Berkeley just isn't the hippy bastion most people make it out to be.

cheers,
cornellgrad

By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 11:09 am: Edit

Ya, the BCR do a credit to their party. They've maintained a level of professionalism that's impressive. Great people, I'm sure. I met all five of them, right after a meeting of the CalDems let out (150+ people) and we passed by their meeting next door.

Perhaps you've just grown so accustomed to Berkeley, that you don't realize how liberal it is. Most of the rest of the country didn't even have war protests, most of the rest of the country don't hold candle light vigils and have students fast when there are proposed cuts to programs like ethnic studies, most of the rest of the colleges don't stage boycotts when they find out that their athletic clothing supplier might have some items made by underaged workers, you can't get vegan menu items in most colleges, student protests to divest from israeli interests don't occur most places, most students at other campuses have no idea who mumia al jabar and leonard peltier are, and the socialist groups on most campuses are usually not larger than the football team. Check out what other campuses are like, and you'll quickly find Berkeley to be far, far more liberal than the norm. I love this aspect of it, and yes - on most issues a dialogue can be had (however, I dare you to try to rationally discuss the israel/palestine issue with other students), but be realistic man - Berkeley not that liberal? Do/did you even go to the same school I do??

As for these people claiming that the Berkeley workload isn't that bad, maybe you guys go to a different school, as well. Granted, I'm mostly engineering, but have you compared the workload here to other schools?? Students here are expected to read an entire *DICKENS* novel every week, for some classes, combined with their other load. You try the Shakespeare class? Seems most of the non-engineering classes I have require reading 50+ pages a night, which isn't so bad until you start factoring in the fact that you have several of these classes. Like the above, I tend to enjoy it - far more interesting use of time than watching TV - but if you think the workload at Berkeley isn't so bad, name a school that's harder? Use PoliSci as an example, if you'd like. I've had friends graduate from Harvard and Cornell with similar degrees (history, polisci), and certainly their workloads weren't appreciably different than ours - they just had the benefit of knowing (Cornell excepted) that if they just put in a decent effort, they were likely to get As. (Gotta love that Harvard grade inflation.)

By Sakky (Sakky) on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 03:16 pm: Edit

Kryptic, I have to agree with anxious_mom about Stanford. Stanford has a reputation for a grueling and unforgiving courseload? Uh, really? I don't think so. If anything, Stanford is even more laidback then HYP. Stanford has just as much grade inflation as any other school, maybe more so. And this is coming from a guy (me) who has great respect for Stanford.

"90% of all letter grades at Stanford are A's or B's"

http://sd.znet.com/~schester/fallbrook/schools/grades.html

"The college magazine Link fingers Stanford University for grade inflation; by 1992 more than half of undergraduate grades there were A- or higher. "

http://slate.msn.com/default.aspx?id=33044

Average undergraduate GPA at Stanford - 3.44

http://www.gradeinflation.com/stanford.html


As far as your discussion of the workload at Berkeley, I partially agree with you. Berkeley engineering is hard, and Berkeley non-engineering classes can assign lots of reading. But as we've discussed before, there are plenty of majors where you really don't have to do anything at all. Again, I'm not going to name those majors, but you know what I'm talking about. There's a big difference between readings being assigned and a student actually needing to do those readings in order to do well in the class.

I knew one guy who took one of those creampuff classes that assigned 7 books - and he never bothered to read any of them. Not only that, but he barely showed up to class. The grade for the class was determined by 2 papers, based on the reading. And he wrote those papers by basically looking up those 7 books on Amazon and reading the comments that people made about the book, and reformulating those comments into full papers. He ended up getting an A- in the class. Nor was this an anomaly. He told me that he was getting away with this sort of thing throughout his entire major. Imagine trying to do that in engineering - Berkeley would expel you without a second thought. But those creampuff majors allow people to hang around doing very little while getting top grades.

By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 04:43 pm: Edit

Sakky, for once I agree with you on everything. Dont you think that those "creampuff" majors are easy at every school though? At the very least, they are relatively easier at every school.

One caveat about Cal and ease of classes though. I know that UCLA undergrad is very similar to Cal accross the board but even in the "creampuff" majors at UCLA people can still get bad grades. I see no reason why Berkeley would be different. This is true even if they actually work harder than the lazy people. (Examples like the one you gave with only 2 papers are common at UCLA. If you study your a** off, you may get a lower grade than a person that never reads. Its just the subjectivity of the grading system based on papers.) Of course, not NEARLY as many bad grades are given out in certain majors. Certain majors give much higher grades on average than others. But I think Berkeley is in no way afraid of giving bad grades no matter what major one is in. The major difference is the average grade is higher AND the work is much easier in many majors.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 05:19 pm: Edit

It is true that creampuff majors exist at every school. What is important is obviously not that they don't exist anywhere else (because they do), but rather what is the impact of these creampuff majors. Specifically:

*Kryptic bases much of his arguments about Berkeley on economic considerations - essentially, Berkeley (and all public schools) have a responsibility to widen access to help the local economy, and this widened access necessarily implies lower admissions standards. While I don't agree with him, I respect his consistency. The problem, of course, is that if you subscribe to the economic argument that kryptic uses, then you have no choice but to conclude that public schools like Berkeley should not be running creampuff programs that do not generate an economic rate of return. Let's face it - certain majors are simply not very useful to the local economy, and if the purpose of a public school is to provide marketable skills to the local economy, then that school should not be spending money on programs that do not provide marketable skills. Even now, while UC is undergoing a budget crisis, UC continues to pour money into degree programs that the economy has little use for. Again, I'm not going to name these programs, but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. I give kryptic credit for agreeing, in another thread here on CC, that this was the case, and that public schools should shut these programs down immediately.

The bottom line is this - if you want to study something that is not useful to the state economy, you are free to do so, but why should the state subsidize you to do that?

* Creampuff majors and lower selectivity - the symbiotic relationship.

I have said it time and time again, the main reason why Berkeley (undergrad) cannot be considered to be the equal HYPSM (undergrad) is that Berkeley undergrad is less selective than HYPSM undergrad. Berkeley PhD programs are competitive with anybody, and the difference is that the Berkeley PhD programs are as selective, if not more so, than any other school's PhD programs. The fact is, there is a significant percentage of Berkeley undergrads who really aren't that good - they don't want to study very much, they don't know very much, and in short, they pull down the average quality of the undergraduate student body. I don't want to be harsh, you must concede that quite a few Berkeley undergrads really are like that.

Now, this might be less of a problem if these students never graduate - in other words, these students are either forced to improve their academic standards, or flunk out. Unfortunately that's not entirely true. There is the third option - the 'creampuff' option. These less-strong students can and do sniff out what are the easier majors and flock to them like dogs to kibble.

Case in point - you hear lots of Berkeley undergrads say "Well, I wanted to major in engineering, but it was too hard, so now I'm majoring in X", where X is one of those creampuff majors. And of course when they say that it's "too hard", what they translates to mean is "I don't really want to study that much". But you never hear of anybody saying "Well, I was really interested in majoring in X, but it was too hard, so now I'm studying electrical engineering". You never hear that.

The bottom line is that a lot of students are in X not because they're actually interested in the subject matter, but just because it's easy. You know it's true. They don't really give a damn about learning the material at all - they're just there to pick up some easy credits to coast their way to a Berkeley degree. {This has the side-problem of screwing over those students who truly are interested in X, because they end up in classes filled with students who don't care about the material at all. One of the most perniciously sapping things that can be done to somebody's morale and love of a subject is to surround that person with others who don't care and don't really bother to do the work}.

So these guys take the third option and graduate in cheesy majors. The problem with that is that it lowers the value of the Berkeley degree. Berkeley ends up conferring degrees upon people who are lazy and not academically strong. This makes those Berkeley students who are hard working and did learn a lot look bad to third parties - employers, peers, etc.

I've heard several employers say how disappointed they've been with the Berkeley graduates they're hired, citing their laziness and lack of intellectual preparedness. Sure, you could point out that those Berkeley grads all got degrees in creampuff majors, but many employers aren't going to make that distinction. Once they've hired some Berkeley graduates and have had disappointing experiences with them, they are less eager to hire future Berkeley grads.

Hence, the bottom line is that the problem of the creampuff majors exacerbates the problem of lower selectivity. Less capable students come into Berkeley and then make a beeline towards the creampuff majors. If Berkeley had admissions standards that were the equal of HYPSM, then the problem of creampuff majors would still exist, but would be sigifnicantly less severe.

* Bad Grades and creampuff majors

First, we have to define what is meant by a bad grade. I submit that in creampuff majors, as long as you do the assignments, it's practically impossible to get anything lower than a C-. Sure, a C- is not a great grade. But at least it's passing. Contrast that with engineering, where you can do all the work and still get an F.

Secondly, I would dispute that creampuff majors are never afraid to give out bad grades. I don't think it's quite that clean. The fact is, many of these creampuff departments know full well that they are vulnerable to the vicissitudes of campus politics. If they don't get a certain number of students, then the administration will cut some of their funding. Hence, these creampuff departments have basically engaged in a "secret handshake and wink" relationship with its students - the deal is that students will come and take their classes (thereby increasing the enrollment of the department), and the department will reward them with easier grades and less work. If these departments all of a sudden started grading harshly, then less students would choose to take their classes, and the department would not be able to show to the administration that they have lots of students. So those departments are essentially "bribing" students to take their classes by, in effect, promising them easier grades, and in many cases, an entire Berkeley degree that doesn't involve much work. Hence, I would contend that in many cases, these departments are indeed afraid to hand out bad grades because they would be hurting themselves in the process.

By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 06:10 pm: Edit

Sakky, here is where our opinions begin to differ as always. I, for one, dont believe that Berkeley is overflowing with lazy students. I dont even believe there is a substantial number of lazy students at Berkeley. Who cares though! You disagree and we cannot ever fully change each others minds so why bother?

I do agree that one should not get less than a C- if he gives at least a bit of effort in certain majors. This has to do with what I said about the average grades and what you said about it depending on the interpretation of what a bad grade is. I will say that it is an interesting theory you gave regarding the reasons why some majors give worse grades than others. That could be one possible explanation.

About subscribing to the notion of a public school’s duty, I still agree that this is at least partially true. I think that the more educated a person is, ceterus paribus, the more productive he will be. Even if he doesn’t want to do certain jobs, if he were to do them, he would probably do many of them better, ceterus paribus. I mean, on average, and ceterus paribus, this is true. The question you may want to tackle is if the marginal benefit of educating a person is less than its marginal cost. If you can prove this, then possibly you will have a point. If not, then why even educate anyone at the high school or elementary school level? May as well just teach him a trade that is in demand so that they can be productive and let him pay for his own education if he wants one. Californians pay some portion of UCs' budget in the form of taxes. Why shouldn’t a person be able to choose what major he wants? After all, if my taxes go to the fire department, so why shouldn’t I expect them to save my house if it were to go up in flames? Keep in mind that no matter what school a person comes from, there are certain majors that provide higher incomes than others. Usually, these majors tend to be a bit more difficult than other majors. So in essence, people are compensated for the difficulty of their major. I’m sure you will come up with some exception but exceptions don’t make the general rule.

By Jared (Jared) on Thursday, September 23, 2004 - 04:11 pm: Edit

hey going back to what i originally asked with a little change to it...

Can anyone compare Berkeley, Stanford, and Penn in terms of competitiveness of students, amount of work, and social scene? Thanks

By Sakky (Sakky) on Saturday, September 25, 2004 - 04:17 pm: Edit

Jared, I responded to your request in the Stanford section of CC.

Getting to shyboy's response. Again, I do believe that there are quite a few lazy students at Berkeley. But you did change my tack, if slightly. My point was not that Berkeley, as a whole, was overflowing with lazy students. Rather, my point was that certain majors at Berkeley are indeed overflowing with lazy students. This again comes down to what I said before - a lot of students who don't really want to study hard come into Berkeley and quickly realize that if they want to graduate without improving their attitudes, they should choose a major that allows them to get away with being lazy. And that's precisely what they do. In effect, Berkeley is saying "You don't want to study hard? That's OK, here are some majors that you can complete without having to do very much". In my opinion, and in the opinion of kryptic, Berkeley should not be doing that.

As to your third paragraph, I don't think you understood the gist of what I've been saying. To use your logic, an educated person may be able to do certain jobs better if he were to do them. Btu that's not the point. He doesn't want to do them. So it doesn't matter if he can do those jobs better if he doesn't want to do them in the first place.

Hence, the takehome point is that while the education itself may be a positive, what is a negative is the attitudes that the education engendered, and in particular, the attitude that an educated person is simply "too good" for certain jobs and that such jobs are beneath him, even if that person could do those jobs better. In short, we have to weigh the increased productivity that comes with the increased skills of education with the decreased productivity in the form of pride and arrogance, and hence decreased productivity, that comes with education.

In the case of certain highly productive skills like engineering, the positive aspects clearly outweigh the negative. A guy with a degree in engineering may feel that he's "too good" to be delivering pizza, but his engineering skills really are valuable in the market, and he will be gainfully employed as an engineer. On the other hand, a guy with a cheesepuff degree may also feel that he's "too good" to deliver pizza, but his degree does not have value in the market. So he can't get the kind of job he feels he deserves, and yet he won't consider taking a job that he feels to be beneath him, so he ends up sitting around at home living off his parent's money and doing nothing at all. This is a true story of a guy I know. In his case, the degree has actually hurt his overall productivity because his negatively changed personal attitudes after he received the degree overwhelm the benefits of his education.

Lest you think this is an isolated incident - again, let's look at the unemployment rates of young people in, say, Europe. In many European countries, the unemployment rate of educated young adults (meaning that they have a college degree) is actually higher than the unemployment rate of uneducated young adults. Sure, those educated young adults are probably highly productive, if they choose to work. But that's precisely the point - they have to choose to work. And apparently many of them don't. I am convinced that college education is a reason as to why they choose not to work. It's not that there are no jobs - after all, the uneducated young adults have lower unemployment rates, so obviously there are jobs available. But the jobs that are available are considered "not good enough" for the educated people, so instead of taking those jobs, they'd rather take nothing. It doesn't matter how productive you are if you choose not to work. Anything times zero is still zero. My point is that a college education can increase the chances that you will choose not to work.

The way that's different from education all the way up to the high school level is that I don't detect any pride and dignity problems associated with people at the high school level. I've never heard anybody say "Well, I'm a high school graduate, so that makes me too good to take a low-end job". But I hear that sort of thing all the time from college graduates. For some reason, pride and dignity are wrapped into the college degree in such a way that it makes college graduates feel that they are better than other people and in particular that they don't have to take certain jobs that other people have to take. This culminates to the point where many college graduates would rather take no job than take a job that is beneath their dignity. And like I said, anything times zero is still zero.

As to your question of why shouldn't you be allowed to choose whatever major you want - hey, take it up with kryptic, because he has made an argument, and quite an eloquent one, as to why not. Basically, you have to ask yourself why is it that Californians pay taxes into public colleges in the first place. The purpose, at least in the eyes of people like kryptic, is to improve the state economy. And the fact is, certain majors are more helpful to the economy than others, and certain majors in particular are not very helpful at all to the economy. So if you follow kryptic's logic, then you have to agree that people who are using a state subsidy should not be allowed to choose whatever major they want, but only a major that will help the economy. After all, that's why the subsidy is there in the first place. If you want to major in something that does not help the economy, then you shouldn't be allowed to use the subsidy.

My take on the issue is slightly different. My take is that everybody in California has to pay taxes into UC, but not everybody in California gets to go to UC. So it's not the case that you and everybody else pays taxes to the fire department, so you should expect a fireman to come and save your burning house. In this case, everybody in the state has to pay to UC, but only certain people get to go to UC - that's like everybody in the state pays the fire department, but the fire department only services certain people. The bottom line is that the benefits of the UC subsidy accrue only to a few people - those people who actually go to UC.

After all, ask yourself this. Can you walk up to an admissions officer at UCSF and say that because you're a Californian who pays state taxes, you should therefore automatically be allowed to study medicine at UCSF Medical School? Can you go to Berkeley's Boalt Law School and say that because you pay state taxes, that means you should automatically be allowed to study law at Boalt? Can you just walk up to the admissions committee at the Berkeley EECS department and demand to be allowed to study EE because you've paid California taxes? No of course not. What that shows is that the benefit of the state taxes that go to UC really only accrue to a few people. Hence, it's a false argument that just because you pay state taxes, you should be allowed to major in what you want. Again, not everybody who pays California state taxes gets to study medicine at a UC medical school.

By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Saturday, September 25, 2004 - 06:29 pm: Edit

Sakky, believe it or not, I believe a lot of what you are saying is true. In fact, I only disagree with a few points.

You mentioned a friend of yours that refuses to work because he has a degree. That’s fine. The question we must ask is if the labor force participation rate is lower for educated people than for uneducated people. Ideally, it would be better to compare the labor force participation rate of the easy major people over time with that of the uneducated. If the former is higher than the latter and the data is truly reliable then I would say that perhaps those majors should be discontinued from the partial subsidization that they currently receive. If not, well then even you would have a hard time defending your current stance on the issue. I don’t have that kind of data though and don’t really desire to look for it. My guess is that there is at worst no significant difference. Like I said earlier, those easy major people generally find jobs that pay less than the hard major people. In my opinion, they SHOULD get paid less. In the past you have shown some familiarity with economic theory so I feel comfortable bringing up how the signaling theory can be applied in this situation.

You mentioned that people cannot simply attend Berkeley if they are California residents. Of course they cant. The point that you are failing to see is that just about anyone can get a public education if they want to. Sure not everyone can attend Berkeley or UCLA but maybe they can attend UCSD. If not, maybe they can attend UCD. What about UCSC? The Cal State system? Don’t forget the abundance of Community Colleges in California. The point is that tax payers in California have an abundance of public school choices. Surely one of these schools is an academic “fit.” Only the brightest California students can get into Berkeley or UCLA but even a person of below average intelligence can get an education in California. The signaling theory can apply here too.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Saturday, September 25, 2004 - 07:30 pm: Edit

Since you too have displayed familiarity with economic principles, I am not uncomfortable in debating with you on economic semantics.

The problem is, I don't think that traditional economics can be applied here at all. The problem with traditional economics is that it assumes that all market participants are completely rational and discounts the importance of psychology.

To wit, it is not economically rational for a person to prefer to take no job rather than take a job that he considers to be beneath him. That is so economically irrational to the point of ludicrity. But that is precisely what many people will do.

Now to be fair, some of the fault lies not with the individual, but rather with American society. Certain jobs are considered embarassing by society - like any job that involves working with your hands and/or wearing a paper hat. These are jobs that American society looks down upon. No doubt, these are not the greatest jobs in the world. And I suppose it's doubly embarrassing to be a graduate from a school with a big name, like Berkeley, and then have to work at one of those jobs. So some people will decide that rather than taking those jobs, they will sit around at home doing nothing, because society considered that to be less shameful. "There's no shame in a paying job" my mother always used to tell me. Sadly, I found out that that's not really true. American society considers it taking certain jobs as a college graduate as more shameful than taking no job at all. So I agree that some of the fault lies with society.

The point I'm making here is that a college education is not an unalloyed positive. Some things about a college education are actually a negative. And in particular, the attitudes that a college education engenders towards certain kinds of jobs, especially anything involving working with your hands and/or wearing a paper hat are a negative. Whether the positive aspects that have to do with graduating with a degree in a creampuff major outweigh the negatives is an empirical question that ought to be studied. And even if the positives do outweigh the negatives, that still leaves open the question as to how to go about reducing the negatives or increasing the positives.


Now about your second paragraph, unfortunately your logic contains a gaping weakness in that it leaves you wide open to a demagogic polemical attack. If the purpose of state taxation is to increase the availability of education to state residents, then you leave yourself with no defense against a person who advocates taking that argument to its logical conclusion and completely defunding all of UC and all of the Cal States and putting all of that money into open-admissions community colleges instead. You have no defense against this because you can't be for both wide access and restrictive access at the same time. If you say that the purpose of state taxes going towards higher education is to spread higher education to all residents, then somebody is going to say that that funding should then go only towards that part of higher education that really and truly is available to all state residents - meaning only the CC's. Somebody is going to ask the question why is the state funding schools like Berkeley or UCSF that aren't available to all residents of the state. They will demand that those places be completely defunded.

By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Saturday, September 25, 2004 - 11:15 pm: Edit

Sakky, I still don’t really totally disagree with you on what you are fundamentally saying based on your previous posts but I am going to respond to the things you are quite wrong about.

“The problem is, I don't think that traditional economics can be applied here at all. The problem with traditional economics is that it assumes that all market participants are completely rational and discounts the importance of psychology.”

There are a number of reasons why you are wrong here. First of all, I wasn’t speaking of plain old “traditional economics.” I was specifically talking about the “signaling theory” in which the degree that a person has sends a signal to the market place that he can handle certain jobs/tasks. The easy major people don’t exactly send this signal. That is why they usually get paid less. Secondly, even if I was talking about “traditional economics” we must keep in mind that we don’t put everything into an economic model because it would only complicate things. We could put as many variables into an economic model that we want. In fact, I have studied models that incorporate just what we are talking about. Have you ever heard of the term “reservation wage?” I didn’t just make this up. This is the lowest wage an individual will work for. This can change over time and circumstances (e.g. experience, education, endowment of stock of wealth, economic climate, etc.). The point is that what you and I are talking about has indeed been looked at by economists.

You claim that my logic has “gaping” weakness. I don’t see any weakness at all. Did you know that you and I have paid for freeways, lights, roads, and bridges that we will never use? My house has never caught one fire but if it did then I have the fire department to be there in case it does. In fact, I have almost no control over what my taxes pay for but I still must pay them. California residents have the opportunity to get an education if they want to. That’s the point I am trying to make. If I am not smart enough to go to UCLA or Berkeley then I can still find a place where I am smart enough to attend. If I am not smart enough to get into ANY public university, which carries a pretty low probability, then I am either not college material or must find a private school to accommodate me. No one who pays taxes “deserves” to go to Berkeley because the fact is that most people are not smart enough to attend Berkeley. The great thing about the California public educational system is that everyone has an oportunity to get an education. So yes! I can be an advocat of both restrictive and wide access to education.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Sunday, September 26, 2004 - 12:50 am: Edit

I understood your point on economic signalling, but it doesn't deal with the issue at hand. The issue at hand is not whether lazier people who tend to go into easy majors are signalling to the marketplace what their work ethic and capabilities are. That's not the real issue.


Yet in fact the real issue is not the signalling itself but rather the difference between what those people think they're signalling (i.e. that they're Berkeley graduates and therefore deserve to get good jobs and are now "too good" to take low-end jobs) and what they are actually signalling (they they majored in something easy and therefore the market won't reward them for that). This is a major explanatory factor of those guys thinking it's better to take no job rather than take a job that they consider to be beneath them. Hence the spectacle of college graduates sitting around unemployed.

Hence the real problem is one of psychology and sociology, not economics. These people for the most part don't understand that they are signalling by virtue of their major that they aren't very hard working. They don't know or don't want to know that that's happening. What they want to believe is that because they are college graduates, they no longer have to take certain jobs. And society feeds off this and makes people think that it's somehow better to take no job at all rather than to take certain low-end jobs. Again, it's really psychology and sociology at play here, not economics.

Economics dictates why those guys can't get good jobs, I agree. But economics doesn't dictate why they don't take the low-end jobs. In fact, economics would dictate that those people should be taking low-end jobs, when they are not. It is psychology and sociology that dictate why they don't take the low-end jobs and why they remain unemployed.

And no, I am afraid that your second paragraph still carries the exact same weakness as before. Whether you actually use every single freeway and road and bridge in the state is irrelevant. The fact is, you could use it. And so could every other Californian. That is why there is political consensus that Californians should contribute taxes to build those freeways and roads and bridges. It is the political consensus that is important. Nobody says that you can only use a certain freeway only if you are highly academically qualified. Everybody in the state could use the freeway.

Universities are different. From a political standpoint, it is a widespread belief among many Californians that elite universities are simply out of their reach. Whether that's really true or not is not the question here. I think you and I both agree that anybody could get to any school if he simply worked hard enough. But the point is not the truth itself, but rather what is the perception of the truth among the people. And the simple fact is, a lot of people in California believe that they have no chance to ever get into an elite university. And so if many people believe that, then you are bound to have them stand up and ask why are their tax dollars flowing to public universities that they believe they have no chance of getting into? That's the gaping weakness. From a political standpoint, your argument makes the UC's, and in particular, the UC graduate schools highly vulnerable to this sort of populist attack.

The fact is, funding for the Berkeley is a losing issue from a purely political standpoint. Don't believe me? Well consider this. Imagine if you had a referendum and asked every Californian would you rather cut off state funding to Berkeley (not the CalStates or the CC's, or even the other UC's, but just Berkeley) and have that money returned to you in the form of a tax refund? I think that that referendum would pass easily. Or, if you think that that referendum is unfair (because you think that everybody always wants a tax refund), then imagine another referendum where you ask do you want to cut off state funding to Berkeley and redirect that money to the community colleges? Again, I am sure that this referendum would pass.

Why is that? The answer is what I said before -most people in the state believe they have no chance to ever get into Berkeley and so they then wonder why their tax dollars are going to support an institution that they have no chance of getting into. Now again, whether it's really true that they have no chance of getting into Berkeley is not the issue. The issue is what they believe to be true, not what is actually true. And what they believe to be true is that they have no chance, and so quite a lot of them would either rather have their money back or have it redirected to a place that they do think they have a chance (i.e. a CC).

But the point I'm making is that to base your arguments on political reasons is most dangerous and is the source of the gaping weakness. And the reason is simple - the elite public schools do not have strong grassroots political support. In other words, if you say that you support widespread education, then you have nothing to say to counteract somebody who stipulates that we should support REALLY widespread education by taking all the UC money and pouring it into community colleges, because CC's are the most widespread education of all.

The point is, you can't be a little bit pregnant, and you can't be for both restrictive and wide admissions at the same time. Once you start going down the road of advocating wide access, you've fallen down the slippery slope where the only logical stop is to have completely open admissions. Every time somebody applies to UC and gets denied and ends up going to a CalState, that person is going to want to remove funding from the UC's and redirect it to the Calstate. And every time somebody applies to a Calstate and is rejected and has to go to a CC, that person is going to want to remove funding from the Calstates and redirect it to a CC.

By Stanfordnualum (Stanfordnualum) on Sunday, September 26, 2004 - 01:03 am: Edit

Wow..I don't know how Jared's post spiral into the lengthy discussion above. Anyway, Jared, Stanford/Berkeley both have top-5 poli-sci department whereas UPenn is in distant 40th-ish. Regardless of what people say about the workload/competitiveness in general, it's likey neither Stanford/Berkeley would give you easy time if you are gonna pick this major. Stanford's grade inflation may take good chunk of pressure off but there's still pressure to keep up with the talented classmates (I think Stanford's students are more talented than UPenn's esp for this major) and to complete all the assignments.

By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Sunday, September 26, 2004 - 05:32 pm: Edit

Sakky, I think we should put this discussion to rest. We have just about did a 360 and came back to the original argument of weather or not certain majors should be subsidized or not. Don’t you remember that I actually agreed that we should NOT partially subsidize certain majors if in fact it were true that the cost was greater than the benefit? We agree on this point don’t we? However, I still stand by my belief that we can have a well-working system of public education in which we can have very selective schools (UCLA and Berkeley), not selective schools (Community Colleges), and every thing in between. Everyone can get an education in this system but at the same time, everyone has there place based on theoretical ability. And you cannot use the enticements of tax rebates as a form of “proof” that the system doesn’t work. Doesn’t everybody want to minimize their individual tax bill while getting the most public goods possible? Besides, I doubt the individual tax rebates would be that great anyway but that is beside the point.

I need proof that certain majors actually harm us before I would be quick to get rid of them. That is the major difference I see between our arguments. You don’t want to have easy majors in public schools without proof that they are harmful while I need some type of evidence. When I say something is harmful I mean that the benefits are less than the costs. I also don’t think that the benefits are strictly pecuniary. For simplicity, and because things such as reduction of crime and a more intelligent society are hard to quantify, I would settle for simple monetary evidence that subsidizing such programs are harmful.

P.S.

I don’t really give much props to people who went to good schools and majored in easy subjects either. I never have!

By Sakky (Sakky) on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 - 04:00 pm: Edit

Your argument still does not hold water to those people who would rather take the notion of open admissions to its logical conclusion. Case in point. You stand up and you talk about how state taxation should be used to provide higher education to the public. Then your demagogic colleague says, exactly right, so we should completely defund all the UC's and CalStates and redirect all of that money towards open-admissions CC's. Either that or we should make all the UC's and all the CalStates open admission. What is your rock of defense to stave that tide? In other words, if you believe that tax money should be used for public higher education, where is your logical leg to stand on when your demagogic colleague says, fine, then that money should go to ALL of the public, not just certain members. There is no middle ground that is logically defensible. Either you believe in higher education funding for the public, in which case you should believe that ALL of the public should be funded, not just certain members, or you don't believe in higher education funding for the public at all. You can't have it both ways.

Case in point. I agree with you that any member of the public can get higher education of some kind from the state. The question is how well funded that education is. What are you going to tell somebody in California who can only get into a CC, when he sees that those students in UC are getting a more subsidized education, because California directs more state subsidies to the UC system than to the community college system on a per-capita basis. In other words, how are you going to convince him that those UC students are deserving of more subidies than he is, when those subsidies come out of tax dollars that that CC student is paying for? Are you really going to convince him that that's fair? Of course not.

And that's why the situation is a political loser from a democratic standpoint, because the fact is, there are always going to be Californians who want to get into UC but can't get in. So if it was up to a state referendum, you and I both know that UC would lose bigtime. There simply is no groundswell of political support to take tax money from all Californians and redirect to only a minority of Californians (those who go to UC). Hence, because there is no grassroots political support for UC, you can't really say that UC truly serves "the people" - for if it really did serve the people, then why wouldn't the people support it politically?

Now does that mean that UC should be defunded? No of course not. It just means that UC can't claim to have the support of majority the people, and that people who support UC can't really say that they are truly in favor of education for all of the people. So let's quit using this false shibboleth that the UC system exists to help all Californians. It is far far more accurate to say that it helps only a minority of Californians.

And besides, your last post betrayed a profoundly interesteing tack. You say that it is up to me to prove that something is harmful before it is not funded. Woah now. So the burden on proof is on me, is it? Really? So basically, unless I can show that something is harmful, the state should fund it? If that's truly your philosophy, then so be it, but I vociferously diagree. I would argue that the burden of proof is on you - in other words, unless the state can prove that something is beneficial, then it should not be funded. This is taxpayer money here that should not be thrown around willy-nilly. What if a business operated in that way? What if a business said that we are going to spend money on things unless those things can be shown to be harmful? That business would be shunned by investors and probably go bankrupt, and rightfully so.

The "default" investment choice of a business is to do nothing, and only if something can be shown to be profitable will a business invest in that choice. I believe the same attitude should be adopted by public institutions. You don't just go around throwing taxpayer money at something unless you have been shown it's harmful. The default choice should also be to do nothing. The burden of proof should be on the new programs to prove that they are beneficial.

By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 - 06:17 pm: Edit

No no no Sakky, are you losing your touch? That isnt the sakky I know! The burden of proof is not on either you nor me. We are not changing anything. We are simply discussing our opinions on a discussion board. Therefore, my job is to talk about my opinion. I don’t make political rules. I don’t control the budget and neither do you. I never said that the burden of proof fell on you. I simply restated your argument from the way I understand it. If I got it wrong then why don’t you restate it.

My argument:

If subsidizing a specific program is found to be harmful, then the subsidies should cease.

Your argument (from what I understand it to be):

Certain programs, weather or not they have been proven to be harmful, should not be subsidized.

If you want to discard your argument in favor of mine, then go ahead. After all, mine is better.

“Your argument still does not hold water to those people who would rather take the notion of open admissions to its logical conclusion. Case in point. You stand up and you talk about how state taxation should be used to provide higher education to the public. Then your demagogic colleague says, exactly right, so we should completely defund all the UC's and CalStates and redirect all of that money towards open-admissions CC's. Either that or we should make all the UC's and all the CalStates open admission. What is your rock of defense to stave that tide? In other words, if you believe that tax money should be used for public higher education, where is your logical leg to stand on when your demagogic colleague says, fine, then that money should go to ALL of the public, not just certain members. There is no middle ground that is logically defensible. Either you believe in higher education funding for the public, in which case you should believe that ALL of the public should be funded, not just certain members, or you don't believe in higher education funding for the public at all. You can't have it both ways.”

No, again you are wrong. I still stand by my original opinion. I can have my opinion anyway I want to have it. Probably 95% of the people who want to attend a CSU or UC are intellectually capable of handling the work. It is not a question of denial of admission. It is a question of at what level can a person handle the academics. Not many people can handle the academic rigors of UCLA or Cal. For those who cannot, there are other alternatives. It is not that they are denied education; it is that they are placed where they belong. They are still entitled to a public education but they ultimately attend the school of their choice given their limitations.

You can say that my opinion must be black or white but I say it can be any shade of gray I want it to be.

By Eliteconnect (Eliteconnect) on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 - 10:08 pm: Edit

It's sad to see Sakky and Shyboy completely derail this thread and enter into a neverending debate that has nothing to do with what the original poster was asking about.

GETTING BACK TO THE OP's QUESTION: According to the National Research Council rankings, Berkeley has the #2 political science department in the country. This is based on faculty quality, which is gauged through the # of citations of faculty members in peer-reviewed academic journals/faculty member in the department. Obviously, they had to to adjust for different faculty sizes between universities when they factored this into account. They also did a peer assessment survey of academic reputation and polled the researchers, deans, and academics across the nation.

The fact that Berkeley and Stanford are both ranked significantly higher than UPenn in political science doesn't necessarily mean you'll get an unequivocally better undergraduate education at these schools. Remember that the departmental rankings are GRADUATE rankings and are designed for graduate students. However, undergrads can use these rankings to gauge faculty quality in **insert major here** across different universities. Certainly, Berkeley and Stanford have stronger faculties in political science than UPenn.

However, we should also discuss the quality of your undergraduate education overall. Your courseload won't just be restricted to political science classes, will it? Most universities have distribution requirements which will force you to take classes outside of your major. The student/faculty ratios at these schools are vastly different. Penn can offer you a MUCH lower student/faculty ratio than Berkeley can. This will definitely matter later on when you ask professors for letters of recommendation for **insert graduate/law/medical school** and these professors don't even remember your name.

You can receive individual attention at Berkeley, you just have to be very assertive about it. Professors have office hours and you'd be encouraged to frequent these office hours in order to receive individual attention, inquire about research opportunities, etc. But keep in mind that receiving face time with professors would be MUCH easier at Penn or Stanford.

Alumni network...this factor comes into play if you plan on careers in business/finance/politics. You want to benefit from a very well-connected alumni network that can serve as a resource for jobs. The Berkeley Alumni Network is VERY weak nationwide and is also pretty pathetic in California (which is sad). If you go to the Career Center at Berkeley after graduating and ask to be connected with an alumnus in your prospective industry, the overweight, overworked, middle-aged woman with the thick-rimmed glasses sitting behind the desk will point to the computers and tell you to log onto "CalJobs" and start a search. This is just the same thing as MonsterTrak, only streamlined for Berkeley. You will receive little to no networking from alumni and the Career Center will most certainly NOT go out of its way to connect you with a job.

Private schools, USC comes to mind here, have the appropriate resources and WILL bend over backwards to make sure their graduates are employed. I'm sure UPenn and Stanford can provide vastly better alumni networking resources than Berkeley.

Cost, this is definitely a factor. As an out-of-state student, you will be paying $23,000+/year to attend Berkeley. This is definitely comparable to the tuition/costs at Upenn and Stanford. Do you really want to pay this much to attend an out-of-state public university? Do you want to be 1/23,000 undergraduates? Faculty quality matters MUCH more for graduate students than it does for undergraduate students. Keep that in mind when people start pimping out the political science rankings here. I wish you the best of luck. If you have any further questions about the political science curriculum at Berkeley, feel free to ask me because I'm a 3rd year political science major here.

Sincerely,
Eliteconnect

By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Thursday, September 30, 2004 - 01:55 am: Edit

Eliteconnect, in retrospect, I'm glad I contributed the small amount I did in making your life a bit sadder.

By Eliteconnect (Eliteconnect) on Thursday, September 30, 2004 - 03:07 am: Edit

That's good to see.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Friday, October 01, 2004 - 01:12 am: Edit

Eliteconnect, if shyboy13 and I want to talk about something, even if it is not directly related to the original post, what is it to you? Why do you care so much? If two people want to talk about something, then why are you butting in? You want to talk about things that are really sad - I think it's really sad to see that you feel the need to go around telling other people what they can or cannot talk about. If you want to participate in what shyboy13 and I are talking about, then by all means, do so. But if you don't, then mind your own damn business. What does it have to do with you? Shyboy13 and I don't go around telling you what you can and cannot talk about, so what gives you the right to tell us?


Now, again, relating to shyboy13, at the possibility of 'offending' eliteconnect's yearning need to go around telling other people what to do, let me rebut.

*The context of 'getting rid' of certain programs.

Well, look at it this way. UC has instituted many many programs that you must agree did not undergo any sort of rigorous cost-benefit analysis before implementation. I am not aware of UC going around studying whether certain programs were net beneficial before going around instituting them. So shall I take the present state of affairs as cast in stone? If so, why? If I say that Berkeley should get rid of a certain program, and your position is that that's wrong because I haven't proved harm, well, my retort is that I am not aware that that program ever proved to be of any net benefit in the first place before the program is implemented. So if I am 'wrong', I am no more 'wrong' than UC is today.

The bottom line is this. If you believe that the burden of proof is on nobody, then you must agree that UC has been wrong in the past to have instituted programs without demonstrating a net benefit, and that they continue to be wrong today because they still have no policy to demonstrate any net benefit before instituting a program.


*Now, about your opinion.

I never said that you couldn't hold any opinion you want. Hey, a person is allowed to believe that the Earth is flat, if he wants. The question is now whether you're allowed to hold any opinion you want, but whether your opinion is going to be defensible and acceptable to certain people. That's a different question entirely.

Case in point - you can believe whatever you want about the structure about UC. But good luck in convincing the people I've been referring to about the correctness of your position. As I'm sure you're aware, the fact that you might believe certain things about UC and the CalStates does not mean that the majority of Californians find those beliefs to be convincing. In particular, those Californians who don't believe that they can get into Berkeley (whether they are right or wrong in believing that), are simply not going to listen to your riffs about how it is "correct" for state taxes to be directed to Berkeley. In their eyes, whether it's right or wrong for them to think this, the only thing they see is that their tax dollars are going to something that they believe they will never get any benefit from. Hence, the political unpopularity of state funding for Berkeley. Again, whether you think they're right or wrong, you must agree that that's what they believe, and you must also agree that they're not going to find your arguments to be convincing.

Now, again, does that mean that Berkeley should be defunded? Again, no. But what it does mean is that nobody can really claim that Berkeley, and the rest of UC is funded by state taxes simply because the majority of the public really wants it to be so. In fact, I would argue that the majority of Californians does not want it to be so. Hence, nobody can really claim that funding Berkeley is done at the "will" of the people.

To summarize, you can hold any position you want. But whether the majority of the public is going to find that position to be convincing is a different question entirely. That doesn't mean that your policy is necessarily wrong, but it does mean that your policy is not done at the behest of the public. That's the point I've been trying to make.

By Eliteconnect (Eliteconnect) on Friday, October 01, 2004 - 05:16 am: Edit

"Eliteconnect, if shyboy13 and I want to talk about something, even if it is not directly related to the original post, what is it to you? Why do you care so much? If two people want to talk about something, then why are you butting in? You want to talk about things that are really sad - I think it's really sad to see that you feel the need to go around telling other people what they can or cannot talk about. If you want to participate in what shyboy13 and I are talking about, then by all means, do so. But if you don't, then mind your own damn business. What does it have to do with you? Shyboy13 and I don't go around telling you what you can and cannot talk about, so what gives you the right to tell us?"

This just makes absolutely no sense. If Person A takes the time to create Thread X about Topic X...doesn't he expect the POSTS in Thread X to relate to Topic X? Doesn't that mean that we (the other posters of the board that are commenting in Thread X) have an obligation to actually write posts RELATED to Topic X?? If this is NOT the purpose of creating different threads for different topics, then why not have one huge thread that covers ALL topics and just spans 328479837432 posts because tons of different posters are posting about many disparate issues? Why have separate threads for different topics altogether? Why not mesh everything together?

I never said there was anything wrong with you and Shyboy debating about all the garbage you guys debate about...but why do it IN THIS THREAD when this unsuspecting high school student is just asking about the political science undergraduate programs at Berkeley, Stanford, and Penn? Why not create a separate thread and debate in that thread? Why hijack this thread and completely derail it? Are your posts doing anything to help the original poster? Again, there is nothing wrong with you and Shyboy debating about all that crap...but why do it here? Believe me, I don't want to "butt in" on your "debate"...I just pointed out that you (intentionally or untintentionally) were hijacking the thread. Again, debate ALL YOU want...just make your own thread for it and don't hijack the threads of others.

**wrings his hands like he just threw out the trash**

***Steering back to the original poster's concerns****

My recommendation would be to be apply to Penn and Stanford and get Berkeley out of the picture altogether. Trust me, you don't want to pay $23,000+/year to attend a large, public university with 23,000 undergraduates. If you're really hardcore about political science, you can finish your BA at Stanford or Penn and apply to Berkeley's graduate program in political science. The GRADUATE schools here are amazing and are easily on par with Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc. In fact, many of Berkeley's graduate programs are ranked higher than the equivalent programs at the aformentioned schools. But for undergraduate work, I think you'd have a much better overall undergrad experience at either Penn or Stanford. Good luck to you.

By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Friday, October 01, 2004 - 09:07 pm: Edit

Eliteconnect, roughly 75% of your post was not related to the original post. Dont you know anything about digressions or the way discussions evolve. You are guilty of this also if this is some sort of crime. Sakky and I aren’t the only ones "guilty" of this either. Not only is this prevalent in everyday conversations but it happens in virtually every discussion of any substantial length on this site. Calm down, it is only a discussion board.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Sunday, October 03, 2004 - 08:22 pm: Edit

Eliteconnect, as far as I know, Jared has had his question fully answered by both myself and shyboy13. I answered Jared's question in the Stanford category (he asked the same question in multiple categories). But in any case, I don't see him coming back and asking more questions or asking me to clarify in any way.

But the point is this. If Jared came back and asked somebody to stay on topic, that might be one thing. After all, he is the one who asked the original question. But if he doesn't have any problem with me and shyboy13, then WTF do you care so much? What is it to you?