<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t know about that. You seem to be implying that departments are constrained by their UG research budgets. Well, if that’s the case, then the answer is to simply restrict the amount of UG research that is going on, so that you can teach more students. Even if your research budget is constrained, that doesn’t mean that you can’t teach more students. Let’s be honest. Most Berkeley undergrads have no interest in research. They just want to get a job and work right after graduation. </p>
<p>Let me give you a statistic. Out of all schools, I believe Caltech has the highest percentage of its undergrads going on to receive PhD’s, with something like 40% of them doing so. That means that even at a research-intensive school like Caltech, the majority of undergrads will not get a PhD. Granted, some of those that don’t may get a master’s degree and so forth, but the point is, even at Caltech, there are plenty of students who simply intend to go to work right after graduation, and/or (like you said) go to a grad school that doesn’t need research experience. </p>
<p>Law and business are not the only examples. You don’t need research experience to get into medical school, as clinical experience ( i.e. volunteering in a hospital) is sufficient. You don’t need research experience to get a M.Ed (to become a teacher), or an MPA/MPP, or a M.S.W, or many other degrees. Heck, you don’t really need research experience to get into a MS/MA program, as I have known plenty of people who got Master of Science/MEng degrees at MIT who had no research experience. Heck, even some Phd programs have taken people who have had no research experience. Even at MIT,there are some PhD students who had no prior research experience. What really matters is research POTENTIAL. For example, I know a guy pursuing his PhD at MIT who did no undergrad research before, but had profs who were willing to attest to the fact that he had excellent potential. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>First off, I never said that Berkeley NECESSARILY had to increase or decrease the number of faculty members to correspond with the number of undergrads it has. My reference was to resources IN GENERAL. You can simply just make existing courses bigger, if that’s what it takes. It’s not my preferred strategy, but it’s better than nothing. After all, if you already have 200 students in a class, who really cares about bringing in another 50? The class is going to be big no matter what. It’s not that hard to expand a class that is already big. You still only need 1 prof.</p>
<p>Another option is to simply bring in more of those adjunct/visiting profs/lecturers. Why not? Berkeley does it already. Plenty of people who teach classes are not “real” Berkeley profs, but are instead untenured adjunct lecturers or visiting profs from other institutions. So why not do more of this to handle the overfill? To give you an example, the guy who teaches ChemE 160 (the senior design course) is not a real Berkeley prof. P. Henrik Wallman is an untenured lecturer whose real job is at LBL. This is the capstone chemical engineering design course - and it is taught by a guy who isn’t even really a prof at Berkeley! Nor is this unique. For over a decade, both ChemE 160 and ChemE 154 (the required unit ops lab) were taught by Fred Vorhis, who was also an adjunct untenured lecturer. </p>
<p>Other departments, particularly the largest ones like MCB and poli-sci, also use plenty of untenured lecturers and visiting profs. They are a cheap and easy way to expand and contract capacity. If you have a large influx of student demand, you can meet it temporarily by hiring lots of lecturers until such time as you can build a permanent faculty to support the demand. If demand drops, then the first thing you do is lay off all of those lecturers and stop bringing in visiting profs. After all, the department has no obligation to them because they were never granted tenure. For example, David Presti, who teaches MCB 61, 62, and 165 is not a real MCB prof. He’s an untenured lecturer. {Interestingly, he’s also considered one of the best teachers in the MCB department}. Amy Gurowitz, who teaches PoliSci 120A, 123, and 149 is not a real Berkeley prof. She’s a research associate at the Institute of International Studies, and also a visiting assistant prof at Mills College, but she isn’t a “real” Berkeley prof. Dan Schnur, who teaches PoliSci106, is also just a lecturer, holding the official title of “Visiting Instructor” at Berkeleys’ Institute of Governmental Studies. </p>
<p>So why can’t a department like econ or psych do the same? In fact, I know for a fact that the psych department has a whole slew of visiting profs and researchers. So having untenured lecturers and visiting profs teach courses would be nothing new to the Berkeley psych department. </p>
<p>To answer a possible objection, I don’t think that Berkeley gets hurt at all by laying off unneeded untenured lecturers and researchers. I think it is widely understood within the academic community that those jobs bring no obligation to the university. In fact, that’s the whole point of being untenured - that you don’t have the kind of job security that regular faculty members have. Berkeley has thousands and thousands of employees, only a small fraction of whom are tenured profs. If you’re a regular secretary at Berkeley, you don’t presume to have a job for life. If Berkeley wants to lay you off, then they will lay you off. It’s like any other regular job, in which you can get laid off at any time.</p>