Big Trouble in California

[waitingtoexhale]

TIME article noting the severity of budget cuts at the UC schools, which includes a 90% decrease in faculty hirings at UC Berkeley and absolutely no new faculty hirings at UCSD and UCLA: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1911455,00.html

[future_eng_grad]

Just one of the reasons I'm glad I decided to attend UT Austin over UC Berkeley.

[belowthree]

At what point do these threads just become Schadenfreude? Yes, go ahead and rock your UT Austin, it's a great school and I have friends there. But I also have plenty of faith our failing California schools will still somehow manage to research our way straight past your own.

You know, no offense.

We'll see how long we're able to keep doing it, but don't count on us to fail just yet.

[Minnesotan]

I also have plenty of faith our failing California schools will still somehow manage to research our way straight past your own.

Yet one more reason the original respondent made the right decision, if this is how people at Berkeley act.

You need an attitude check, mister "My dad researches better than your dad!"

[belowthree]

I don't go to Berkeley. I'm sure they're much nicer there than I am. (Hopefully anyways! Since that's not exactly much of a standard.)

Since I have no hangups about being a nice person, I go ahead and call people out when they suddenly pop out of nowhere and talk trash about a great school because it happens to be going through some rough times. As I mentioned, there are many good things about UT Austin and I think it's a good institution, so I take much less joy than you think from comparing it unfavorably to Berkeley. If UT were going through hard times I would hope I would have the decency to express sadness for the students there and not express sentiments like "wow I'm glad I'm not going to that garbage place." (The fact that the other commenter used slightly lighter language doesn't at all hide the sentiment they were expressing.)[1]

So as far as I'm concerned the comment deserved exactly the response I gave it. I can understand if you might disagree with that, but it's hardly cut and dry. (And if you ever feel it is, I'm sure you'll take appropriate action.)

We're going through enough rough times in the UC system without everyone else playing peanut gallery and acting like our schools have now suddenly gone from what really is (still! Maybe not in a few years if this madness continues, but right now really still is) an excellent public university system to a hair above a vocational school[2] in a matter of weeks.

If people want to have a serious discussion about the massive budget issues the system is undergoing and the ramifications on graduate work there, research output, admissions and funding, then you'll have no objection from me and I'll be happy to contribute what I know about funding, ICR rates and excepts from the PPMs on each campus. If people want to just express how delighted they are that they aren't apart of the system, well... then you're going to get reminded that campuses in our system are some of the best in the world and I'll keep posting articles about how even with budget cuts my dad does do better research than your dad.

Oh and I'll make sure to use the word schadenfreude at least once in every post.

[1] Why yes! The air is fresher up here on this horse! So high up, you understand...

[2] Again, not that there's anything wrong with a vocational school, but it is a problem when you aren't *trying* to be one.

[MaximKat]

Why do use assume that future_eng_grad meant something bad? He definitely has right to be glad about his university not having financial problems

[Minnesotan]

It's going to be a little while before the results are in, but they look ominous. The Chronicle reports the common sense view that this year's stimulus money is covering up the real damage the UC system is going to take. We'll find out if they're right in 2010-2012. If so, there might be a mass-exodus of big names on the order of the UW-Madison deterioration of the past couple of years.

Here's the name of the article, so folks can look it up through their own library system, rather than butting heads with the Chronicle's New York Times-esque paranoid security bots (heaven forbid one should *read* the words a paper prints!): In California Budget Deal, Bad News for Colleges in 2010.

[t_ruth]

I think I'm just going to try to be blindly optimistic, because at this point, there isn't much else for me to do

[Minnesotan]

I think I'm just going to try to be blindly optimistic

That's the mindset that got me on the path to an English PhD. Don't trust that urge! =)

[t_ruth]

It's a little too late now (for both of us)!

[LingGrad2009]

Every time this thread pops up I get the urge to watch Big Trouble in Little China. And you know what ol' Jack Burton always says about fiscal irresponsibility in the Golden State . . .

[pea-jay]

Im californian and I must say I'm not considering schools here. Partially because of the budget but mostly because they afford me little professional advantage in this state and exact a huge financial cost on my near term expenses. That said, I've been to Berkeley for a conference and loved the campus. I did meet a few advisors, but really Im not giving this a lot of consideration. Still its a shame to see these great institutions suffer.

[UnlikelyGrad]

I got into a UC school (Davis). I loved it when I visited, but the horror stories I heard about funding scared me off. I'm not talking about the program, although that was impoverished too--I'm talking about individual professors, most of whom got their funding from CA state agencies. One guy was even told that he couldn't have the money he'd been promised but not given (he'd been promised his grant money in 2 allotments). His grad students all had to scramble to find new labs. GULP!!!

[zilch]

Most professors are pretty good about not promising money that they don't already have in hand, but there are exceptions. Last year was rough everywhere in terms of funding and this year is looking to be just slightly better. Both myself and a friend were promised TA-ships and possibly fellowships by professors at UT-Austin and they rejected us at the last minute.

New faculty hirings being frozen isn't necessarily disastrous (it's certainly not good), but it'll help them regain stability by cutting expenses for 2-3 years. The money crunch is being felt everywhere, I know a lot of people that just entered grad school with limited or no funding that would've been fully funded a few years ago. 2009 was, unfortunately, a horrible time to graduate from undergrad. Severely limited job markets, and much tougher graduate admissions due to record numbers of applications and limited funding. And so far, 2010 is not looking great either.

[psycholinguist]

Yep, it's tough down there. I got into UCSD last year; as an international student, though, I couldn't be promised a cent. Which is why I'm not there right now.