A 3.46 gets you into Berkeley these days? Wow... talk about lowering standards.... I guess Berkeley isn't the same school it was 10 years ago when I was applying to colleges. Back then Cal and UCLA were the hardest of the UC schools to get into and not that I would have applied to Cal (not an SF fan) but I don't think I would have even bothered even though I had a 3.9 GPA with only 'decent' SAT scores...sheesh.... I even had a chick in my class claim she was Puerto Rican just so that she would get in as a minority.... Unfortunately it actually worked for her although when the white, Jewish, had a grand-mother who once lived in Puerto Rico thereby justifying her claim to actually being Puerto Rican, got flyers and letters from the latin club, I'm guessing she didn't go join them.....
You need to actually read the article and some of the earlier posts . . . the fact of the matter is that these 7,600 "applicants" were applicants to the entire UC system and not specifically CAL-Berkeley. They had an average GPA of 3.46 The incoming Freshman at CAL had an average GPA in high school of 3.76 and an average SAT score of 1330. Got it?
That's no doubt true - but the cuts at UC didn't apply to CSU. Forget about the JCs for a second. Couldn't they go to a CSU campus for a couple years? Not all of these 7600 kids in question wanted to go to UCB - that number is across all UC campuses and not all of them were going into engineering or hard science. I know there's a mythic cache about UCB (especially on the part of those who went there) - much of it deserved, but also more about the junior/senior/graduate levels than the freshman/sophmore. Realistically wouldn't some of the 23 CSU campuses be reasonably comparable for these kids freshman and sophmore courses - especially since there is probably a large number of them that were NOT planning on going into UCB's engineering program? Obviously it depends on the specific program of interest, but even for engineering and scientific curricula, there are some pretty good programs available at some of the CSUs (e.g., CalPoly). And let's face it - the freshman and sophmore classes aren't even being taught by the "world class" faculty UCB and the other UCs like to cite - graduate assistants teach most of those classes. For example, for an EE major, are the graduate assistants and class work for Physics 1AB/2AB, Chemistry 1AB/2AB, Math 1AB/2AB, Biology 1A, Statistics 101, Literature 1, Psych 101, Sociology 1, etc. going to really be grossly different?
Yeah, got that. I thought you meant that they had initially been accepted but were now getting rejection letters. My take from the article was that they did indeed send rejection letters to them (as they do to tens of thousands each year) and that in prior years they would probably gotten in. I didn't see it spelled out, but presumably this means that in order to effect the 10% cut in enrollment they raised the eligibility standards. Not sure how they would have done it otherwise. If it is a case that they raised the bar for entry (and that meant that 7600 kids across all the UC campuses's ~75,000 freshman entrants were not accepted this year but would have been accepted under last year's standards), it's kind of a so what in my book. You've got to set the eligibility bar somewhere. And if part of the method for setting the bar is to achieve a certain total enrollment level based on available subsidy funding - that seems like a rational thing to do.
True. As far as I know, this latest issue does in fact effect CSU applicants as well. I believe that there was a 9% CSU system reduction. It may have actually been less, perhaps only 4%. I'm not sure. But there was also a 30% hike in tuition as well, voted in last Summer, just like the UC Regents. Here is a pretty interesting article written last August about the Budget Crisis in Calfornia with regards to the UC and CSU system: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/education/8132/print/8132education.html
A 3.76 GPA/1330 SAT combo average seems too low for a $20K+/yr school - especially one that's being subsidized 65% by taxpayers.
Right now, revenues from "card rooms" and Indian Casino Gaming produces roughly $8.4 billion dollars in the state of California. Yet, California does not share in any of the "take" while Connecticut and New York share in 25%. I believe that in an effort to make-up for budget shortfalls, Gov. Schwarzenegger will undboutedly be tapping into this resource before too long.
I must not understand your point. I was saying that a 3.76 GPA/1330 SAT combo seemed too low a threshold for a $20K+/yr school, especially one that taxpayer dollars are being used to subsidize 65% of the tuition for. Couple reasons for saying that is that (1) Berkeley's only about $4K/yr less than CalTech which has much higher GPA/SAT minimums and (2) 1330 is just such a medium score. For that kind of tuition, I'd have thought an SAT average at least closer to 1400 would be in order. But that's just my opinion.
waggie, I give you credit for having a reasonable proposal. I find it frustrating that governments at all levels never have to face the financial discipline that private businesses do. The first, and last, option is simply raise taxes. Under no circumstances can any employee be let go. If taxes can't be raised, then they never seem to prioritize but rather look to cut whatever will cause the most upset with voters. Here I think it is clear that the UC system is lavishly subsidized by the state, which cannot afford to continue it. A reasonable response would be to raise prices and cut expenses, and thereby try to serve the same number of students. Instead, they are spending huge amounts on administrators and taking the budget cuts out on students. There is another issue here, which is cost accounting. It's not clear to me how much they actually save by reducing the number of students, since most of the costs are fixed. I mean, if you have 5 less students in a 100 student class, you still have the same expenses. I have no idea what the marginalcost of an adiitional student is, but I would expect it to be small.