UC vs IVY LEAGUE

UCLAri
Thu, 25 May 2006 11:20:58 +0000

See, those money problems were overblown.



You ignored my caveat. You don’t think that a lot of impacted, popular majors could do with some better funding, or better yet, a population decrease?

One of the big problems the UCs are facing is decreasing funding along with increasing enrollment at the UG level. You don’t think this is bound to hurt the education?



First, I thought we were talking about UG and second, who cares if some law student wants to go to cornell because they have better lecure halls.



I already said it was an imperfect example, but it shows that funding matters, especially with yield. Part of making undergrad programs great is getting a great student body. If schools like Stanford (which you may legitimately argue have worse opportunities for an undergrad) can pull students from Cal easily, then it’s a problem.



Except when say its the fifth best school for UG in the country, right? Those are the very people that fill out those peer reviews.



I strongly suspect (and I’m sure you’ll disagree) that the peer review, though one of the best metrics for measuring a school’s quality, is largely dependent on graduate program quality. After all, that’s what academics know the most about and care the most about. Research makes the research university world go round.

Besides, I don’t know that it’s accurate to say that the peer review means that they think it’s the “fifth best school for UG in the country.” And even if that is what they believe, why do Cal students seem to have a harder time getting into top grad programs than their Ivy equivalents? Something is amiss there.

Look SnuggleMonster, I’m not saying that Cal is bad. Please, for the love of God, don’t think that’s what I’m saying. I think that if you consider the quality of the graduate programs, and the quality of grad students the SAME departments can pull, then it’s a problem when the undergrad program is not getting students of the same caliber. That’s not how it should be.