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Is there such a clear-cut restriction for students transferring into L&S? I've always found it to be kind of ridiculous to kick students out if they can't complete the work in eight semesters ESPECIALLY considering that there's a large amount of classes required for engineering degrees and MANY of those classes simply CAN'T be found at community colleges.
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Yes, there's something called the major cap. Basically, you can stay in L&S for 9 semesters, but if you're staying for 9 or more semesters, the semester in which you exceed 130 units will be your last. So, let's say that you finished 115 units in your 8 semesters, and then take 13 units in your 9th semester, and 13 in your 10th semester. Since your 10th semester is the one in which you exceed 130 units, you can't sign up for an 11th semester.
Of course, you may petition to get around this rule if you need a class to graduate or something. They might give it to you or have you do it at Berkeley Extension.
The problem with letting students stay to complete their degrees is, in the past, the rules were a lot more relaxed, and many students stayed for a 5th year, 6th, year, or longer. Unfortunately, a good number of those students either cannot make up their mind on a major, keep switching, and take forever to graduate, or they are simply lazy. There are some majors at Berkeley that can only be referred to as "fluff" majors, where you can get by the classes by doing very little work. Combine this with the fact that you can take 3 classes per semester and stretch out your education, meant students can sit around, drink alcohol and smoke weed all day, not go to class, and basically putting off the real world and milking Berkeley for all its worth. That's a problem when you have a large university with limited resources for its huge number of students. Every student that stays for a 5th year or 6th year means they have to reject a potential admit to Berkeley. Of course, for political reasons, Berkeley can't reject too many students, so they have to admit more students, which strains resources and create tons of problems like waitlists, housing issues, etc. It's not pretty.
Of course in a perfect world, students can take as long as they want to finish their degree, Berkeley can admit everyone, and there are no spacing/monetary constraints. But since we have to work with all these limitations, we have to consider trade-offs. Do we admit more freshmen, or let more students take a 5th year to finish a degree?
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to fulfill the R&C req...ppl said that german R1B is easy but i don't speak german...and i don't necessarily want to learn about the german culture.
is asian american studies easy?
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German R1B does not require you to speak German. It's a class on German literature, but everything is in English. I have heard that it's pretty easy and even got one of my friends to start taking German. But, if you're not interested in German culture, there are many, many other classes you can take to fulfill that requirement. Asian American Studies is generally easy, but I know people who've taken Asian American Studies classes that almost killed them. It varies from class to class. The best thing to do is, go to L&S's website and look up what classes can fulfill R1B, look them up at schedule.berkeley.edu, see who's teaching it in the upcoming semester, then go to ratemyprofessors.com to check out what people have to say about that professor. It's not a short process, I know, but no pain no gain.
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