In response to the many debates on ugrad quality

[greatestyen]

<p>

Hey, the vast majority of people in the world do not suffer from daily hunger, but that doesn’t mean that daily hunger is not a problem. The vast majority of people in the world do not have malaria, yellow fever, tuberculousis, hepatitis, or AIDS, but that doesn’t mean that these diseases are not a problem for those who have them.

</p>

<p>Stop making these ridiculous analogies. The situations are vastly different. </p>

<p>

Berkeley should be trying to eliminate the problem of impacted majors. Nobody at HYPSM has problems with impacted majors, because there is no such concept at those schools.

</p>

<p>Student activism has to demand it. The administration is certainly not going to do it all on its own. </p>

<p>

I would hardly say characterize the PHD program in AHMA, or any Berkeley PhD program, is ‘watered-down’. As I have always said, the Berkeley PhD programs are among the most best in the world.

</p>

<p>Well, what I actually meant was that undergrads in NES are more or less being taught what AHMA studenres are being taught, though in a much more “watered-down” fashion. That should be obvious. It’s like that in all fields. </p>

<p>

But this is all part of a STRATEGY. This is about taking away excuses. For example, right now, I suspect that the reason why economics is impacted has nothing to do with resources, but has to do with the fact that the econ department simply doesn’t want to teach more undergrads. But how do we prove this? After all, if we tell them to drop their impaction policy, they will probably respond that they are lacking resources. Ok, fine, so how do we solve this? I think the way to do it is to simply offer them the resources in order to take away that excuse. If they STILL say that they can’t teach more students, then we all know that they were just making excuses. But the key is to exhaust their excuses.

</p>

<p>Giving Econ more resources is not something I oppose at all. What I oppose is giving Econ the resources of smaller humanities departments because those smaller humanities departments barely have anything at all. Indeed, the smaller humanities departments basically have nothing other than faculty offices, departamental offices, and books in the central library. Do you want to do away any of those? If you do, do you actually think that will do much for Econ? Is taking away the small hallway of Dwinelle Hall that Film Studies uses to house itself and giving it over to Econ really going to do much for Econ? Remember that there’s office space in Evans that is not being used. </p>

<p>

This is the way you solve interdepartmental political problems. You expose departmental excuses for the lies that they are.

</p>

<p>I actually think that a better way might be to create a Central Committee of Departamental Planning and Resource Allocation. THEN the departments could be held accountable.</p>

<p>

Think of it this way. We offer them resources. One of 2 things will happen. Either they will take those resources and drop impaction. Good, problem solved. Or, they will simply throw up another excuse. If they do that, then at least we are closer to knowing what we are really dealing with.

</p>

<p>Ok, give them resources. But not the resources of other departments.</p>

<p>

Oh, I HARDLY doubt that is the case, simply because there is barely an organization in the world that is completely optimized. Even organizations such as Toyota, Dell and Walmart that are famous for their operational efficiency are STILL finding more and more ways to optimize themselves. For example, Toyota has been on the vanguard of lean manufacturing initiatives within the auto industry for several decades now, and yet they are STILL increasing productivity and yield. If even an extremely tight ship like Toyota can still find ways to optimize themselves, then I have to imagine that a far looser organization like Berkeley can do so also.

</p>

<p>There may indeed be better ways for Berkeley to allocate its “resources.” But I still don’t believe that faculty numbers should be “shifted” or departments forced to give up the “space” they currently occupy. Money is probably the one “resource” that could be reallocated. However, I question the assumption that money needed by say, a massive department liek MCB can or should be taken from say, a smaller department like History-mainly because History just don’t have much money. After all, MCB has plenty of money that it uses to train undergraduates in research labs and get large numbers of them into medical On the other hand, History has just ONE small grant available to undergraduates who desire to explore an original historical topic for which “resources” cannot be found in the Bay Area. </p>

<p><a href=“http://history.berkeley.edu/undergraduate/forms/UG_Research_Grant.pdf[/url]”>http://history.berkeley.edu/undergraduate/forms/UG_Research_Grant.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I strongly believe that if History had the money to send its undergraduates to collect primary sources across the world, it would make its classes tougher and by doing so, better prepare (more) of its students for grad programs in History. </p>

<p>But let’s leave History aside. Say you were to take from Chemistry, which obviously has LOTS of money. I think you would actually be hurting Chemistry. And that’s of course, to be expected. It’s expensive to do research in chemistry, probably just as much or more as it is to do research biology. So, these departments obviously cannot look towards small humanities departments to find money because that money just isn’t there. Yet, that is exactly what it seems that people like sakky want to do. </p>

<p>

I’ll give you an example. Not that long ago, Berkeley got rid of all of its undergrad mining engineering programs. These programs had long-standing histories within Berkeley, and specifically within the old College of Mining (which then became part of the CoE). But Berkeley got rid of them, even though they still had students, but just not enough students to justify the programs as ongoing concerns. I am quite certain that other programs like this exist at Berkeley.

</p>

<p>But as I already said, this example fails to take into account the changing nature of politics. Closing Mining was profitable to almost anybody. But that’s no longer the case with many of the smaller departments. After all, let’s say Berkeley were to close down Ethnic Studies. You really think radical political activists, especially in California, are going to stand for that? No, they are not. They will take it all the way to the Supreme Court if they have to and they will probably win. So why should Berkeley spend so much money on fighting legal battles when it can use that money to expand “resources”?</p>

<p>

Allright! Now we have gotten to the truth. So why are you even giving me reasons for why Berkeley has to be impacted? The fact is, you LIKE impaction, so to you, it wouldn’t matter if I was able to come up with a way to fix impaction, because you don’t want it fixed anyway. So now I think you ought to explain why impaction is good, and specifically, I would invite you to explain it to those students who couldn’t get the major that they wanted. You may want to do that with some police protection, however, as I’m sure that their response to you won’t exactly be positive.

</p>

<p>I’m not going to list my reasons unless you answer the question that you have now ignored three times.</p>