<p>PS: (And part of me wants to say, “Nyah! Nyah! Yall are just jealous because its not <em>your</em> flagship state U. Sucks for you! Get over it!” But that, of course, is very childish and unbecoming. :-)</p>
<p>Actually, not really. Berkeley is a fine school, no question about it. But it looms a lot larger in the minds of people in California than it does elsewhere. This has been discussed before, but for a lot of people Berkeley conjures up vague hippie associations and not much more. Which is not a reason not to choose Berkeley, and I’d be delighted if my kids went there. But to suggest that it’s “national” in scope is an example of Californians overthinking California culture and institutions’ prevalence elsewhere.</p>
<p>Does anyone remember Prince Akeem in Coming to America claiming to attend the University of the United States? When his love interest says she’s never heard of it, he says, “It is very small. We do not even have a basketball team!”</p>
<p>I think that’s a hoot.</p>
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<p>As an engineer. it looms pretty large in the minds of engineers too.</p>
<p>^^It looms pretty large to Chemistry students too. UC Berkeley has not one but two elements named after it (#97 & #98). No other US university has even one. Berkeley also has two more elements named for UC professors (#103 & #106).</p>
<p>Pizzagirl: I’m not a native Californian and I’ve never seen the big deal. (I’m also on the Stanford side of the bay and therefore lean a bit more that way.) On the other hand, the people who seem to be going on about it as a “national university” aren’t Californians either. My teasing was mostly that so many other people were making such a big deal about something that seems sort of like “Yeah, it’s nice, but very impersonal and with many caveats” to me.</p>
<p>This has become a college bashing thread. Show a little class here people.</p>
<p>Sure, Berkeley is a national university, in a sense. It has a national (and international) reputation. But there are quite a few universities, both public and private, that are national in that sense. It just ain’t gonna happen that any one of them is going to become THE national university.</p>
<p>^^^^ Agreed 100%. My post about Berkeley was just basically to say that in the circles I travel it is generally regarded more as a tech powerhouse than a hippy dippy university. Although I’m sure both sort of still apply.</p>
<p>It’s sort of like I don’t think anybody associates Harvard with Thurston Howell III anymore.</p>
<p>
I always loved the way he’d say, “Must be a Yale man!” when encountering a cannibal or other undesirable.</p>
<p>Just wait, O will do it, he will print a little more $$ (at this point it does not matter, few billions more or less anyway) and we will have it (some of us, at least).</p>
<p>Oh, please! This is not the Election & Politics forum!</p>
<p>Seriously. Let’s not contaminate this otherwise thoughtful discussion.</p>
<p>PrincipalV, a national university really could not compete with privates or even states, unless they did something like set it up as a quasi-private (or quasi-federal) institution, like FannyMae (maybe a bad example!) The privates and states can pay what they want to - there are faculty members, particularly at professional schools and in athletic departments (i.e. D1 football and basketball coaches) making millions of dollars per year. The fed. government payscale tops out at 400K, the President’s salary.</p>
<p>Moreover, in the U.S., federal institutions in most realms (medicine, law, finance) are not necessarily associated with the greatest prestige except for the very top positions. The best Justice Department lawyers often end up working as private-law-firm defense lawyers. The best non-research physicians are usually in private practice, though often with a university affiliation. A top federal finance post is where you go AFTER you’ve made your gazillions at Goldman Sachs, not the other way around.</p>
<p>And most of this is because America is a capitilistic country where money talks</p>
<p>SEA_Tide said: “In my view, the US is made up of 50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, and other political entities. Each one of these has the power to create their own university systems . . . (a)ccording to the US Constitution and its amendments, the powers not granted to the US Federal Government, which include many retained by other governments, are given to either the individual state governments or the people themselves.”</p>
<p>Well, that is certainly well-written, but glosses over the federal government’s key role in establishing land grant colleges, like Cal. Invoking the Constitution is an overly legalistic way of explaining why the states formed universities. That clause didn’t stop the Morrill Act, and is much less a cause of the decentralization of higher education than it is a different expression of the same cultural bias. </p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>There is an assumption underlying this question posed by the OP that there should or can be a single national university and that this university should be the best that the nation can offer.
As many have pointed, each state has its own public university. In many states, this public university (system) is the best or at least one of the best (eg. Cal & UCLA and Stanford & Caltech). But that is not true in every state (Yale vs. University of Connecticut, for instance or Harvard & MIT vs. UMass-Amherst).
Another point to consider: In 2007, the University of Massachusetts system (Amherst and four smaller campuses) had a total endowment of $238 million vs. approximately $30billion for Harvard and around $8billion for MIT. Chicago’s endowment is $6.5 billion vs. $2.2 billion for the much larger University of Illinois system. the cost of creating a first-class national university would be prohibitive, not to mention that the whole concept is unnecessary.</p>
<p>I agree, Leah321, it has been an interesting discussion but folks’ geographical bias toward what they are familiar with and the tendency to pooh-pooh what they don’t know well, state school wise, isn’t so nice to see.</p>
<p>As a native Nebraskan, I’m still bristling a bit at Post #36, which states in part:</p>
<p>“I think I’m the only proponent of a national university on these entire boards. 
I don’t feel it would be inappropriate whatsoever. I can’t help but empathize with the excellent students from areas like the Dakotas and Nebraska who are too bright for their less-than-stellar state universities, yet fall through the cracks with financial aid to top tier privates; thus they are forced to attend a, frankly, bad school. A national university would alleviate both of these issues, providing there was competent staffing.”</p>
<p>The poster takes more shots in Post #56. I acknowlege that he’s a young adult with a lot to learn, but it still bugs me.</p>
<p>The University of Nebraska is not a “bad school”. Far from it. I would venture to say the same thing about many colleges in the Dakotas. Stop the potshots.</p>
<p>As a MA resident, I am very willing to say that while UMass-Amherst is a very decent university, it just is not in the same league as many private universities in the state (and not just Harvard and MIT). It is precisely the presence of so many excellent private colleges and universities that prevents UMass-Amherst to obtain the clout to get more funding from the state legislature.</p>
<p>Kei,</p>
<p>I realize that there is probably some cultural bias in my reasoning, but I decided to wiki the Morrill Act. It quotes that the purpose of land grant colleges was “without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.”</p>
<p>Considering that some states were given more funding in 1890 to form many of the HBCU’s, the Federal Government respects that states control much of the educational systems. Luckily, the states like to work together and with the Federal Government on things so one can expect relatively similar laws and policies in each state. I’m not saying that the Federal Government cannot find a way to run its own civilian universities. In fact, globalization may be making even more federal involvement in education almost inevitable. </p>
<p>Still, it is a legitimate interest for a state to educate its residents. According to <a href=“Home”>Home; , my university, The University of Alabama states “Institutions of The University of Alabama System exist to
serve all people of Alabama through teaching, research, and service programs. As resources permit, the institutions extend these functions to the nation and beyond through a wide variety of educational programs and services.” The way I understand US laws, education is left up to the individual states with the Federal Government stepping in to support its interests (equality, national defense, research, future taxpayers, etc). I would like to see a national university in the United States, it’s just that our laws and culture (ie state pride) make it very difficult for it to happen.</p>
<p>I would expect any self-respecting planet to have a world university where a few thousand of the world’s best students are educated for the collective good of all nations. I propose that the United Nations take over the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and rename it the World University of Earth. There, the best and brightest students from every nation would learn how to serve the priorities of the world.</p>