Berkeley
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sun ...@prodigy.net (Sally)
Just took a Berkeley tour today. Beautiful spring day. Two tour guides: female music major and male environmental policy major. In the tour office before the tour, I heard someone (a student?) complaining that the University had not ***igned a space for her cl***; she couldn't advertise the cl*** without a cl***room ***ignment; she sounded exasperated. The tour guide said that one of the worst parts of going to school at Berkeley was the bureauracy.
The tour was far too much about ancient history and silly stuff. I learned about Mario Savio and the 1964 Free Speech Movement. I learned about why the sycamore trees look like Cheetos. I learned that dinosaur bones are stored in the Campanile. I learned that no studying is allowed in the Morrison Libary. The Morrison has dark walls and low lighting. Looks like a place where men would have smoked cigars and drunk port 200 years ago. Now people listen to CDs.
So lots of Berkeley students are preparing for medical school.
Housing is guaranteed for one year, unless you are a spring admit. No housing guaranteed for Spring admits. Some dorms have coed bathrooms.
There is a substance-free dorm that houses about 500 students. A good place to look for housing is craigslist.com. About 10% of the students are greek, a lot of them join to get housing. The coops have mellowed a little. They used to be really wild.
The undergraduate library, Moffitt, has a cafe that is open when the library is open. The library is open 24 hours/day during finals, but sleeping bags are no longer allowed.
In the main library, students can reserve a study room with a chalk board for group work. The Library Advisory Service will help finding books for a paper, and most librarians are willing to help with finding the resources you need.
The computer network is never down, according to the tour guides, except if there is a power outage. Berkeley is working on setting up a wireless network.
The parking spaces labeled "NL" are for Nobel Laureats. They say that is the only way to get parking on campus. A parking permit only allows you to hunt. Don't bring a car to campus. Public transportation is free and will get you anywhere, including into San Francisco. Having a car in Berkeley is very stressful. Most students walk.
We visited one lecture hall: Pimentel. It seats about five hundred.
The stage rotates so demonstrations for an 11 o'clock lecture can be set up during the 10 o'clock lecture. There are 14 cameras that can project on a huge screen in front. Lectures are on the web, which is good for review. The tour guides emphasized that students should attend lecture and go to office hours.
The tour guides said that many new students are concerned about the large cl***es. They said that most intro cl***es are huge, but many cl***es are in the 10-50 student range the second year. New students can take Fresh-Soph seminars which are led by senior faculty if they want small cl***es. They can also take Democratic Education at Cal cl***es which are taught by students and sponsored by faculty: Beatles, blackjack, dating, etc.
The tour guides admitted that Teaching ***istants sometimes have heavy accents. They say students learn to understand them. Students can switch sections if it is a problem.
Someone is giving a speech almost every day at the Sproul Hall steps.
Students think this is a real plus. It is what makes Berkeley exciting.
Students can use the tutors at the Student Learning Center. They will help edit a paper.
There is a career center on campus where students can take tests. The counselors can help them find their path. There are career fairs on campus.
At the admissions session, we were told that Berkeley looks for leadership. They also want to see at least four solids during the senior year.
And oh yes, drugs. The tour guides say illegal drugs are available if you want them, but it is easy to stay away from them also.
That is my report.
Sally
darcc ...@aol.comnojunk (Darccity)
Great report. Just a few questions on your impressions of : *how the students were dressed (bohemian, suburban, ...) and did they appear to be self-segregating by race/ethnicity or mingling?
*how was the appearance of place these days (graffiti, trash, grounds, furniture badly in need of repair/replacement)?
*how safe did it seem?
Thanks.
youngbe ...@earthlink.net (Karin)
I would say the bureauracy is alive and well.
"alin" a...@dlin.d2g.com
Does the campus have full swing of people? How does it look when students are p***ing across different buildings? We missed the "actions" when touring there in the past summer.
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"Abe Kohen" ako...@xenon.stanford.edu
Absolutely true - at least way back when.
They wouldn't approve the grad course taken elsewhere. They wouldn't approve my petitions. They insisted on marking me down as white, even as I declined to state.
Stanford, after Berkeley, was like going to heaven. Petition? Yes. Change your requirements? Sure.
Berkeley, with the 300 student lectures in my wife's junior and senior years.
Berkeley, with the Campanile, the kumquats, the half-naked women in Sproul Plaza, the Campus Cops pretending not to see, the cold mornings and warm afternoons, the unmeshed architectures, the brilliant minds, the Nobel laureates emeriti, the crazies in the Plaza and across the road, the People's Republic, the smell of weed everywhere, the memories.
I loved it and I hated it. My wife just loved it.
Did they show you the nuclear reactor under Soda Hall?
Sally, thanks for a great report, and for bringing back memories.
Abe
"Kath" kathryn.havem...@lexisnexis.com
I don't see many positives in your account of the tour. For one thing, I am very wary of colleges that do not guarantee housing for at least two years. Sophomore year is a bit too soon for many students (most only 18 or 19 years old) to be moving into an apartment off campus and risking alienation from campus activities and friendships so prevalent in more residential colleges.
"Silly" history is important to some students. It makes a place interesting.
Yeah, right. If a student has a choice between getting out of bed and attending an essentially video-lecture in a room with 500 other students or staying home and watching the lecture at a more reasonable hour in his bed, guess what he'll do?
"Democratic Education"? Are core courses in literature, science, and math considerred undemocratic? Although arguably somewhat interesting, getting credit for cl***es about blackjack and dating is not a good use of hard-to-come-by parental money (or even federal aid money).
What percentage of those required large lecture cl***es are taught by TAs who have (some/little) English as a second language? Did anyone ask?
This is true of most campuses. Nothing special here.
What college doesn't? How do you develop leadership on a huge urban campus?
Not much opportunity for that, if you ask me.
That's what they all say. How prevalent are drugs on campus? Are drugs the predominant campus culture? Then again, only freshmen live on campus.
I know Berkeley is an excellent university but, depending on the student and his/her desires, it may not be the best place for many who are looking for a more intimate setting and some real student support. The happiest students will probably be those who are extremely independent, creatively resourceful, and very ***ertive about their educational needs.
sun ...@prodigy.net (Sally)
Hey Darccity, Try reading the Daily Cal: http://www.dailycal.org/opinion/ . In the opinion section is an article about self-segregation. The students don't seem to mingle much. Is it different at other colleges? Check out the Police Log, where there are reports of drugs at People's Park.
I felt safe on campus, and even in the south campus area. Walking past People's Park wasn't that creepy. There are beggers on Telegraph Ave.
The Berkeley campus is beatiful. A burbling creek shaded by ancient trees runs through campus. The architecture is eclectic: cl***ic buildings mingle with brutalism and 1960's boring. I saw no graffiti, even in the south campus area. The grounds were clean and well-kept.
The cl***rooms seemed fine. A couple of benches in Sproul Plaza did need repair.
The clothes the students were wearing seemed unremarkable. Maybe a bit downscale. Definately not preppy or business casual. Lots of jeans and tshirts and sweatshirts. But some kids wore button shirts or athletic clothes.
Sally
sun ...@prodigy.net (Sally)
"> Did they show you the nuclear reactor under Soda Hall?
Abe, No, we didn't get to Soda Hall. We kept to the central campus area.
Glad you enjoyed the report.
Sally
sun ...@prodigy.net (Sally)
Alin, It looked crowded!!!!!!!!!! There are more than 30,0000 students there. I'm not sure what you mean by "full swing." Sally
"alin" a...@dlin.d2g.com
Thank you. You have answered exactly what I was looking for.
Yeah, when we were there in the summer, the campus looks nice and "open", although I was trying to picture 30,000 people in the "open space".
sun ...@prodigy.net (Sally)
http://www.berkeley.edu/tour/ check out the photo link above. There are also live cameras around campus you can link to. Sally
fun ...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Hank Fung)
A real Berkeley student (tm) (graduating, too!) comments on your post.
In article <2398fe97.0302031420.676f5...@posting.google.com>, Letters and Science IS bureaucratic. I deal with engineering, and a small department at that, and they are blessedly not bureaucratic.
Especially during the winter (the slow months), the tours often deal with the eclectic and esoteric. The tours during the month of April and November are generally much more focused, since there are large groups of people, including parents, that don't care about the silly stuff.
And I never thought the sycamore trees look like Cheetos myself.
Not many, actually. There are many Berkeley students that THINK they want to go to medical school, but whether or not they actually get there is another story entirely. The stats are at http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/MedStats.stm, and maybe two or three hundred a year actually apply to med school.
In practice, they get one and a half years of housing. Some people bail out of dorms for personal or financial reasons. Those are enough to give spaces to the spring admits. They also get priority the next semester over people who were in the dorms the full year.
Most, actually.
Actually, the dorm 9Freeborn) holds maybe 250.
Agreed. Personal connections, though, are more useful than any sort of public posting service, in my opinion.
They are down occasionally. Power outages occur relatively frequently in the Southside (by the standards of where I came from, which means a power outage two or three times a year, one of which will be longer than two hours), but not on the University campus, although last year there was a power outage that lasted the good part of an evening and morning, right during midterm season.
There are on campus lots for "central campus" permit holders, those with 20+ years of service and high level types.
I know of many successful commuters in my major that drive to campus. Most get there before 9 am or after 3 pm. That's the secret to getting spaces: come early.
I have a car. There are dings on all four corners of it, but I wouldn't consider having a car "stressful", although I do have a space in my apartment building, and I mainly drive it on weekends and when I am running errands, not to campus, which is 10 minutes away by foot.
Which, strangely enough, many students don't do.
They can't say "taught" anymore after the controversy with the Male Sexuality cl*** (which involved sexual relations that were perceived to be required to be a member of the cl***). It's very major dependent: a CS student can graduate without ever having taken a cl*** with fewer than 100 students, whereas in my major, civil engineering, I have no cl***es in my major with greater than about 50, with most in the 30-40 range.
Engineering students hardly ever go to the Sproul steps. The guides might think of it as a real plus, but the majority of students are not there.
They are more difficult to get than you think. It depends on the living situation: co-ops have historically been hotbeds of drug activity. As with most universities, alcohol is the drug of choice.
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Hank Fung fun...@ocf.berkeley.edu Go Bears! http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~fungus
fun ...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Hank Fung)
Actually, the city restricts Berkeley's size to 28,000. The actual student population varies, and counts include or don't include students abroad, people on leave or research, and other things. I would say 28,000 actual warm students that set foot on campus in a given week sounds about right.
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Hank Fung fun...@ocf.berkeley.edu Go Bears! http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~fungus
fun ...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Hank Fung)
The eventual plan is to offer two years of housing, if only to compete with UCLA, which does. Whether or not this can be accomplished is certainly debatable.
They get at most two units of credit, and only so many count for the degree (in engineering, it's 8, the other colleges may have different requirements). You pay the same price whether you take 12 or 22 units, so I don't see the problem there, although I do see a problem in people taking these cl***es solely to meet a unit requirement, and thus delaying their graduation for personal reasons (job market or perpetual activism).
Very few lecture cl***es, and certainly no large lecture cl***es, are taught by graduate students acting as TAs. TAs do the discussion sections, which are a unique feature of the large university. At most smaller universities, and even at the Cal States, most cl***es are taught by faculty, and they meet for a certain number of hours a week. The lecture-
discussion format has the lecture at a certain period, in a large lecture hall, and discussions, recitations, labs, or reviews held with graduate student instructors in smaller cl***rooms. Depending on the cl***, the time can be sizable: for instance, a 4 unit math cl*** might have 3 hours of lecture and 3 hours of discussion.
Large scale leadership is difficult. The ASUC (student government) is polarized. On the other hand, many students are leaders in their majors, their religious organizations, their clubs, and in university governance.
No. The majority of students do live within walking distance of campus, though, so they are essentially "on" campus. A significant percentage do commute, but they are not the majority.
I agree, especially for someone who doesn't know what they want to do.
It can be argued that the freedom from choice that a liberal arts college offers provides a better and more holistic education.
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Hank Fung fun...@ocf.berkeley.edu Go Bears! http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~fungus
darcc ...@aol.comnojunk (Darccity)
Thanks, Hank, for those wonderful clarifications and comments. I'm sure they helped give many much greater insight about the modern state of perhaps the best public university and one of the only urban, public residential universities in the U.S. For many areas of engineering, it is hard to find better.
One addition. Most students have no idea (why should they) about where on the pecking order their course instructor stands. Although you are correct about the TAs and discussion sections, and especially correct about engineering programs, thousands of university and LA college courses are taught by non-regular faculty and/or folks lacking even a "terminal" degree (a quaint euphemism for the arts fields where artists and writers with professional experience may have as little as a bachelors or where a PhD is generally not availble). Many universities allow you to teach a course after you've p***ed your comps (as little as a couple of years past your bachelors), and some universities put you teaching a lower division math, english comp, or language cl*** after as little as year of grad study. The fact that you are no longer called a TA (because you aren't "***isting a prof any more) still doesn't make you a prof.
Then there are the adjuncts which have proliferated uncontrollably at universities and colleges: whenever a prof needs a "release" to work on a grant or do some "service" task, they fill in with slave-labor adjuncts called in at a moments notice from outside (though many have either full-time non-teaching jobs as well or are "gypsy" instructors who attempt to parlay courses -- as many as eight/term -- at several nearby colleges into a subsistance salary) There is an increasing trend toward hiring 3- and 5-year contract, non-tenure-track instructors to do the teaching, especially of enormous auditorium courses. These amazing folks often have supernatural abilities to keep people awake and come away with useful skills (although others are just good at keeping students content enough to not complain to the Dean or department chairperson).
sun ...@prodigy.net (Sally)
Hey Darccity, I am not sure that I am catching on here. You seem to be saying that it doesn't matter where you go to school or who teaches your cl***.
They are all lousy teachers due to one of the following: 1) lack of experience 2) care only about research 3) so overworked and underpaid that they are too resentful to teach well.
Please correct me if I misunderstood.
Sally
"alin" a...@dlin.d2g.com
unless if you go to a small liberal arts, where only tenured full professors teach undergrad courses, only if you can avoid the places where aging faculty who are only trying hold on to power.
darcc ...@aol.comnojunk (Darccity)
Yes, but with a couple of important caveats. Most (at least 80%) of so-called LA colleges are not. They have yielded to professional/career programs to maintain enrollment and relevance, or at least so they think. But non-LA programs are not cheap to staff, so these "LA-plus" colleges rely on $2500/course adjuncts, non-terminally degreed, and outside-of-field substitutes (e.g., MBAs and education folks teach business). Also, non-selective LA colleges (most LA colleges accept at least 75% of applicants) have pitifully small endowments and cannot charge premium tuitions either; the result is that salaries must be well below market, so they cannot attract quality faculty and also must cut corners with more adjuncts and underqualified instructors. Some of these colleges have as many as half their courses taught by instructors, lecturers, or non-terminally degreed professors. That's what happens when even full professors get paid $55,000 or less. The religious affiliated, BA-granting colleges are in the worst shape of all -- constantly battling accreditors and creditors.
sun ...@prodigy.net (Sally)
Alin, About teachers at small liberal arts colleges: don't they have that same publish or perish problem?
Sally
sun ...@prodigy.net (Sally)
So Darccity, where does a student go to find good teachers? Sally
sun ...@prodigy.net (Sally)
Hank, do the spring admits enjoy their dorm stay? Seems weird to start a semester late and then spend a year with brand-new first year students.
Sally
"Abe Kohen" ako...@xenon.stanford.edu
Thank God, things have changed.
Cal had a housing crunch way back when and it still has one now. When the Mrs. and I were promised an apartment in Married Student Housing, we found after driving cross country that there were no vacancies. Not being able to afford anything reasonable in the area, we rented an apartment in the Projects in Richmond. We certainly added to the "diversity," as the number of whites increased by 200%. The rats the neighboring kids threw in our patio, really did not bother me, but the nightly ritual of tire slashing (not our car), and the nightly screams (were they having sex or was it rape?), really motivated me to put pressure on the housing office to get an apartment in Married Student Housing ASAP. With the help of Cal's Legal Aid, we got our deposit back, and moved into the Army barracks in Albany, aka, Married Student Housing by the end of September. Later on we got lucky and moved into the Housing on Smythe Road.
Of course those students who live at home with their parents in Kensington or in the City, don't have a housing problem.
Then things really have changed.
Even the politically active engineering students don't go to Sproul, or cross Sproul to get to Telegraph?
Abe
"alin" a...@dlin.d2g.com
I must be too good/bad at sarcasm that evaded both you and darccity.
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darcc ...@aol.comnojunk (Darccity)
No. The publishing standards are lower, much lower, at even fairly good LA colleges. Research universities, even tier 3 and 4, require 7 or more refereed journal publications (some sole authored) to gain tenure. The first time I got tenure, at a decent LA college, I had only one, minor publication (I was into teaching and service then)! The second time, a research university, I had eight, all of them in respected journals. In fact, what happens is that faculty at the top LA colleges often are those denied tenure originally at research universities. Remember, salaries are higher and teaching loads lower at universities, even if the undergrad education offered is inferior.
darcc ...@aol.comnojunk (Darccity)
Here's a few guidelines for selection: 1. Consider places the guidebooks rate highly for professor concern and accessibility.
2. Look for places that have a "shopping period" or extended add/drop (preferably two-weeks) at the beginning of each term. This prevents "gotcha" profs from exercising too much power and too little attention to student. They cannot easily deceive students about their teaching prowess for two whole weeks.
3. Choose only places where the culture values learning and inquiry, while avoiding party/jock havens. Even the most dedicated and qualified profs wilt rapidly when confronting cl***es of hungover, apathetic, grade-grubbers.
Curious and enthusiastic students makes teaching more enjoyable and profs more effective.
4. Other things equal, apply to more selective colleges, because education is about learning, not teaching, and students learn from each other.
5. Find colleges where everybody gets into the undergrad cl***rooms (even the president on occasion), so that teaching isn't a second-cl*** activity.
6. Check out colleges where profs support their cl***es with strong web sites.
7. Email current students about the quality and accessibility of their profs.
8. Check a schedule of cl***es, and avoid any place where many of the instructors listed are no people listed in the catalog as regular faculty.
Also, avoid places where instructor names are left blank or listed as TBA or "staff." Notice that I didn't mention cl*** size, as some large cl***es can be quite effective.
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