Interesting Article on Enrollment increasing

kyledavid80 · February 21, 2008, 3:59pm

Well, it’s more than campus housing, and administrators are very well aware of that. The infrastructure wouldn’t support it – it’s already saturated, and they’d need to build much more on the campus. I don’t think that’s gonna happen.

sofla951 · February 21, 2008, 5:03pm

Albany is for grad students, and geared directly toward students with families. Its a very different demographic than UG. Most of those students have cars. It’s also three miles north of campus while oakland city limit is at least a mile or two away from campus. Undergrads at Berkeley grumble about how far CK is from campus. I think building outside the city of Berkeley is even more improbable than decreasing the size. Also LBNL is up in the hills, ive walked down from there…very dangerous and also very tiring. The school would have to have buses running basically all day and student there would no be happy. LBNL is also going to be expanding according to plans I have seen and I doubt there going to let Berkeley put student housing on land so prime. There is 1 or 2 parking lots around campus but if they were to build dorms they would also have to build new facilities and I can’t see them fitting both. Again if you look at UCR, UCSC- which has swaths of land around it, and UCM- those campus seem underutilized and underappreciated…Berkeley could make the case that they need to pick up the slack if Berkeley decreased. Either way no one knows for sure what could happen…well just have to see once we build an endowment. I know though that for the next couple years the likely hood of Berkeley decreasing is very minute.

unlimitedx · February 21, 2008, 11:15pm

I got a taste of being a grad student thru URAP. We hung out in the PhD lounge at Haas. They had a foosball table, all you can eat candy, free printing, photocopying, pens/pencils, stationery needs and comfy couches. Plus every PhD student gets to put a photo of themselves on the bulletin.

I’m pretty much just making a big deal out of it for fun.

sakky · February 22, 2008, 7:20pm

Ha! I wish you were right. But let’s face. The infrastructure has been strained for many years now, yet that hasn’t stopped Cal from cramming more and more students in. I agree it would ultimately mean the degradation of educational quality, but, again, that unfortunately has never stopped Cal before.

As a case in point, let me tell you of a story that current undergrads view as simply fantasy but is actually true. It wasn’t that long ago - less than 10 years ago - when, apart from CS, L&S didn’t have a single impacted major. And in fact, I think CS wasn’t impacted until around the mid 90’s or so. Yep, L&S students were free to switch to any major they wanted within the college.

Furthermore, L&S allowed anybody from other colleges to freely switch in. So if you were in the College of Engineering and did very poorly, you could just switch to L&S. Your terrible engineering grades wouldn’t stop you.

Unbelievably, those were the “good old days”. If you can believe that. What I believe has happened is that Cal has crammed more and more students into the campus, and the departments have responded via the terrible practice of impaction because they can’t handle the inflows. But the Cal administration doesn’t care about that. Rather than stop the inflows to eliminate impaction, as can be seen by the article that started it all, Cal continues to cram more and more students into the campus.

Hey, that’s what buses are for! Why not? It would be just like high school. I, like most other high school students, didn’t live within walking distance of my high school. I took the bus until I was able to have my own car. Cal could do the same thing.

But it’s more than just offering buses. Right now, a significant fraction of undergrads don’t live in the city of Berkeley, but rather commute in every morning. I knew a guy who commuted in from his parent’s house in Fremont (via BART) every day. It’s a brutal commute, but he said he wanted to save money on housing, and besides, he was very close to his family and so he liked living at home. Hence, I can see a situation in the future where Cal encourages students to commute in, or at least, doesn’t discourage it. For example, in the future, Cal could just build a bunch of undergrad housing in adjoining cities (Albany, Emeryville, etc.), and then say that every incoming undergrad may have 2 years of guaranteed housing, but not necessarily in the city of Berkeley, and if you don’t like your housing allotment, you are free to find housing by yourself, which would then naturally push people to look for commuting alternatives (as opposed to paying high Berkeley rents).

Now I completely agree with you that such a move would be highly deleterious to the undergrad Cal student cohesiveness and culture. But again, does the administration really care about that? I don’t want any of these things to happen that I am proposing, but the question is not what I want to happen, but rather what the administration wants to happen. For example, I never wanted impaction, but it sadly happened anyway. And frankly, if I was an administrator, I would have probably instituted impaction also. {So some students can no longer get the major they want, well, hey, as an administrator, that’s not my problem…}

Uh, the extra space would not have to be for students (at least, not primarily). You could move professor’s labs to that extra space. That would then free up space in the main campus for more student facilities.

Lest you think this is ridiculous, may I remind you that many professors *right now * operate extensive operations at LBL, to which they generally have to take the LBL bus in order to access So is it really so ridiculous to reposition more of the current campus’s lab space to the Hills? Remember, most undergrads will never have to go up there because most of them do not participate in research. That arena would be the domain primarily of professors and grad students, and right now, plenty of profs and grad students make the daily trek up to LBL without complaint. {As a case in point, Professor Carolyn Bertozzi is now the Director of the Molecular Foundry at LBL and hence spends a great deal of her time up there. Many of her grad students and postdocs also similarly spend much of their time at LBL and little time on the main campus.}

Still think it’s ridiculous. Let’s recall that Clark Kerr didn’t always used to be a dorm, in fact, it used to be an insane asylum (and that hasn’t changed - hah hah). Hence, that illustrates that you can convert buildings from one thing to another. One of the buildings that currently houses research facilities could, in theory, be renovated into a dorm or classrooms or other such student services.

Ha! The presumption there is that student happiness actually matters. Unfortunately, it’s never really mattered before, so why would it start now? For example, when Cal began to implement impaction, the students certainly were unhappy, but Cal didn’t care. They did it anyway.

Uh, that’s not LBNL’s decision to make. Cal owns that land. Cal therefore has the power to decide what to do with the land, not LBNL.

Like I said, that land east of the main campus is largely unoccupied. Filling it in would not greatly affect the existing campus.

I notice that y’all keep asserting that a larger endowment will be able to trigger a campus population reduction. I don’t see the case for that - if anything, a larger endowment will only encourage population growth. After all, a greater endowment will only increase the political pressure for Cal to take more students. In particular, the politicians in Sacramento would probably demand that Cal expand in lockstep with a greater endowment.

kyledavid80 · February 23, 2008, 12:36am

True – I didn’t say it has stopped them. But there is a point where they can go no further, and I don’t think they’re going to go much further because of that. They do have a sense of academic excellence, and they strive to maintain it. This is just my opinion.

sofla951 · February 29, 2008, 4:31am

While I agree Cal has continued to cram at some point it has to hit the brinking point. For example UF has much more ample space to expand than Berkeley could ever have yet at 51,000 students the school just can’t continue anymore. From many articles I’ve read Berkeley’s campus is at max capacity. With the second tidal wave of applications UC is receiving, going up almost 10 percent this year alone, UC could only add around 1500 spots to this campus. Plus budget issues right now have caused UC to not promise acceptance to those eligible to attend the UC system in 08/09. From my experience most students do live in the city of Berkeley. Southside is one of the densest areas west of the Mississippi with a density of 30000 per square mile. I find it very hard to believe that this is not due to the amount of students living just in southside, especially with all the frat houses, coops dorms, and apartments. According to the master plan through 2020 all new housing has to be within one mile of Doe library or one block from a transit line that provides transit in less than twenty minutes- which includes walking time to Doe from the nearest campus transit stop. I think that pretty much excludes anything outside Berkeley. If they were to try and expand out into Berkeley I think the city would be very upset and it would be a definite battle. In response to LBNL, even though UC owns most of the land behind campus, most of it is preserve and the UC arboretum. They don’t have much land to for new facilities and building campus housing up in the hills on a fault line doesn’t seem likely. Plus many new facilities are going up, the Li Kai Shing Center, a new Campbell Hall, Stanley Hall, and UC is now in control of land formely owned by the CA Department of Health across the street from Warren. These facilities are going to be used primarily for research and administrative operations which doesn’t seem to promote the idea that they are going to increase UG enrollment if they aren’t expanding teaching facilities. Again according to the Long range 20/20 plan enrollment is going to be around 33,500 until then. I still believe that Berkeley could lower UG population if its endowment grew and it wasn’t so dependent on the state, which as of right now only provides around 30% of the university’s budget, and probably less in coming years. I believe California gave Berkeley about 500 million this year,10B in endowment could cover that, and I doubt state funding is ever going to equal 0 as long as Berkeley is 80+ percent CA residents. I also encourage every to read the 20/20 plan and the New Century plan they are very interesting read if you are interested in the future vision for the campus.

sakky · February 29, 2008, 11:57am

But see what you’ve just done here? On the one hand, you invoked the California Master Plan as far as the student housing codes are concerned. But on the other hand, you admitted that UC will be effectively violating the Master Plan in no longer guaranteeing admission to those who are eligible for UC.

That’s my point entirely: that the Master Plan doesn’t really seem to be a binding contract, but rather serves more as a ‘guideline’, and that if UC wants to modify it or violate it, UC will do so. In other words, if Berkeley decides it wants to build student housing far away, it will do so no matter what the Master Plan says, just like how UC no longer guarantees admission to all UC-eligible students, even though that is what the Master Plan mandates.

Like I said before, they don’t have to build housing up there. All they have to do is take one of the existing research/admin buildings on campus and just renovate it for housing, and switch out those researchers/administrators to another building up in the hills.

Ridiculous, you say? Why? Universities renovate buildings into dorms all the time. Even Berkeley has done it. Like I said, Clark Kerr used to be a mental institution (and I guess to this day nothing has changed, ha ha, just kidding). It’s been a dorm for only about 20 years. Hence, I don’t see what would necessarily stop Berkeley from taking one of the existing campus buildings and converting them into dorms. Or buying a bunch of private apartment complexes around town and converting them into dorms.

The question is not whether they ‘could’ do it. The question is whether they would do it. Like I said before, a larger endowment is almost certainly going to increase the political pressure on Berkeley to admit more students.

sofla951 · February 29, 2008, 1:48pm

Maybe I should have been more clear I wasn’t invoking the original CA Master Plan but the 2020 long range development plan.

<a href=“http://www.cp.berkeley.edu/LRDP_2020.pdf[/url]”>Planning Documents | Capital Strategies;

The university was just barely able to appease the city regarding this small increase of 1600 by DOUBLING the amount it pays sewage, water, and also other benefits. Anymore increases I feel will bring a lawsuit from the city.

[Peace</a> in Berkeley](<a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/05/27/EDG6NCUOA61.DTL&type=printable]Peace”>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/05/27/EDG6NCUOA61.DTL&type=printable)

I thought Clark Kerr used to be a school for the blind and deaf…perhaps seen as mental disorders back then…but CK probably didn’t require much renovation because it was already basically a dorm for those staying at the school/asylum whatever. There’s really no other building I can think of that the campus owns that can be converted into dorms…plus with the average house price in Berkeley well over 800,000 (this list says 1.3 million but I’m not sure on its accuracy. [Palo</a> Alto is most-expensive college town, Berkeley is No. 5 - East Bay Business Times:](<a href=“http://www.bizjournals.com/eastbay/stories/2007/11/05/daily16.html?page=2I]Palo”>http://www.bizjournals.com/eastbay/stories/2007/11/05/daily16.html?page=2I)) I don’t see the school buying up apartments for student housing…its just not economically feasible or worth it. I agree it could receive political pressure to admit more students…but if its not as dependent on the state for funds Berkeley could argue its adhering to the original master plan and wants to improve UG experience. An example of increasing autonomy of public institutions would be UVA, which has become much more like a private in management as state funding has decreased. Once Berkeley is not dependent on the state Berkeley it could become more autonomous also. Either way I don’t see them increasing enrollment.

sakky · March 1, 2008, 2:10am

And it’s perhaps a lawsuit that Berkeley might be willing to risk.

Or, you haven’t considered yet another alternative: which is for Cal to simply start building facilities outside of the city of Berkeley. Again, not just student housing, but entire subdivisions outside of the city of Berkeley.

Consider this. Is there anything really to stop, say, the Law School from being eventually relocated to, say, Oakland or Emeryville or some other city? After all, does the law school really truly have to be located on the main campus? Undergrads don’t take law classes. The law students, frankly, have very little interaction with the rest of the campus. Law students/faculty rarely if ever have to use any of the main campus resources, and similarly most non-law-students or faculty never interact with the law school.

Ridiculous, you might say - because you can’t have a split campus? Well, consider the fact that the Harvard health services professional schools (i.e. Harvard Medical School, the School of Public Health, the Dental School, and many of the Harvard health-related PhD program resources) are not located in Cambridge at all, but rather in the Longwood Campus which is actually in downtown Boston, several miles away from the main campus. Similarly, Harvard Business School is also not located in Cambridge but rather in Allston (a Boston suburb). You also can find extreme cases like Cornell’s medical school (the Weill Cornell Medical College) which is actually located in Manhattan, literally more than 200 miles away from Ithaca. Heck, the UC-Davis Medical School is not even located in Davis (it’s in Sacramento, which is 15 miles away). What I am saying is that it is hardly unprecedented for a school to have split campuses, with a subcampus in an entirely different city.

Hence, just by moving the law school outside of the city of Berkeley, you will have moved 1000 students out of the city. One could imagine similar such things happening with other self-contained programs at Cal like the School of Education, the School of Information, the School of Optometry, perhaps the School of Journalism and the School of Public Policy. In fact, I think many of those schools would be eager to move. {For example, do you think the School of Information really enjoys being stuck in ratty South Hall?}

Renovation is a wonderful thing. For example, the MIT dorm known as “The Warehouse” used to literally be a warehouse (hence the name).

Uh, perhaps you may not understand how multi-tenant real estate finance works. Just think of it this way. The vast majority of apartment housing in Berkeley is owned by entities that are far smaller and have far fewer financial resources than Cal does. Yet if they can somehow afford to purchase residential property in the city, why can’t Cal? If nothing else, Cal’s credit worthiness and cash flow far far exceeds those other real estate entities. I’ve lived in several private apartment buildings in town, and all of them were owned by relatively small real estate companies.

Specifically, what happens is that those entities can purchase those properties because they know they will make back their purchase price on the rents they will charge. Cal, as a tenant, would be able to do the same, and in fact, their assurance of payback would be higher because they would be able to charge students directly on CARS, and hence would be able to bar students from registering or graduating if they don’t settle their bills. Private apartment owners always run the risk that a tenant will simply stop paying, or even completely trash the place, and then force the owners to undergo the legal expense of eviction. Nevertheless, private owners apparently find Berkeley to be a profitable place for them to own property, so why wouldn’t Cal be able to do the same?

Uh, Cal will always be dependent on the state even if it never receives so much as a dime from the state going forward. Why? Because the state could (and would) argue that the fixed assets of Cal - especially the land and most of the campus buildings - were paid for by the state and hence still belong to the public. Hence, the only way for Cal to completely eliminate its ties to the state would be for Cal to completely pay for all of those fixed assets, yet those fixed assets are not for sale. Otherwise, it would be something like the National Park Service claiming that, if the government no longer provides funding, the NPS would then somehow “own” all of the nation’s national parks and could do with them as they please. I think not.

sofla951 · March 1, 2008, 5:27pm

I think Cal would be more prudent than the to anger its host community and honestly I think Cal knows it wouldn’t win any lawsuit brought by the city, which is why the administration was so eager to appease the city by doubling what they pay in services just to add a mere 1600 students. I don’t understand why Cal would want to risk a lawsuit??? Despite what you think of Cal I don’t think the chancellor and administration are chomping at the bit to expand UG. I don’t think they want to turn Berkeley into the “factory” that your scenarios portray. The link to the 2020 plan I provided shows you that they are not considering expansion further than a mile from Berkeley. If Cal were to create an edowment and not depedent on the state for fund what benefits would these expansions into other towns provide except further stretching and wasting resources. There’s a reason why consolidation occurs. I guess I don’t know how “multi-tenant real estate finance” works but I do know that the average apartment price in Berkeley is around 500,000. Spending 500,000 on an apartment that would house 4 people at the most just doesn’t seem economical or worth it for the university. Plus a large percentage of undergrads at Berkeley don’t pay full room and board. Both my roomates are receiveing 50 to 75% off. If you think of that plus the added utilities apartments would just end up making them drains on university funds. I just don’t think that if an endowment is created, Berkeley will ever feel pressured enough to waste money just to expand , especially when the expansion doesn’t seem to have any benefits for the university. If there were warehouses around the Berkeley neighborhood then yes warehouses are quite easy to convert…but I don’t see any. I would advise you again to read the 2020 plan…there is no evidence to support the idea of that Berkeley is going to move any of its professional schools outside of Berkeley. Let’s take the School of Information- Why would Berkeley decide to move it? Its already set up in South Hall, which I think is actually quite nice, and next to Doe library, the CS department, and a plethora of other campus resources? I just don’t see the university jeopardizing the school’s ranking and ability to recruit grad students and faculty by moving it off campus, which would isolate the school and also involve buying property at premium prices, spending millions on buiding or renovation, and having to move all personal/equipment. It’s just completely improbable Cal would do this just to add at most space for a few hundred undergrads, which would provide no benefit to the university. Public Health and public policy are already off the main campus in buildings not suited for UG education. And as for journalism have you seen where its located?? It’s a less than 4000 sqaure feet historic building which basically is a log cabin. The university is not going to move the school just for 4000 square feet. Also the campus curriculum and research is moving to an interdisciplinary approach, for instance all new buildings are being built to foster such approach…Stanley Hall, Li Kai Shing Center, and the new law/business building going up soon.

[11.10.2005</a> - UC Berkeley NewsCenter](<a href=“http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/11/10_stadium.shtml]11.10.2005”>11.10.2005 - UC Berkeley NewsCenter)

Moving these departments off campus, let alone outside berkeley, would be the complete opposite of what the university is trying to promote.

I also wasn’t saying that Berkeley would or could completely privatize but follow a route similar to UVA. It will always be a public institution but not as indebted to the state for funds. Actually the land wasn’t paid for by the state, it was bought by a group of individuals for a private university known as the College of California…later this college and the new public Agricultural, Mining and Mechanic Arts College merged, but this is grasping for straws because I’m not an expert on the legal aspect or implications, but I don’t think you are either Sakky. Either way I am not saying UC Berkeley coud or would ever privatize, but become more autonomous like UVA. The state has power over Berkeley’s funding…but if Berkeley were not dependent on the state for funding then what leverage would it have over Berkeley? Berkeley could stay 80% instate and decrease student size saying its adhering to the orginal master plan. The only reason its been forced to expand in the past is really due to the threat of state funds being cut if it didn’t. Once again Berkeley would still be a public institution but a more autonomous one. Also if the state were to cut all its funding, which could happen one day just due to budget constraints, then the UC system could decide to freeze or even cut enrollment as it has in the past and may do in 08/09. I still think that Berkeley could decrease enrollment once it builds an endowment.

kyledavid80 · March 1, 2008, 7:24pm

Agreed. sakky makes it seem all too possible, but I really don’t see the administration going for that – and not even I have the best opinion of the administration.

sakky · March 1, 2008, 11:18pm

The issue is not whether they are ‘champing at the bit’ to risk a lawsuit. The issue is whether the Cal administration sees it as the path of least resistance. As I have been saying throughout this thread, Cal feels perennial political pressure to expand its ug enrollment, and the easiest way to do so may well be to risk a lawsuit from the city. After all, frankly, that may be easier for them than just resisting that political pressure entirely (which is what all of us wish they would do).

In fact, a lawsuit, unfortunately, may ultimately have to be the choice that Cal makes. Again, put yourself in the shoes of the administration. The primary goal of you as an individual administrator is not really to improve the quality of the education, nor is it to maintain Cal’s brand name. No, the real goal of you as an individual administrator is simple: to deflect political heat from yourself. In short, you want to make sure that if anybody is upset about something, nobody can blame you for it. Hence, the Cal administration may actually want a lawsuit from the city because that removes them from blame line of fire, for they can then tell the politicians and the voters that they tried to expand Cal but the city wouldn’t let them, so if you want to blame anybody, blame the city, etc. etc. It would be quite sly “CYA” tactics.

But then how can it be “worth it” to all those private developers and landlords who currently own those properties in the city? Somehow those entities are able to derive profits from owning those properties. So why couldn’t Cal?

Uh, I presume you are talking about financial aid and if so, that is completely irrelevant to the point at hand, for it is just an internal accounting transaction. Think of it this way. If you, as a person receiving aid, were to live off-campus, you don’t “lose” your aid. Cal just gives you a check for part of your room/board and you decide how you want to spend it. Hence, the total costs to Cal would be exactly the same whether you happened to live in Cal-owned housing or private housing.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. What matters is not what benefits the university. What matters is what benefits the administration, and specifically, countering or deflecting the constant political heat from the voters to cram in more undergrads.

Besides, think of it this way. If Cal never wants to expand its housing, then why did Cal build those new minisuite structures in Units 1 and 2: Christian, Slottman, and Towle, as well as the Wada apartments? Maybe you haven’t been around long enough to remember, but those structures are completely new. They weren’t around so much as just a few years ago. One could ask the same questions you are asking: why exactly did Cal spend so much money on building this extra housing if it doesn’t provide any benefit for Cal?

Uh, there aren’t? In fact, there is still an entire slew of warehouses in West Berkeley near the Marina. Remember, Berkeley used to be an active port and many of the warehouses that serve that port are still there, either largely unused or used for low-scale commercial services (and hence relatively easy to buy out).

But you’re missing the point that not just warehouses can be renovated, but that renovation is a powerful tool. To give you another case in point, the consolidated dining hall between Units 2 and 3 never used to be there. In fact, units 2 and 3 had their own individual dining halls. Those individual dining halls are now that extra housing of which I spoke above. They demolished those old dining halls and built housing on that space. Don’t try to tell me that such a thing is “infeasible”, because they did it.

Uh, why not? Why is that so infeasible? Harvard Medical School used to be on the main campus in Cambridge. In fact, the current location of HMS is actually the fifth location in its history. Similarly, Harvard as we speak is currently implementing a move to shift numerous departments, notably its engineering and probably many of its science departments, out of Cambridge and to Allston. Granted, the move is going to happen over a period of decades, but looks like it’s going to happen. Harvard doesn’t seem to be particularly worried about “jeopardizing its ranking” or its ability to recruit grad students and faculty. So why has Harvard been able to repeatedly and successfully shift resources off-campus but Cal cannot?

Uh, it doesn’t actually matter that the land wasn’t paid for by the state. What matters is that the state took legal title to the land and simply allows the university to “reside” on the land sans rent, in return for certain services (i.e. servicing the educational needs of the state).

Again, the leverage is simple to understand. The state would simply point out that Cal is utilizing public property and therefore has an obligation to serve the public. In extremis, the state could actually threaten to revoke Cal’s charter. Obviously that’s the ‘nuclear strategy’, but that simple demonstrates the point that Cal can’t win a war against the state.

Again, the question is not what they could do, but rather what they would do. Given the governance structure that Cal has, why exactly would a larger endowment spur the administration to lower the enrollment? Again, if anything, I would argue that it would cause enrollment to expand because doing so, again, would give the administration a way to cover their butts politically.

kyledavid80 · March 1, 2008, 11:48pm

I highly disagree. Call it naive, but I don’t think it’s as cynical as you like to make it seem.

Er, because Berkeley doesn’t have the financial resources for it? We are assuming that Berkeley will have the resources, but you are asserting that it will then use those resources both to expand undergrad (which entails myriad other things – more housing, more faculty, more staff, more facilities), and create satellite campuses.

And then Berkeley, under such political pressures, would point to the ‘overenrollment’ bit, and then point to the many CA campuses that are currently underenrolled.

If we assume that each campus supports at most 27,500 students, that’s 247,500 students. How many does UC currently support? 210,000. 5 of the 9 undergrad campuses are currently underenrolled.

I don’t know of taxpayers crying for their students to get into Berkeley or UCLA or any specific campus – just for college.

And I think they would not expand. Clearly sofla951 does too.

Because they can then improve undergrad quality and make Berkeley even more competitive? That seems to be the administration’s goal in much of what it does – to make Berkeley better, not worse.

sofla951 · March 2, 2008, 2:01am

But the question is why do they feel that pressure…I would argue that its due to threats of losing state funding. If Cal were to build an endowment that would end the states leverage over the university. According to the bylaws of UC Regents

Regents of the University of California," with full powers of organization and government, subject only to such legislative control as may be necessary to insure the security of its funds and compliance with the terms of the endowments of the university and such competitive bidding procedures as may be made applicable to the university by statute for the letting of construction contracts, sales of real property, and purchasing of materials, goods, and services"

The state really has no power over UC except the fact that it provides around 35% of funds. The land is actually property of the UC Regents of California. You think the state has much more leverage than it actually does. You could argue many of the Regents are appointed by the governor, but that doesn’t seem to make a difference right now when UC has just stated that for 09/10 it will not expand enrollment unless state funding is adequate, even with the amount of demand for UC education right now. If Berkeley can’t expand, it can’t expand. Cambridge and Oxford are public universities, yet they aren’t expanding. I would think there would be the same political pressure on these two universities to expand, being the two most prestigious public universities in a country of 60 million and having half the undergrad population of Berkeley.

Each campus has a high degree of autonomy but another question is how much power does the regents actually have over each campus, would they be able to fire a chancellor who flatly states the university can’t expand…it will lower UG quality. I don’t think they would and if they did that could anger faculty and staff who also don’t want the university to expand. I recently read a article about the how professors at the mechanical engineering department were angry about how many more students they had. You have to take into account that Berkeley is also much more than just any old public undergrad institution…its not ASU or FSU… its seen as the crown jewel of the public system in CA and some say the world. The university is also a major employer in Northern Californa, it brings the most talented professors and grad students in the world to CA, who do research at Berkeley which is a HUGE economic driver for the state. The board of regents would realize any moves that could distablize the university could have much more profound impacts than not admitting more students.

In respect to the apartment housing, I would suspect large majority of the owners of those complexes bought them before the boom. The Bay Area now has by far the highest median house price in the nation. You say it would be the same cost no matter where the undergrads lived, yet that would support my argument that the extra millions spent on buyng apartments at the premium price would not be worth it because it would end up in a net loss. Unlike the landlords, Cal would not be able to recoop costs spent on buying/renovation because for many student they would be paying for them to live there also. I just can’t see the pressure being so great that Berkeley decides to waste money.

The new structures you mentioned were already built on university property, hence they didn’t have to pay premium prices to buy the property. Also those units were built primarily to give students two years of gauranteed student housing, not to expand UG population. I think this would be an example of how Cal is trying to improve UG experience. I have over 10 non freshmans on my floor alone. Then comes to your idea that the campus would expand to West Berkeley 2 miles away, which isn’t even a possibility because its not in the 2020 plan, let alone it being in a very seedy area and causing the university to waste resources on extra security. I just don’t see this being seen as a plausible idea at all. The new dining hall you speak of is an example of how Cal consolidated to cut costs and save resources. Rather than expand, Cal improved UG life by giving 2 year housing and consolidated two dining halls into one…which was a very smart thing for Cal to do.

You can’t compare harvard’s allston scenario to Berkeley. Harvard’s move to Allston, a lower/middle class section of Boston is going to take almost 5 decades. Its approximately 250 acres Harvard started buying many years ago , a large protion before the real estate boom and in a cheaper area of Boston. Boston is expensive, but not nearly as expensive as the Bay area. The Allston campus is right across the river from Harvard and it already had facilities in Allston including Harvard Stadium. Harvard is not increasing UG, the new campus will mainly be research facilities and graduate housing, a totally different demographic than UG. In Cal’s case, it can’t expand anywhere that close in Berkeley. For god’s sake the poor university can’t even build a new athletic center on university property, an athletic center that takes athletes out of danger in currently siesmic unsafe facilities. As I’ve stated before the city of Berkeley is a major reason why Cal won’t grow.

You also use HMS as an example how Berkeley could move its grad schools but for one Berkeley doesn’t have a med school, which I’m sure you know. HMS is in Longwood, one of the premier medical areas in the world. It has 3 hospitals alone including Beth Isreal, Brigham and Women’s, and CHB right next door. Having HMS in Longwood is even better than having it at Harvard’s main campus. Any movement of Berkeley’s grad schools would have nothing but negative effects on the schools. Harvard’s circumstances are completely different from Berkeley’s.

In the end I think Berkeley already has much more autonomy than you think, its funding that gives the state its leverage over Berkeley. It could decrease one day, not soon, but as for expanding I think the logistics of expanding, let alone in Berzerkeley, make it even more impropable than decreasing.

Let me provide this link

[University</a> of California - UC Newsroom | UC to offer admission to all eligible undergraduates for 2008-09; state budget challenge deepens for university](<a href=“http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/17388]University”>http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/17388)

It backs up some of my claims and also states that many students will not get into their first choice university. Many students will have to go to lower UCs because they are underutilized and its easier to add students there rather than Berkeley. Let’s take the new UC Merced, why do you think UC decided to build in Merced? Because its a beautiful and exciting location and with students begging to go? No- they decided to build there because land was cheap. Merced has over 900 acres to expand on. It made more sense economically and logistically to build a whole new campus rather than to expand at Berkeley or UCLA. Again Berkeley is at max capacity right now and even if it did have the endowment money to expand on its own logistically it just can’t.

Again please read the 2020 plan…it will show you what Berkeley plans to do.

kyledavid80 · March 2, 2008, 2:21am

Does it really? That’s what’s confusing. According to this:

[University</a> of California Financial Reports](<a href=“http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/finreports/index.php?file=/06-07/pdf/campusfacts2007.pdf]University”>http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/finreports/index.php?file=/06-07/pdf/campusfacts2007.pdf)

It only provides $76 million, which covers 4.5% of the total budget.

sofla951 · March 2, 2008, 2:57am

I’m not sure I’ve read recently that the state provide alittle bit less than 500 million to Berkeley, with UC recieving around somewhere over 3 billion in total. I also just started working at the call center and they told me around 35%. What’s an even more mind boggling fact is that CA spends around 9 billion to fund prisons…which is three times as much as it gives to UC and projections showed that one day CA could spend more on the prison system systems than the UC, Cal State, and CC systems COMBINED. On the bright side California will have world class prisons! (:

sofla951 · March 2, 2008, 3:10am

Here’s a link to the article…California is ridiculous!

[Prisons</a>’ budget to trump colleges’ / No other big state spends as much to incarcerate compared with higher education funding](<a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/21/MNG4KPUKV51.DTL]Prisons”>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/21/MNG4KPUKV51.DTL)

kyledavid80 · March 2, 2008, 3:13am

Well, the $500 million figure probably includes federal and local. State funding accounts for $76 million, according to the most recent financial report. “Around 35%” most likely means government funding–which can include federal, state, and local revenue.

Plus, if UC got around 3 billion in total, it’d average out to 300 million per UC school. Considering that Berkeley doesn’t even have a med school, I doubt they’d give 1.7 times the average to Berkeley, especially when it has the most financial resources (read: largest endowment) of the UCs.

And the fact that we spend much more on prisons is really saddening. Just more evidence of our governor’s failure…

sofla951 · March 2, 2008, 3:39am

When reading about endowment I get confused because I see different figures all the time…I’ve seen 3.34B from US News in 2007, 2.05B from that source for 2007, and the daily Cal said around 900 million.

sofla951 · March 2, 2008, 4:36am

^correction I didn’t add the campus foundation endowment at 990M so it comes to around 3B. What is the difference between the campus foundation and university endowments? Also I don’t think you can totally blame the governator for this I read the “get tough on crime” policies that started this mess supposedly started 30 years ago…around when Reagan was governor.

Interesting Article on Enrollment increasing

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