<p>The explanation seems to be simple: Cal Poly is the most heavily technical-centric public school in the state. The school name is California Polytechnic after all. Berkeley’s salary figures are dragged down by the larger contingent of lower-paid humanities and social science majors. </p>
<p>Now, perhaps the point is that Berkeley should not offer so many of those lower-paid majors. In this day and age of constrained state budgets and UC funding, I have often times wondered whether tax dollars are being judiciously utilized to subsidize educational programs that seem to provide low economic benefit for the state. While those programs can still be offered, the question is whether they should continue to be subsidized by the taxpayer when state budgets are under severe stress. {After all, how many more Peace and Conflict Studies graduates does the state really need?} </p>
<p>But for the purposes of this thread, that’s neither here nor there. The point is to simply explain why Cal Poly apparently seems to have a higher overall starting salary than does Cal, when calculated across the entire student bodies.</p>
<p>I’d rather that Berkeley cease to increase the student intake and gradually decrease it to have a maximum of 10k undergrad student population (freshmen and transfers combined) rather than abolish some majors. Some majors at Berkeley are good feeders to law schools, med schools and other postgrad programs.</p>
<p>Cal Poly has a higher percentage in “careerist” majors like engineering and business than UC Berkeley, where a larger percentage of students choose majors like biology, various humanities, and various social studies.</p>
<p>Major by major, the career surveys indicate that Cal Poly graduates have lower pay but better job placement rates than UC Berkeley graduates of the same major.</p>
<p>What do you mean by this? No specific major is required or recommended for pre-law or pre-med students (although certain majors are popular among such students).</p>
<p>As with some of the advantages offered by Cal Poly over UCs, it has litany of attributes. Attributes such as highest undergraduate starting salary over all other public California universities, including Cal. #4 ranked undergraduate architecture school in the US</p>
<p>What I meant was I am not for the abolition of some courses or programs, which sakky was trying to imply due to having low ROI (in the point of the graduates). Some of those BA programs at Cal serve as pre-law or pre-med programs instead of the rigid and more demanding eng’g programs. That’s just one reason. Another is, some graduates fo those programs actually proceed to postgrad and specialize in the field making Cal the number 1 producer of postgrad students in the whole US. And, lastly, Cal isn’t a specialize school like Caltech but a multi-university like Harvard.</p>
Sorry; but I don’t buy that claim. The data don’t say what really happened to those who did not respond to the Cal career placement survey, as well as, they do not tell what percentage of those graduates who went into startups, found their own company or become budding entrepreneurs who later reap millions of dollars when their companies prosper.</p>
I was actually saying to not mind the EECS when making a comparison to The Cal Poly CS program. Cal’s BACS data alone would already suggest that Cal’s CS program, regardless of its degree classification (BA or BS) is a more valuable qualification and can command more renumeration from the employers than the Cal Poly’s CS program. </p>
<p>The bottom-line here is that the data from both schools are incomplete so it’s hard to draw a conclusion based on that.</p>
<p>Then we could simply abolish those majors that are not good feeders to anything. Let’s face it - certain majors, notably many of the ‘Studies’ majors - are not strong pathways to anything but seem only to serve as ‘safety majors’ for many students who merely want an easy degree while putting in minimal work. The ‘Studies’ majors are ironically filled with plenty of people who are not actually interested in ‘studying’. {To be clear, some students indeed care about those topics and work hard, but many do not.} </p>
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<p>But even Harvard doesn’t have the sheer proliferation of majors that Cal does. More importantly, Cal’s budgetary woes far outweigh the relatively minor problems that Harvard is facing. If Cal had the money, they could afford to maintain every program as is, including programs that don’t seem to offer a high value-add. But Cal doesn’t have the money.</p>
<p>But to be clear, I am not opposed to reducing the Cal student population, and indeed, I’ve proposed precisely that numerous times on other threads. But as long as state funding comprises a significant percentage of the university budget, then it is only fair that Cal be able to demonstrate that they are delivering a high return on that state funding, and that’s an easier case to make if Cal stops offering certain low-paying majors. </p>
<p>Another tactic that could be used is that Cal could declare that taxpayer subsidies not be directed towards students in certain majors. Those majors would still be offered and students would be free to choose them, but they would have to pay out of their own pocket. For those who believe that to be a draconian proposal, surely you would agree that it’s less drastic than eliminating the major entirely. If taxpayer funding is at stake, then it is entirely appropriate that the taxpayer receive a high return on their investment. Price signals can be used to channel students towards more marketable majors.</p>
<p>At a time of budget cuts for all California public universities, where every school in the state needs to justify its level of state funding, Cal Poly can tout its high rate of return, achieved largely by channeling a highly disproportionate percentage of its students to high-paying majors. Perhaps Cal should consider doing the same.</p>
<p>sakky, your proposal is very interesting; would you name those programs you would recommend be abolished? How many programs do you think a school like cal should only have?</p>
<p>Although Cal Poly’s ethnic mix is somewhat strange for an engineering-heavy school in California, that is not really of direct relevance to the questions posed in this thread, or what Berkeley should or should not do in terms of its academic programs.</p>