i would just like to share with you guys that I....

[eudean]

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And that boils down to a problem of information - nobody really knows whether they really are going to be a “good” or “bad” student. After all, I doubt that many students come to Berkeley already knowing they are going to be “bad”. Yet, the fact of the matter is, many students come to Berkeley and do badly and may find that they can’t get the major they want (or in some cases, not even graduate at all). These students, would be better off at a top private school if they could have gotten in. Since you never know whether you will end up being one of the good or bad students at Berkeley until you get there, and by that time, it’s too late, then clearly the risk averse choice is to go to one of those private schools. If you get admitted to Berkeley and Stanford, you can’t just “try out Berkeley”, and if you do poorly, then just transfer over to Stanford. If you do poorly at Berkeley, Stanford will not admit you as a transfer.

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<p>That’s fine. The point I was making was it doesn’t matter whether you’re a good or bad student. You can learn just as much at Berkeley as anywhere else. If you are a bad student, it may be more painful. Doesn’t mean you won’t still get a good education.</p>

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But even if it really is a matter of money, then that simply begs the question of why can’t money be redirected to those departments that are bursting at the seams? If students want to major in X, they should be allowed to study major in X.

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<p>If there are sufficient resources, I completely agree. However, you must consider that redirecting money isn’t so simple. If Mr. Levis (he came from Haas, right?) donates 10 million to Haas, it isn’t going to go to patching up Cory. They’ll find a way to make Haas better. That’s what the money is marked for.</p>

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I’ll throw one out right now. I don’t think I am the first person to observe that the Math department has an unusually large number of profs, relative to the number of students they have. Physics too. And the truth is, a lot of math and Physics profs could be teaching related subjects. For example, a lot of the math profs could be teaching CS, because CS and math share many similarities. A lot of physics profs could be teaching EE or ME classes. Obviously they aren’t going to be teaching advanced grad-level courses. But that’s not what I’m asking for. I’m merely saying that undergrad CS, and undergrad EE/ME really aren’t that complicated and specialized. Why is CS impacted when the math department seems to be chock full of unused resources?

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<p>Okay, say we use Physics professors to help teach the lower division EE courses and the Math professors to help teach the lower division CS courses. That seems about right. Say we can stuff another 50 kids (or X kids) into each of CS61A, B, and C, and EE20 and 40 by doing so. We have an additional 50 * 5 = 250 (or 5X) students in the EECS department now. Now those kids are juniors and they’ve finished their lower div requirements. They want to take EE105 and EE120 (and comparable CS courses) now. But we don’t have those extra professors from Math and Physics to supplement now. So we’ve over-crowded our upper division courses and degraded the quality of education in the EECS department.</p>

<p>Consider also that when we hire faculty, we sometimes hire them as teaching and sometimes as research. Those research faculty signed up in part because they could spend most of their time researching. Forcing them to teach would cause two problems: 1) they may move to another institution which allows them more research time, and 2) our graduate education and quality of research may suffer. Hiring more teaching and less research faculty may be a reasonable answer, but again you’re compromising research one way or another, so it isn’t a free way to improve education.</p>

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The point is, there does indeed seem to be quite a bit of slack capacity at Berkeley. I would like to redirect that capacity. That’s what operations management and operations research is all about. Heck, CalX was a former IEOR grad, so he should know exactly what I’m talking about. Why shouldn’t Cal use some of the principles that it is teaching students? Are you saying that it’s OK to teach students optimization techniques, but not to use them yourself?

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<p>This went a bit OT. If we have the money to hire more lecturers (I’ll use this instead of professors) for a certain department that is impacted and we have expendable excess in another department (as in, removing money or faculty wouldn’t significantly hinder research or teaching capabilities), then I’d say go for it. I’ve got nothing against optimizing where possible.</p>

<p>I just don’t see it as a big issue. I don’t see gross inequities or massive quantities of students left out of their desired majors. The balance I’ve seen is relatively good.</p>

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Look at the history. Demand doesn’t fluctuate THAT much. MCB numbers are fairly consistent. It’s not like you get 100 MCB students one year, and a thousand the next year. The numbers are consistent. Hence, you have a good idea of what it is going to be in the following year. When you see the sun come up every day, you can probably bet that it will come up tomorrow. Hence, when you have a history of past demand, you can then make predictions of what future demand will be, and then adjust your capacities accordingly. If I am selling bananas in the farmer’s market, and I am consistently getting sold out by noon every day for a whole month, then the smart thing for me to do is to bring more bananas next time. I have to be willfully blind not to see that I am not meeting my demand and I should adjust my capacity.

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<p>I don’t know what the variances are, personally. I would imagine 10% would be within range. For a major with 500 people, that gives you a total spread of 100 students. Do you budget for 500 or 550? Would you rather have extra or not enough? It’s a fair question, certainly, and someone has to decide. In a purely pragmatic sense, 500 should be the choice, but then you’ve got a potentially impacted major. You’ve optimized and you’ve still got impacted majors. What now? If you were selling bananas, you’re either going to have to take some home to let them rot each day, or you’re going to have to say sorry to some of your customers (okay, in this case you could just eat the bananas yourself). Depending on the cost of producing and selling a banana, one situation may be more profitable than another.</p>

<p>Further, historically, majors can and do fluctuate a lot. Take a look at EECS over the past decade. The dotcom bubble affected EECS enrollment hugely. As an example, CS61A was up to 400+ students at the peak, and nowadays is around 100. While actual EECS major numbers didn’t vary by 400%, you can imagine that it was at least significant enough that if changes weren’t made, accomodating that many students would be impossible. That means either hiring more faculty to teach these courses, or kick some students out of the major.</p>

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But that is, of course, presuming that you WANT to adjust your capacities to meet demand. Which doesn’t seem to be the case.

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<p>You should always want to. You only should if you can do so without disrupting other departments. If you have a “free” way (as in, doesn’t require significantly harming another department) to adjust capacities, that’s great. Otherwise, it would be iffy to take from Math to give to EECS if Math needed what it had. If you’re taking from Math research funding to pay for lackeys to teach lower level EECS, you’re basically taking from the top minds so that the students who were deemed unqualified for EECS can now take courses in EECS, which doesn’t seem optimal at all.</p>

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Is there something bad about using untenured lecturers? Some of the best classes I ever had were taught by untenured lecturers, and some of the worst classes I ever had were taught by full profs.

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<p>Not necessarily. There is something bad about using unexperienced lecturers, and most untenured lecturers aren’t as experienced as tenured lecturers. That’s not to say there aren’t many bad tenured lecturers and many good untenured lecturers, but if you’re going to pick between someone with 2 years of teaching experience and someone with 10 years (without any more information), I think you’d probably pick the 10-year veteran.</p>