In response to the many debates on ugrad quality

[sakky]

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You’re using the analogy in a different way than I see it. In theory, if you get into a selective private that doesn’t have impacted majors, then you’ve got a different, comparable world except that it doesn’t have disease. If you have that option, it’s a good option to take. If you’re a good student, it won’t matter.

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<p>So you agree that this a reason for people to prefer HYPSM to Berkeley. </p>

<p>I also disagree about the notion that if you’re a “good” student, it won’t matter. That depends on what you mean by ‘good’. Like I said, there are people who got 3.5’s who can’t get into CS. I would say that if you got a 3.5 in CS pre-reqs, you’re pretty good. Hence, even some good students can’t get into the major that they want. I believe that people with even higher grades have difficulty switching into EECS. </p>

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Why ask only those that have been antagonized by impacted majors? Why not ask everybody? Certainly, those other students deserve to be heard on the issue because they attend Berkeley, too, and are also affected by impacted majors. Take a fair poll. I don’t know what the results will be, but I do know what would happen if you asked a bunch of republicans if Bush is a good president or not–just like you know what people that didn’t get in to their intended majors would say about impacted majors. But that statistic isn’t relevant–just like mine wouldn’t mean Bush is a good president, yours wouldn’t mean impacted major are bad. It would mean it was bad for those students, but only if it is bad for the majority of students is it actually bad overall.

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<p>No, the democratic political process is not a good analogy, because democracy is enshrined with the notion of ‘one-man, one vote’, despite the fact that in this case, the people who are affected by impaction feel far more intensely about the subject than those who are not affected. </p>

<p>To give you an historical analogy, slavery in the US South was a DEMOCRATIC notion in the sense that the majority of people in the South supported slavery. True, blacks were disenfranchised at the time, but even if they had complete suffrage, it would hardly have made any difference, because blacks were a minority in Southern states. Hence, if the question of slavery was put up to a vote within those states, slavery would have always won, because the majority (the whites) wanted slavery. </p>

<p>That’s what happens when you have a one-man, one-vote system. The minority (the blacks) obviously feel far far more intensely about slavery than the whites did because they are the ones who became victimized by it. However, you cannot seriously argue that slavery was not a problem overall, just because the majority of people in the South not only did not suffer from slavery, but actually SUPPORTED the system of slavery . But the salient point is that the damage that slavery does to an individual slave is far far greater than the benefit it may provide to the non-enslaved. Yet in a one-man, one-vote system, these intensities of benefits/drawbacks cannot be expressed.</p>

<p>Similarly, what if a law was proposed today where men would have to become slaves of women? I suspect that this law might pass democratically, for the simple reason that there are (slightly) more women than men. But of course men would intensely oppose this idea. </p>

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Yes, but I’m not arguing Berkeley’s advisors are good. You’re arguing that they’re not. I’m arguing that you can’t argue that without evidence (besides one or two anecdotes, because I’ve got my own anecdotes to counter those). Further, to argue that the advising is bad is vague. I agree, the college of engineering advisors are useless for telling you what classes to take, and are bad in that respect. But that’s not their job. That’s what your department advisor is for. That’s what all the professors in your department are for. If the professors at Berkeley are significantly worse than the professors at other universities at telling students what classes to take, you’ll have a strong point. But you can’t just say it is so without real support.

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<p>Huh? This is not a point of comparative analysis! Even if we presume that some other school has bad advising, that doesn’t make it OK for Berkeley to also have bad advising. My point is, Berkeley advising needs to be improved REGARDLESS of what other schools may or may not be doing. </p>

<p>I said it before, I’ll say it again. If Berkeley improves its programs and the other schools don’t, then Berkeley will be better than those other schools. But of course that presumes that people here actually want Berkeley to be better than those other schools. I get the feeling that a lot of people don’t really want that. </p>

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Yes, those students would’ve been better off elsewhere. Too bad for those students. It’s great for every single other student in the CS major that those students didn’t get in, though. Unless there are more 3.5GPA students applying and getting rejected from the CS major than there are students in the CS major in total, I don’t see how this is a bad thing for Berkeley education.

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<p>It’s not even a matter of 3.5 GPA students. I think any student who is getting a 3.0 in CS prereq classes is doing pretty well. Yet a LOT of them are getting rejected. </p>

<p>Besides, think about what you are saying. If impaction is good for CS, then why isn’t it good for every other major. Why not have ALL majors be impacted? Like you said, it would be good for those students who actually get into those majors, right? Heck, if you could calibrate the situation such that 50.1% of students are able to get the major they want, then according to your logic, the majority of students are benefitting, and that lower 49.9% who didn’t get in, they can basically go to hell, right?</p>