Tom Campbell wants LA and Berkeley to cost as much as Stanford

[xiggi]

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I would actually argue that the best thing to do is to reduce enrollment of all students, whether graduate or undergraduate. The truth is, Berkeley has been oversubscribed for decades. Berkeley loses money on every student that it enrolls, even OOS and grad students - or at least Berkeley so claims in its accounting statements. {If the problem is misleading accounting, then Berkeley should fix that as well.} But in any case, if it is really true that Berkeley loses money on each student, and Berkeley is faced with a budget crisis, then the answer is to simply enroll fewer students. I believe somebody once posted a planning document that indicated that Berkeley was never supposed to expand beyond 20k undergrads until a time far beyond the near future. We’re now at 25k and counting.

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<p>If enrolling fewer students was the objective, why do the flagship schools in the UC system continue to admit so many transfer students? </p>

<p>Would the issue of attracting OOS with deeper purses and BETTER test scores not help Cal and UCLA to become more like Stanford? </p>

<p>It seems that this could offer a convenient compromise as students would not mind earning a Cal degree all the while avoiding the purgatory of “slightly” overpopulated and basic classes that represent the bane of the tenured faculty. The school, in turn, would benefit from a vast supply of students who learned what it means to attend a competitive college and had higher admission freshman credentials. </p>

<p>Of course, this would mean a departure from the mission of the UC system --or is it?</p>