In response to the many debates on ugrad quality

[greatestyen]

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If you’re never used HKN’s professor and course rating service (and from your comment, it’s clear you haven’t), please don’t bother trying to claim ratemyprofessors.com is even close to the quality of the HKN service.

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<p>I never claimed such a thing.</p>

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The fact is, many departments ask for students to rate their professors in some manner at the end of a semester (I know the music department, EECS, and math departments do this–maybe physics, too, I can’t remember). If they simply gathered data on scantrons (still allowing for separate fields for comments) and scanned that data into a solid, web-accessible system, it would be of a huge benefit to almost every student.

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<p>Indeed, many departments do that. In fact, I think all of them do. However, I’m not too sure, it would be a “huge benefit” to “almost every student.” I mean, just look at how undergrads who choose to respond to surveys in which every student is asked to perticipate in have to say about how their professors. A whooping 62.1% are, at the least, “satisfied,” with the “quality of faculty instruction.” And that’s without most departments releasing their faculty’s ratings! So perhaps what you really mean is that releasing ratings will be a “huge benefit” to “many students.”</p>

<p><a href=“https://osr2.berkeley.edu/Public/surveys/ucues/2005/core2005.html[/url]”>https://osr2.berkeley.edu/Public/surveys/ucues/2005/core2005.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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Go to ratemyprofessors.com and try to find all of these professors: Nikolic, Varaiya, Chenming Hu, Subramanian, Chang-Hasnain, Gastpar (all EECS, if there’s any ambiguity). Tell me how many ratings there are for each professor, and if there are any comments about the course they taught that semester. Then go to hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu and try it again. Just because you’ve only used a sub-par system with sparse amounts of information that can, at many times, be completely useless, doesn’t mean there isn’t a better solution out there that would be easy to implement.

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<p>OK. I accept that. Now I would like to know how much NKH costs EECS. If it’s a lot, how are smaller (especially humanities) departments going to pay for such a system? Would the central administration pay?</p>

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The only time the professor ratings at HKN’s site aren’t useful is when the professor is new and doesn’t have any ratings yet. That’s to be expected, though. There have been way too many times where I haven’t even been able to find a professor at ratemyprofessors.com.

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<p>That is true. But in my experience, the professors who aren’t listed on ratemyprofessors.com don’t really teach that much. When they do, it’s to a very small and sporadically held class. That means few students are affected by not having the professor listed on ratemyprofessors.com. If few students are affected, it’s relatively unlikely that the departments themselves OR “Berkeley” will seriously attempt to solve problem by releasing faculty ratings. But again, that’s just in my experience. </p>

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I don’t know. Do you? You speak from ignorance. I won’t say that financial resources are definitely to blame, but I won’t say they definitely aren’t. Just because you don’t buy the explanation doesn’t mean it isn’t true, or doesn’t have merit at least.

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<p>I speak from ignorace? Really? </p>

<p>No, I don’t. Make no mistake about it, not one of the impacted “departments” with the probable exception of Mass Communications are short on money. The departments that ARE short on money are USUALLY the ones that AREN’T impacted. That list would include departments like:: French, Film Studies, Women’s Studies, etc. </p>

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Maybe econ has a different way of gauging their limit than Poli Sci.

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<p>Maybe they do. I highly suspect their “limit” is measured by faculty willingness to teach. </p>

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Don’t you think the department probably knows best how many students they can take without degrading their quality of education?

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<p>Of course I do. I explictly said on this thread that I have never been present at a single departamental voting committee meeting. On another thread I stated that I blindly support the decisions of the impacted departments to impact themselves. </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=2693810&postcount=43[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=2693810&postcount=43&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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Or do you think you know best, and the department should take everyone?

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<p>I don’t think I know “best.” But I do know one thing. Many professors in the impacted Psychology department feel that it is grossly unfair that their groundbreaking research is only recognized by USNEWS as 2nd best in the nation. I believe they want to be number one and the decision to declare themselves impacted was so that they would have to teach fewer classes and focus more on research. Again, as I’ve already stated, I suspect that the Econ department feels the same way. As to the latter part of your statement, I support the departments in what they each want to do because I think it’s best for research and I think research is relatively more important than teaching undergraduates. But that’s not to say that I wouldn’t change my thinking if the national economy was socialized. If that happened, departments could teach countless students and not live under the constant fear that if their professors don’t research enough, the department will lose much of its funding. </p>

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I’m sure they have a lot more information to decide from than you do.

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<p>Yes, I agree.</p>

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Unless you can show me some realistic cost per student number and the budget of the econ department, why should I believe your assertion that the econ major shouldn’t be impacted is true?

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<p>Look. The reality of the situation is that departments that don’t use laboratories don’t really need THAT much money. Now, I’m not an economics major and I’m certainly no expert on economics, but from what I gather, undergraduate economic classes are usually made up of Lecture and Discussion. No Lab. </p>

<p><a href=“http://sis.berkeley.edu/OSOC/osoc?p_term=FL&p_classif=U&p_deptname=Economics&p_dept=&p_course=&p_title=&p_instr=&p_exam=&p_ccn=&p_day=&p_hour=&p_bldg=&p_units=&p_restr=&p_info=&p_updt=&x=38&y=8[/url]”>http://sis.berkeley.edu/OSOC/osoc?p_term=FL&p_classif=U&p_deptname=Economics&p_dept=&p_course=&p_title=&p_instr=&p_exam=&p_ccn=&p_day=&p_hour=&p_bldg=&p_units=&p_restr=&p_info=&p_updt=&x=38&y=8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Can someone confirm this? Undergraduate economics classes DO NOT have laboratories, right?</p>

<p>So, that leaves us with lectures and discussions. Let’s start lectures. What goes on in economics lectures? I remember sitting in one and observing that they are really no different than lectures in Political Science or in most other departments. Professor shows up, goes to the front of the class, and lectures. There may be some…</p>

<p>slides - usually on PowerPoint. Not very expensive for professors to make. </p>

<p>projectors, overhead, white screen, microphone, speakers, podium, chalk, chalkboard, dryerase boards, dryerase markers, chairs, air conditioning, lighting, etc. - all come with lecture hall</p>

<p>There are NO “expensive” Chem 1A-style demonstrations, right? </p>

<p>Now for Econ undergrad discussion. I admit I’ve never been in one. But isn’t it just like Poli Sci where you sit in a room with other students and are given clarification, extra help, quizzes, and smaller assignments, etc. by the GSI? If that’s the case, I don’t see how the department is actually spending much of any money on the classes themselves. After all, it’s not like Berkeley has to pay itself to use of its own classrooms. That would be stupid. </p>

<p>The only real cost I can think of that the Econ department and every other department directly spends on undergraduate classes is on copies, especially for midterms and finals. Now, I have NEVER heard of ANY student not being provided with a copy of the midterm, final, etc in ANY department. </p>

<p>So really, WHAT are these costs you seem to think the Econ department is spending on its undergraduates? </p>

<p>Maybe you think it’s in the form of GSIs? Well let me tell you that that’s a bunch of crap. GSIs are paid directly by the central administration, not the departments.</p>

<p>In the end, you’ve got to realize that the “realistic cost per student number” for the Econ department is a VERY SMALL sum and Econ DEFINETLY has much more money than said sum. Someone who is majoring in Econ, could you make it “official” that the department doesn’t really spend much of anything on undergraduates? Remember that faculty salaries are not dependent on teaching hours.</p>