Hacker News Reader

Comment by calinet6 | Hacker News Reader

Robert Birgeneau, the chancellor emeritus of Berkeley, spoke at a fundraising event I attended and said something I thought was poignant:

"The University of California has gone from being a state-funded institution, to a state-sponsored institution, to a state-located institution."

The level at which the State of California funds the university is practically nothing at this point. Alumni donations have filled some gaps but don't nearly cover everything. Tuition has increased to the point where even I, who graduated in 2006, consider it ridiculous. It is now over 8 times the maximum semester tuition I paid.

I can't imagine considering Berkeley a "great value" anymore, as I did when I was there considering the (excellent) quality of education versus the price. It used to be a sense of pride; that a public university could be so great, to prove the experiment, to show that society could produce academic excellence without falling to the vices of money and the divisions that come with it. Now that experiment has failed, and only those who believe in it strongly—the Alumni and supporters—are upholding it, but that's not sustainable.

We need to grow up. This fantasy of American individualism is killing us. We need to grow up and learn how to share—and this is the worst part: as we once did.

View on HN

UC actually does raise a lot of money. Last year, Berkeley raised about $400mil from private donations, compared to about $650mil for Harvard and over a $1bil for Stanford. However, those institutions are including a med school. If you add Berkeley and UCSF (a stand alone med/health sciences research university), it goes up to about $730 mil.

Of course, most of this goes toward research, which is probably a big part of why Berkeley hasn't really slipped much (if at all) in graduate standings (UCB actually has more PhD programs in the top 10 than any other university, according to the NSRC). The problem is, what to do with those pesky undergrads.

Stanford and Harvard solve the problem by not enrolling all that many of them, charging a sky-high tuition, and then providing very very substantial financial aid even into the middle class (Harvard will charge 10% of family income to students from families earning between $120-$180k a year). The problem on a societal level is that this doesn't scale, there just aren't enough spots. Berkeley alone enrolls more low income students than the entire ivy league combined.

I'd rather see Berkeley continue this tradition at the undergrad level than emulate an elite private college. But it isn't going to work without state funding. The state just can't demand a huge undergraduate enrollment with lots of low income students and a high (70+%) from California without also kicking in a lot of money.

There's a reason Stanford and Harvard are structured this way - this is the optimal way to run an elite private research institution - more graduate students than undergraduates, and lots of grants and private donations, along with a small but very elite and well heeled undergrad population, with extremely generous financial aid to small numbers of low income students.

Berkeley was different because it was a state supported school with a different mission - and a different and substantial source of funding. You can't keep the first without the second, it won't work.

I think the vast majority of people are okay sharing when they can see things moving towards some sort of mutual benefit. For example, funding students in STEM, medicine, etc.

But now we have programs like "[choose "minority" group] Studies" and we talk those students as seriously STEM.. or worse, we consider the STEM students as an afterthought.

Also, if tuition is now 8x what you paid before, I would suggest that there's a problem with the program itself and not necessarily how we're funding it.

Those "[choose "minority" group] Studies" programs were en vogue far more in the 80's and 90's, the subject of this piece, than they are now. They're also ridiculously cheap to provide, along with being the first to go when budget cuts get serious.

And if you think that the vast majority of people would be willing to pay a little bit more for STEM kids to go to school... I don't even. Very few people out there care what you study in school, and considering some sort of social ROI for undergrad majors is about the last thing on most peoples' minds. Even if there is concrete proof that its better for the whole of us in the first place.

Why would they get rid of them if they're cheap to provide? I thought the general rule was that the humanities subsidized the sciences, why cut the profitable portion?

Because they're small programs that aren't missed by most. And the rule of thumb that humanities and social science programs subsidize sciences seems a bit misleading. There are an enormous amount of other funding sources within the American system (federal government, industry, military) that patronize science programs. There isn't a comparable system on the other pillar of the academy.

Just because there are some majors that you object to ("get off my lawn") and deem worthless that a handful of students choose, you're willing to throw out the whole system, including making STEM degrees just as difficult to get as the rest of them. Nice. That's just brilliant. You're an asshole and probably a bigot.

While that's my bias, I believe the stats back it up. For example, in all the hand wringing about "recent college grads not being able to get jobs" there's always the implied (and rarely stated) "except for STEM majors."

Since society deems people outside STEM qualified to do basically nothing, we should take that as a warning sign that something is very wrong with the system.

It's like if everyone who worked at a restaurant refused to eat there. You have to start wondering what's going on.

(Also, I never said throw out the whole system, that is your straw man.)

The idea that a university education is only for job training is poisonous. The humanities teach critical thinking and broaden students' perspectives in a way that STEM programs, in general, completely fail to do.

If we were to convert to a STEM-only curriculum, I would be gravely concerned for our future.

There's nothing wrong with taking english classes as part of a STEM degree. I think it's VERY rare not to.

I'm also not sure why you think critical thinking skills are something that math and science don't require. If you don't have critical thinking skills, you'll have a hard time engineering anything that works or mathing out something correctly. What makes this biased assumption especially weird is the fact that you can actually check whether someone critical thought something out or not to a correct conclusion in the science and math fields. If anything, it's the humanities that need to prove they've anything to contribute to their students' critical thinking skills, because the job market seems to be finding them lacking lately.

There's a lot of thinking in engineering, but not much critical thinking.

The type of thinking involved in STEM is mostly instrumental rather than critical. It's about mastering techniques and learning "how".

Critical thinking, on the other hand, is about asking questions, especially reflective questions that are more "why" than "how". It's about examining taken-for-granted assumptions and considering alternative perspectives.

In general, it's much easier to see your assumptions when you are confronted with people who have very different ones. Every age has its dogmas. Studying history, philosophy, and foreign cultures usually opens our eyes to them.

Yes, clearly critical thinking and the scientific method have nothing in common.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking#Skills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#Elements_of_...

Obviously, no scientist or engineer has ever stopped to ask themselves "why does it..." or "what if it doesn't actually do..." or "maybe it's not x, but y instead?"

It'd be wise to remember that the sciences were once called "natural philosophy."

Liberal arts courses on the other hand are mostly memorization and regurgitation of the ideology currently favored by the academia's current regime. Before they moved to "~ studies" majors, liberal arts majors used to study the works written and drawn by scientists and mathematicians and engineers. It's easy to see why the humanities would prefer "critical thinking" to be redefined as something fuzzy enough to require no original thought or even an attempt at reaching a logical conclusion.

I'm not a scientist, so it's harder to speak to that, but as an engineer, I can definitely say that engineers are in general more interested and more skilled at asking questions of "how" rather than questions of "why".

When I studied the humanities, I read Euclid, Galileo, Darwin, etc. The history of science is an essential part of the humanities. Unfortunately, it is not part of "STEM" in the sense that politicians use that term.

Scientific revolutions are definitely a case of "natural philosophy", but that differs dramatically from "normal science" as described, for example, in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I am likewise concerned that movement towards a jobs-oriented STEM curriculum will actually retard the progress of the sciences, by producing more functionaries and fewer deep-thinking scientists capable of innovation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_science

Exactly.

One of the major discussions in my engineering program is that there isn't a "right" answer like there usually is in regular math.

Instead, there's a "best answer given the current circumstances and limitations."

It becomes entirely about the How and the Why.

In my experience at a college with a large engineering program, the S and M parts of STEM has a large emphasis on critical thinking and the TE do not. That's only one data-point though.

Also the school was so heavily STEM focused that I wouldn't trust any of the liberal arts students there to reason their way out of a paper-bag.

I disagree with this, strongly.

I was a double english and math (cs-emphasis) major. I went to grad school in Industrial Engineering/Operations research because I wanted to study a field where engineering type thinking is applied outside the traditional engineering fields.

The things I've learned in engineering and science classes constantly influence my thinking outside these fields. For example, I recently did a computer science programming assignment (coursera data structures) about percolation and phase transitions. Immediately, I started seeing the model in so many things - vaccine coverage in a population where people start to opt out, availability of housing, the dating scene as people start to pair off and get married. Any probabilistic process where things seem steady state until the last moment, and then a sudden shift occurs. I know my example may be a little trivial, but that's the point - some of these are silly, and probably very misapplied, but other times, they lead to extraordinary insight. My thinking about a very wide range of things is deeply influenced by may background in math and engineering. I constantly build math models in my head when I read the news. I see it as a basic form of literacy - and you only get it if you really engage with the kind of difficult math typical of STEM fields.

I really think that humanities students are in greater danger of ending up narrowly focused than science students. Even if I hadn't majored in literature, I (like most STEM students) would have had to take a substantial amount of history, art, literature, foreign languages, and so forth as part of my GE requirements in college. The math and science requirements are typically far less rigorous for humanities majors.

It's a terrible mistake to think that math, science and engineering aren't essential components of a broad, liberal education.

My message must have been unclear, because you think you disagree with me, but I completely agree with you :)

Let me just say: math is wonderful. Science is wonderful. You're absolutely right that math provides a rich source of models and metaphors for understanding the most diverse domains. Everyone should study them!

Yet I don't feel the need to sing the praises of math and science. Why? Because nobody doubts their value. But people do question the value of the humanities. They even imply that they are worthless and should be eliminated. And that seriously concerns me, because in my opinion, they are invaluable. They represent a huge portion of our cultural inheritance, and yes, they teach things that are not found in STEM subjects.

Two important things that the humanities teach are history (knowing how we got here and why) and what I previously called "critical thinking". I realize now that that term is too ambiguous. People think I mean something like "good thinking" or "novel thinking", which are certainly present in STEM as well.

What I intended is much more specific than that. It's the ability to question our assumptions about ends. Science asks about how things are. The humanities ask about how things ought to be. It's an alltogether different domain of inquiry.

Whether it is literature, philosophy, painting, or theater, a humanistic work proposes an ideal for human life. Over time, great works in the humanities dramatically alter our collective understanding of what is good and worthwhile. They help us ponder our destiny.

Popular culture does not do that for us. It is driven by business interests and rarely makes detours into the pursuit of serious questions. The humanities do. They are our sincerest and most persistent attempt to get to the bottom of what really matters.

The type of thinking the humanities and social sciences teach is the type of thinking that asks "should we be doing this?" or "what will the repercussions of technology X be?". These are questions that STEM graduates don't typically ask, are not trained to ask, and maybe should not be trained to ask too often because it would retard their creativity.

However, the questions are still important, someone needs to ask them. Just because business has devalued these sorts of questions does not prove that they are unimportant. This web site is filled, on an almost-daily basis with stories of corporate malfeasance and straight-up incompetence. Yet you are willing to use that broken system as a metric for the value of various sorts of education and thought?

As a formally trained engineer, we had to go through numerous classes and discussions on engineering and business ethics specifically. Luckily, most of the discussion boiled down to "don't be an ass" and "breaking the law is usually bad."

In fact, the lead engineer behind the Hyatt bridge collapse spent a good deal of time with us talking about how poor practices and oversight can cost careers and lives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse

As a STEM student, I ask these questions, have been trained to ask them, and like to consider myself quite creative. So many people forget that the philosophers studied by liberal arts students were often mathematicians and men of science, as well. STEM graduates aren't the people getting only half of an education, here. In fact, if historical trends continue, humanities students 500 years from now will be studying the stuff they write.

I'm not saying that burying your head in a book on ancient philosophers constitutes an education. I am certainly a proponent of a truly liberal education. However, I get quite annoyed by arrogant STEM-types who pin the problem on what they perceive to be a collection of "useless" humanities and social science programs.

Again and again people say that engineering graduates are basically illiterate and that they should be taught to write. This is an excellent example of a situation where "more STEM!!!" isn't a solution. Our problem is over-specialization in undergraduate curricula, and this is evident across virtually all disciplines. But the attitude that "those <insert department here> people are worthless hippies" prevents us from solving this problem.

Education has many uses. Some of them are highly practical (get a job, grow food), and others are somewhat less practical (or, at least, their practicality is less obvious), but just as important IMO (understand society and government, deal thoughtfully with social issues). The ideal would be to educate most people broadly and some more specifically in each area. But inter-area bigotry and dismissal prevents us from achieving that first part.

> If we were to convert to a STEM-only curriculum, I would be gravely concerned for our future.

Amen. I remember this study which said that studying English Lit. reduces police brutality. This makes sense. If a policeman has to read Steinbeck in college, this makes him think about his clients and the nature of the law that he has sworn to uphold.

What negative consequences do you believe would occur?

They are legion, but here are a few: - a less informed citizenry - increasing fundamentalism - increasing conformity - the loss of high culture - the triumph of materialism and external symbols over internal development - religion and politics even more dominated by strident name-calling

These things are happening already, and I attribute that partially to the fact that the humanities have already been gutted, intellectually as well as financially.

I find this quite ironic considering the first response to my comment was one of the humanities advocates calling me an asshole because I disagreed with him.

You're equivocating merit of a college program with employability.

You implied that public funding is not a worthwhile undertaking. This means that the whole system gets thrown out. We don't fund certain programs, we fund universities.

Beyond that, I think that training people to think about the problems we have as a society and to come up with and advocate for solutions to those problems is extremely mutually beneficial. Partly because of public funding, universities have traditionally been hotbeds of social activism and progress. This won't happen if these institutions are transformed into mere job-training centers.

Computer Science can often have one of the highest percentages of graduates who can't find a job. We all know that people are leaving university and being unable to code. Maybe we should scrap CompSci then?

Is your best argument really calling someone an asshole just because, you know, he has a different view than yours? You could also try to find a typo in his comment just to further strengthen your argument. </grumpy_mode>

Pointing out that colleges now offer programs where you learn absolutely nothing at all, in a frantic bid to rake in more ridiculous tuition dollars, isn't bigotry. It's actually a pretty solid observation.

There are a lot of four year programs that teach nothing more than bland repetition of "white cis straight male bad, trans queer POC woman good" these days. And I say that as someone in several of the latter groups!

They are always used as a bogeyman, but relatively few people major in those * Studies programs. The top major is always Business, followed by Psychology. Rounding out the top 5 is usually education, biology and communications.

It makes sense that public universities would become more expensive (because of state funding being cut), but what explains private universities raising their tuition so much?

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76

The stagnant NIH and NSF budget. High-end research is expensive, and the money to keep the place running has to come from somewhere. If it isn't from federal grants it has to come from tuition.

This. I was part of a program managing NASA grants, mostly to universities. The University overhead was atrocious, in a few cases approaching 40%. Of course that's just how the industry works, which means grant agencies get accustomed to it and start giving out higher grants to compensate, and the subsidy increases.

Sequestration must have hit universities hard.

what!? if universities can't have their research funded by grants, they just don't do the research. if a professors grant funding gets cut and he can't pay that grad student any more, they don't pay the grad student out of tuition funding, they just let them go.

This is what is happening right now in higher education, it is going through a structural change. MIT and Harvard will continue to be fine, at Purdue and Carnegie-Mellon they have to struggle a little harder, but they will be fine. Lesser places have no chance.

I cannot see how they will deal with it. In my department 80 % of the undergraduates go up to medical school. Up to now, the deal was that you had to have some kind of research experience as an undergraduate to be accepted at a decent school, but this is going to change, as grant income is shrinking. No cash, no research, no honour's theses. The current plan is that they hired several new professors in a bid to get grant income, but this isn't going to succeed.

Half of the full professors here have no grants. The social contract has always been that professors pull in grant money, that is what justifies their salary, as compared to teaching-only staff. But now they haven't got grants and won't get any ever, and you can't explain that to the taxpayer.

I don't think anyone has a plan, going forward.

Price is not always based only on cost, but also on prestige. People think more expensive things are worth more. Once the public universities cost more, then that means they must be better, right? Quick! Raise the rates for Harvard, we have to appear the best!

California is an entirely different level of crazy. You guys are steadfastly determined to pay way more than you need to for services that usually kinda suck.

Hell, there was a reality show that visited people doing jobs that made things in the US when they visited the San Francisco fire department's ladder factory. Yes, the SFFD manufactures it's own ladders. (http://www.sf-fire.org/index.aspx?page=1004)

I live in NY, which is similarly insane. The per-pupil costs to send a kid in my small-city school district (plus fund the gaggle of Charter schools) is over $26k/year per student. I could literally send my child to a catholic school for 50% of that, or an elite non-religious private school for about 75% of that sum.

> We need to grow up. This fantasy of American individualism is killing us. We need to grow up and learn how to share—and this is the worst part: as we once did.

Reminds me of the very first chapter of The E Myth book (good little book if you haven't read it).

Since it has such a reputation for great STEM programs, I looked into Berkeley when I was trying to find colleges to transfer to after I got my associate's. The cost for an OOS student is something like $50,000/year now, without any hope of institutional grants or scholarships to lessen the cost (they make it pretty clear they're not available for OOS students). I don't have access to even half that amount per year in loans!

Since California clearly didn't want me, I'm going to NY instead now, since they are very friendly to OOS students. (At my public college, tuition is basically free for me after the first year, and even the first year where I have to pay OOS tuition it's roughly the same cost as in state tuition in the crappy flyover state I'm in now.) California should really think about revising their financial aid and tuition policies if they want to be known for being anything other than someplace only the rich can afford. I guess the days of colleges being known and valued for the academic merits of their students are over.

I earned half my undergrad tuition for Syracuse University (in no way an "inexpensive" school) working summer & part time, parents providing the other half from what they saved. No debts. No socialism. American individualism works.

ETA: individualism does not preclude working hard to save resources for your offspring (no strings attached at that), or anyone else you choose to assist entirely at your own discretion. Individualism does not require one start life under a rock and never accept gifted assistance. There is a profound difference between helping those you brought into this world, vs compelling strangers to give up their earnings for people they never met.

Lots of folks would be debt-free too if they were on the hook for just half of tuition. Most I know from good public universities worked full-time and still couldn't pull it off without five figure debt four years later.

Today without any tuition assistance, the tuition for a year of undergrad study at Syracuse is tens of thousands of dollars. If you are having to feed yourself and pay rent while paying this tuition, the vast majority of available part time or summer jobs will not pay enough to meet even half of your financial needs.

Also:

> parents providing the other half from what they saved

and

> American individualism works

are contrary. You didn't do anything on your own to get the money your parents provided. This is not individualism, you relied on your existing social networks to meet your financial needs.

Well, duh. Handouts from parents = rugged individualism. Crush those lazy welfare peons who haven't worked hard enough to have rich parents!

Boy, if only I had worked harder, I could have had well-off parents too!

Me too! Except that I also got a job that paid that much because my parents lived in the kind of neighborhood where Stanford-educated engineers with connections live and being known as the smart kid got me a job instead of beat up in school.

American individualism is great. There is just enough meritocracy so that people who were born with every possible advantage short of a trust fund can feel comfortable saying that they are totally self-made.

Is this a joke? American INDIVIDUALISM works because you were able to afford college with your parents paying for half? Not to mention that the ENTIRE POINT is that tuition costs have gone up past the level most students can afford, which you seem to be confirming, as you say you can only afford to pay half.

Good god man, I cannot imagine typing this and not having my self awareness alarm going off like crazy.

Evidently the quality of the education is not going up in accordance with the price.

I'm currently a student at a public school. I work 20-25 hours a week during the school year (with a job that pays well for a student) and have a paid internship over the summer. I will be graduating with ~$35K in debt. When you add up COL and tuition, even at a public school, you can't do it working part time.

Nice "American Individualism" as you relied on your parents to fund half your college expenses.

I like how your brand of "individualism" relies on your parents paying for most of it.

I don't know if you've noticed, but your school costs $60,000/year now.

http://www.syr.edu/financialaid/costofattendance/

For comparison purposes, a minimum wage worker employed full-time (forty hours per week for 52 weeks), would earn $15,080 annually. Are you seriously suggesting that someone work for four years in between each year of their college education?

$23/hr?* Doable, although not at most unskilled-labor rates.

* http://www.syr.edu/financialaid/costofattendance/

Total Cost of Attendance $57,450

(That does include transportation and "personal expenses", though (to the tune of about $1600/annum).)

Assumptions

* 2000 billable hours * 3 months summer * Half-time remaining 9 months.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com