Innovations in Higher Education--from the Student Regent, D'Artagnan Scorza

[Arthos]

Hi Everyone,

Although education is a considerable portion of the State's budget, financial support has decreased over the last 20 years. This has left us with overcrowded and impacted classrooms, as well as, decisions to cut back enrollment. This causes me to want to find ways to increase quality while decreasing costs.

Can you help me think of ways to save money in the UC? Be as creative as possible. For example, imagine that when you wake up for an 8am class, you get up in time to eat breakfast and then sit down in front of your computer to watch your professor lecture right in front of you on your computer screen (at least you won't fall asleep in class). You head to your discussion section as scheduled and meet with your TA on G-Chat when you need it.

I will present your ideas to the Board of Regents and push to make some of them come to life. Please post your ideas on the group page and have an impact on your University. Thank you!

Best,

D'Artagnan

[kremlinmirrors]

I can personally say I don't want to watch my classes on a computer screen. I won't be focused, and I sure won't learn anything. I do think being able to have live chat study sessions with our discussion section students and GSIs could be a great addition via technology, though.

From talking to some of my classmates, I think we would really like to have an easily accessible report of what the UC is doing with its money. We decided to renovate Sather Gate right in the middle of an economic crisis, we spent money to put up basically a board of student faces and quotes, and to build that ridiculous structure in Memorial Glade last year (I notice the Glade still hasn't recovered). Yet we don't have the money to have enough lab sections for Chemistry majors, or to renovate tennis courts that were suddenly and unexpectedly shut down?

Now I pay $40,000 a year to go to a school where honestly, the value of education seems to be decreasing. I have thirty people in my lab (there is almost no space in which to work) and now my tennis class has been moved because we woke up one morning to find the courts closed. While in-state students with incomes under $60,000 may soon have drastic cuts in tuition, no one has worked in our household for the last five years, save me in the summer, and now I'm struggling to make ends meet because I decided to "infringe" upon a UC. At least, that's what it feels like. I'm certainly not getting much help.

I can't say I'm sure exactly how to save money, but we should be more careful about what projects and whose pockets we're putting it into.

[mmmpotatoes]

There is no real way to squeeze more efficiency out of the UC.  They are epically underfunded, and if I recall a conversation I had earlier correctly, the fittings for the gate itself are being replaced.  I agree that there should be some thought, serious thought, about the spending of any money.  Money should be directed at academics.  Let's not waste money showering the ASUC with blank checks, waste millions on a, to be completely honest, total bloody circus of a "Multicultural Center".  UC Berkeley is an academic institution, first and foremost.  We pride ourselves in our accomplishments of the mind.  Sports are good, and people like to have a good public image, but 95% of the community is focused on their education, the education of students, and the maintenance of the institution that makes it possible. The priorities should lie there.

The school cuts webcast funding, but puts up face-boards?  One webcasted class costs three-thousand dollars to produce (to quote Prof. Brian Harvey, of the CS department).  That eyesore / graffiti magnet of a collage cost what?  Ten, fifteen thousand dollars probably?  There is no excuse.  It is actually insulting.

Overcrowding in classes is a major problem.  I don't see a good way to fix it, except perhaps to change the way classes are given.  With laboratory space at a constant premium, for sciences / engineering, there is a near-static number of possible sections, and by extension, limits on enrollment.  With humanities classes, lecture sizes can balloon.  Webcasts alleviate the pressure, but hardly solve the problem.  There may need to be enrollment limits, or more, smaller sections.  You can hardly reasonably see that 1 Pimentel, 2050 VLSB and Wheeler Auditorium are constantly booked and expect to fit more students in classes.  Professors may have to teach more smaller sections.  There either needs to be fewer students, or more classes. 

Saving money, from the administration's point of view, should come from cutting the fat.  Additional fundraising measures are important, but without reining in the waste, it is only a stop-gap measure.  Class overcrowding can be solved by cutting enrollment.  The drop in funding from shrinking enrollment can be compensated by dropping programs that do not scale with student population, or do not directly serve the students at large.

I'd continue this diatribe, but it's very, very late.

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