Judge freezes UC Berkeley's student enrollment at 2020-21 levels
berkeleyside.org
berkeleyside.org
Not that I disagree, they added nearly 7x the students they planned to add due to reduced state funding so perhaps revisiting their plans is a good thing. Maybe they'll add more than just 150 faculty housing units.
I think overall this just shows the uncertainty in higher education. Top tier schools can attract a practically limitless supply of students yet we can only add so many spots due to space constrains. Meanwhile there are dozens to hundreds of schools throughout the country that are closing due to declining enrollment (many deserved it since many of these schools were simply former agricultural schools, etc. that re-branded as universities to attract more students). Maybe instead of trying to squeeze every ounce of space on existing locations, these schools should open satellite schools throughout the country?
Texas A&M is a public university https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_A%26M_University
Don't you think it's a bit dystopian for an employer to be housing its employees? Not sure that's what we should be aiming for.
Not so much an issue in Berkeley, of course, but makes a ton of sense for schools where heavy snowfall is a thing. School get canceled most often because professors [and employees] can't safely get to campus due to weather -- individual professors getting sick isn't enough to close the entire school.
The military, for instance (and this is similar to what I've seen at some colleges), have housing for people at different grades. Dorms for younger enlisted troops, houses for families, and houses for specific ranks/positions like a base commander. There are a few reasons for this. One is historical (a lot of bases weren't near housing options), another is control (the dorms), another is community. By being on the same base with each other everyone is part of the same community. You can see a bit of disintegration (at least for USAF) with the decrease in state-side housing (or the use of it). They aren't around each other as much, their families aren't friends with each other in the same way as last century, they have no real sense of community (the troops may, but not the wider population of troops + family, this is also uneven, some subgroups haven't been impacted in the same way as others).
What I've seen at some colleges (more accurately, saw) was similar to the rank/position housing and also trying to help with creating a community at the college. The former can make a lot of sense, and is hardly dystopian. College president hosts a lot of events and gets a house suitable for it on the campus. With both them and other faculty members it keeps them on campus as part of the community, rather than turning college professor into a "job" (a thing you commute to and do your 9-5 and then go home from, again, see the disintegration of the military community in the US as an example of something you sometimes want to avoid).
Also, college campuses don't move very often. Since cities don't stop growing the housing around the campus can become very limited. Forcing people away, out into the suburbs. Whether you just want them to have easy access to the campus or want to try and create a real community, having campus housing can mitigate this issue.
It becomes dystopian when it's subpar housing, comes with pay cuts, or is mandatory (especially without at least a decent reason like: The president should live in the president's house).
obviously never visited a barracks.
Sure, if (1) Save Berkeley’s Neighborhood was responsible for some action requiring an EIR, and UC can make a colorable argument both that (2) SBN violated the requirements of CEQA with regard to the EIR, and that (3) this caused legally cognizable injury to UC such that the University has standing.
Of course, none of those are true.
Lots of things have existed for a long time, in the context of a society where they have always had to coexist and interact with others. Why would existing for some time give them license to affect the community and people around them in any way?
This isn't like someone moving next to a pub and demand they stop playing music, or next to a farm and complain about the smell of manure. The complaint is about the adverse changes.
Not saying that it is the right way to do things, but its hard to deny the presence.
It immediately reminds me of one of my all time memorable yet confusing quotes.
"Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic. In the purely historical universe that they have chosen, rebellion and revolution end in the same dilemma: either police rule or insanity." Albert Camus, The Rebel
If everything is determined by local control like this then every single college town will come to the same conclusion.
I can empathize with the homeowners there - but obviously bad for society as a whole if every single town acts selfishly.
Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods is a group of residents that organizing collective action and is bringing a legal challenge against a massively wealthy and powerful organization which they believe is impacting their quality of life. Doesn't seem unreasonable.
That is what I mean when I say it is coordination.
How do you arrive at the conclusion that it is really not good overall? I don't see what you mean.
But you can bet your bottom dollar those organizations would be the first to launch legal action against the little guy if they thought they were being impacted by their activity, so what's the problem with action in the other direction?
The university I went to has existed since 1388, one of the first universities in the Holy Roman Empire if I remember correctly, and yet it still answers to public authority when it comes to land use. That seems pretty normal to me, no such thing as academiocracy
Open a race track in the middle of nowhere. 20 years later you have a group of neighbors asking you to cease your activity because it’s too loud.
Same with airports.
Where I live there are "Farm Rights" laws which say if you are a newcomer, you can't file suit or complain about or interfere with normal farm operations.
Existing farmers have complete seniority over new folks!
So smells, sounds, big equipment on the roads, etc. MUST be tolerated. And especially the annual "shit straining" of fields with cow manure which smells up everything for the week or two when that's done.
I think it's great and the way it should be!
How isn't it a good faith lawsuit? The group is unhappy with Berkeley's growth. So they've tried to block increased student housing as well as increased enrolment. It sounds to me like their position is entirely consistent.
(I'm not taking a position on the issue at hand by the way.)
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Seligman also ordered the UC Board of Regents to void its 2018 approval of the Upper Hearst project and to decertify the supplemental environmental impact report. Cal must redo the SEIR to address certain issues, including how student enrollment increases have affected noise, housing and displacement in Berkeley, the judge ruled.
...
But Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods and the city of Berkeley sued, stating the SEIR was inadequate and did not comply with CEQA, the state’s environmental law. The city complained that the university was trying to sneak a huge growth in student enrollment into the SEIR without examining its impacts and the costs to Berkeley for providing emergency services. In 2005, in a long-range development plan, UC Berkeley had said it only anticipated increasing student enrollment by 1,650 people by 2020. But as the state legislature reduced funding to the UC system, the Regents ordered certain campuses, including Cal, to add more students to bring in income. In 2019, UC Berkeley said enrollment had gone up by 11,285 students.
In 2020-21, student enrollment was 42,035 students.
Berkeley sued in 2019 but dropped the suit when the City Council voted on July 13 to enter into an $83 million agreement with UC Berkeley. Cal will pay Berkeley $4.1 million a year over the next 16 years for its use of city services in exchange for Berkeley dropping its opposition to the new 2021 long-range development plan and environmental impact report.
That left Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods to pursue its case against UC Berkeley.
“The city could have negotiated a much better deal for Berkeley had they waited for this judgment,” Bokovoy wrote in a press release. “As it is they sold taxpayers short with a ‘pennies on the dollar’ annual payment and no enforceable commitments to build housing and mitigate impacts.”
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> The group stated that enrollment should be capped until there's new housing. They also simultaneously argued that a housing project shouldn't move forward. Isn't that circular logic?
I'm not sure what specific housing project you're referring to, but this article is entirely consistent. Even so, they could be arguing that Berkeley shouldn't expand without increased housing and they could also be against UC Berkeley's proposed solutions to increase housing (say due to NIMBYism). In that case, it would not be contradictory or circular. They would just be against UC Berkeley's proposed solutions.
So no I really still would say their position is entirely consistent. They don't want Berkeley to change in certain ways. They think that UC Berkeley's increased enrolment requires those same certain changes. Hence they're against the enrolment. The logic makes sense and is frankly quite straight-forward.
I would even go further and reduce the population over time rather than just freezing it. Let Berkeley be the place it once was.
Why don't we give Nobel Prizes to everyone, since you said we can be super selective and huge?
Berkeley is a graduate school masquerading as an undergraduate school.
When I went, the undergraduate population was roughly 10k whereas the graduate population was roughly 20k.
The undergraduate school is factors smaller than the largest undergraduate schools.
EDIT: Largest undergraduate schools are around 60k! Even UofT Austin is around 40k.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-lis...
EDIT2: The prestige comes from 1) famous grads 2) the professors who are supported by the graduate students. The undergrads gain from the reflected prestige.
Personally, I would prefer it if people weren't like that. But it's the way it is.
Tuition is more than 35% of all revenue. All domestic students have to pay AT MOST of 1 year of out of state tuition, because you establish in state residency in your first year here. So you have to get more students to make more money. State support is now just 14% of the revenue (used to be a lot more before). Federal grants have reduced dramatically. The only other sources left are gifts, which btw only select schools bring in.
Meanwhile the costs are only going up. 40% of the budget goes into wages and staffing costs. And another 20% goes towards pensions. I was a TA for an undergrad course and we had 80 students per TA, mostly because of budget cuts.
So yeah letting Berkeley be the place it once was requires not only increased state and federal funding, but also increase in tuition to keep up with inflated wages that people need to be paid in Berkeley, CA.
> Higher education spending accounted for 18% of the state budget in 1976–77, but by 2016–17 higher education funding had fallen to 12% of the budget. These funding cuts have been felt most strongly at the University of California, where funding per full-time-equivalent student fell from slightly more than $23,000 to about $8,000. CSU funding per student has also fallen by about 25% since 1976–77 from slightly more than $11,000 per student to slightly less than $9,000.
It appears that the number of students has skyrocketed (UCB in 1980: ~14k, in 2020: ~32k) while total funding has not even kept up with baseline inflation. Also driving salaries upward are housing costs near some of the biggest schools (LA and Bay Area housing costs much more now than in 1980 in "inflation-adjusted" terms).
Another big difference, though, is how much financial aid students get, which is heavily biased toward low-income first-in-family students who, presumably, are less likely to complain about the state of things than privileged middle-class young adults whose lives are harder than their parents'. (Over 50% of the 675k total UC and CSU students pay no tuition, also according to [0].)
The fact that the percentage of the state budget allocated to Higher Ed is not super dissimilar from 1980 ignores that the amount of public funding per-student has dropped dramatically while the cost of providing that education has risen dramatically.
[0]: https://www.ppic.org/publication/higher-education-funding-in...
I agree that ballooning costs in the face of a constant slice of the same pie is a problem, but I wasn’t sure that diverting funding to prisons was the reason why, and that’s really all I wanted to check.
Is that sort of thing normal? Not the 1-year time frame, but is it normal that living on campus changes your residency such that you can qualify for in-state tuition? That just seems bizarre; unless you are moving to the campus (or nearby) full time (that is, not "going home" between semesters and during the summer), it feels kinda wrong for that to establish residency.
I grew up in Maryland and went to college in New York, but I never changed my residency to NY. I don't recall any of my out-of-state college friends doing so either (for example, we all kept our home-state driver's licenses).
- https://www.collegeconfidential.com/articles/can-pay-state-tuition-one-year-another-state/
- https://www.ucop.edu/uc-legal/_files/ed-affairs/uc-residence-policy.pdf
This isn't true in many cases. I was an out of state student attending a California university and was paying out of state tuition for all years. You can only establish residency if you demonstrate financial independence (e.g., you need a full time job). If you have someone else helping pay the tuition that is outside the state, or if you're using loans to fund yourself, you remain an out of stater.
yeah... universities worked this issue out more than 20 years ago. maybe a couple of folks will chime in with post-2010 bachelor's degrees from some place that hasn't caught on, but this is largely gone.
Ding ding ding.
Universities managed to function (by some miracle) before the current explosion in support staff. It's doubly amazing because much of the work performed by support staff in the 1960's, 70's and 80's has been automated.
Some examples:
* The registar's office used to manage paper lists of students, and "signing up" for class meant showing up in person to write your name in ink. Your "permanent record" was a physical manila envelope with paper inside. That's all done in a web portal now.
* The bursar's office handled physical checks or cash for nearly everyone. Today almost virtually all payment is handled electronically.
* Professors (or their TAs) can now use a departmental copy/print machine to automatically create stapled exam packets instead of having an administrative assistant copy, collate and staple the exam.
Somehow, the enormous technology-driven increase in labor productivity, seen in all other sectors of the economy, has not impacted colleges and universities. That "somehow" is mismanagement and bloat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_Uni...
Prestigious is opinion, of course, but Ivy / Ivy+ / Seven-Sisters / whatever your definition of desirable college might me, I dont think that list has grown as much as population. So we need to grow seats+faculties or we need to foster more colleges to attract the increased population.
EDIT: I myself went to UC Berkeley for grad school, and Cornell for undergrad. I can already see that my children, who would be applying ~2031-2033 would have a way more difficult time getting into the same institutions, given ever-increasing applications and ever lower acceptance rates. I hope there are many more universities we can select from in 2031...or I hope my startup takes off and i'm rich, which would probably solve the problem per my understanding of how these things work...
what you can do is increase the standards at less prestigious schools. I got a great education at a state school with an acceptance rate of >60%. it's not well known nationally, but it is regarded quite well by local employers. its relationships with local employers helped land me and most of my classmates with great jobs straight out of school.
Another note, "let Berkeley be like it once was" sounds a lot like "Make America Great Again."
If you live in the area, you'll quickly realize that the typical Bay Area Nimby is no less Xenophobia than the Trump supporters they vehemently despise. "All are welcome (but just don't move here)"
This is especially true for state agencies (like the UC system) - you basically have to sue them.
How is it a great question?
In the US when two parties have a disagreement they can either discuss amongst themselves and resolve it, take it to a mediator to resolve it, or take it to the courts. In this instance, the courts became involved because UC Berkeley wasn't going to stop the expansion and the people and city felt that they had a case. Apparently the judge agreed with them. Like I said in my other comment, someone had to file a suit. The judge didn't intervene just because they were bored, someone filed suit.
> how can a judge tell a business where they can be and how many they service, if there's nothing illegal going on?
Read the article. Berkeley made initial expansion plans for around 1600 students by 2020, but exceeded 11k instead. This contradicted the initial agreement and plans with the city so the suit was filed. Also, UC Berkeley is not a business, it's a public state institution.
Your answer of 'disagreement / mediation / grievance / court' is frankly not very helpful, because it's simply not the case in the vast majority of disagreements.
There has to be some legal grievance for the lawsuit. As it turns out, the issue is brought because apparently UCB, according to the Judge didn't do 'a good enough job' at assessing the social impacts of their growth.
This is firstly, a very odd thing for a judge to do in my view, taking a stance in a very grey matter, moreover, the more salient issue is that the outcome of the impact assessment may not be relevant. If it turns out that the student increase will increase rents and home prices by 30%, well, so what then?
For example "This contradicted the initial agreement" - what legally binding 'agreement' would a university have to have with a local municipality? Surely they'll want to work together and agree to invest here and there, but how does that turn into something binding? I'd like to know.
Given all of this ambiguity, it's a pretty reasonable thing to ask for someone with material legal background for insight.
Judges make rulings like this all the time. Without these kinds of rulings, the final result would be determined by default. If Party A is doing something potentially harmful to Party B, and Party A is permitted to continue while everything plays out in court, then the result is a default ruling for Party A.
Also, in the original question there was a nonsense phrase (civic ruling) which I took to mean civil ruling. If that's the correct interpretation, the courts in the US are involved in both civil (like this) and criminal matters. That's what they do.
Regarding my 'disagreement /mediation / greivance / court' thing, that is how things get resolved, aside from violence or protest or just ignoring it, the principle methods of resolving disputes in the US are: discussion between the parties, mediation, the courts. That is a factual statement.
Violence is not a legal manner of recourse. Ignoring it is obviously not what one group wants (so forces them towards discussion, mediation, or courts). Protest (probably happening) doesn't actually resolve most things on its own, unless it's able to shutdown business for one of the parties long enough to force them to the table or put them out of business. Protest mostly draws attention to an issue, which can force the hand of one side but is not universally successful.
Essentially, A judge found that the UC Berkeley campus and the UC Board of Regents violated the California Environmental Quality Act by failing to consider relevant factors in their handling environmental impact statements regarding UC Berkeley expansion, and directed the Regents and campus to nullify their illegal actions and halt further expansion until such expansion was lawfully approved.
> if there's nothing illegal going on?
The “if there's nothing illegal going on” premise is directly contrary to the ruling. The campus and Regents actions regarding the required environmental impact reports related to the expansion were found to be illegal, that's the whole basis for the decision.
UC Berkeley is a state agency, not a business.
I see now that it was a legal problem with the environmental impact study. I misunderstood what was going on, and someone helped.
California has an environmental law called the California Environmental Quality Act[1] or CEQA. It sets forth a process that all state and local government entities (including state universities) must follow when undertaking new projects. My very superficial legal understanding of the CEQA is that it’s seriously complex. I’m on mobile so I’m having a hard time finding the document but to give you an idea of the complexity the state puts out an annual CEQA handbook with all the rules and guidance and recent cases and it’s something like 400 pages long. (Edit: Here’s a link to the PDF[2] of the 2021 Handbook.)
At the heart of CEQA is a requirement that, prior to undertaking a new project, the entity has to complete an environmental assessment of how the proposed project will impact things like water use, pollution, noise, etc. Then they need to publish the report, get comment from the public, and, in certain instances, adjust the project plan to minimize the impact.
CEQA also, somewhat controversially, allows for a private right of civil action. So when a state or local government entity in California doesn’t comply with CEQA then a person who is or may be negatively impacted by the failure to comply can file a civil suit and that’s what happened here.
The reason the private right of action is controversial is because it’s sometimes (often?) used as pretext to get a court-order to prevent a project by people or groups who aren’t at all concerned for the environment but have some other motive. And, because the law is incredibly complex, it turns out it’s not a bad legal strategy for NIMBYs. (Edit: I just want to clarify that I don’t mean to imply the group who filed this suit are NIMBYs or environmental activists. I have zero idea as to their motives.)
Anyway, this case wound up on this judge’s docket because a local group brought suit under CEQA alleging the University didn’t follow all of the requirements and the judge agreed. So he sent them back to do the process again. And in the meantime, he froze enrollment.
(Again, I have a very superficial understanding of how it works so take everything I’ve said with a grain of salt. In practice it’s far more complex than what I’ve described.)
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Qua...
Of course; don't do them. They are worse than nothing.
Though note that part of the idea of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" is that it's preferable to have both the baby and the bathwater than to have neither, which obviously isn't the case here.
The idea behind the saying is that the baby has value, and isn't intrinsically linked to the bath water that you want to get rid of.
To be more concrete: there is value in protecting local environments. If the problem is with environmental groups using reviews as a "weapon" (which is an inappropriately loaded term designed to cause a strong emotional reaction), then we should reform that problem.
What we should not do is to allow un-reviewed, unfettered development without any space for environmental advocacy. Balance is necessary.
I don't think we rely purely on impact statements for this, there's plenty of parks / nature reserves where building is simply not allowed. And of course zoning heavily restricts what can go on land where building is allowed.
I believe (and another comment mentions here) the California law is unusual because it allows private groups to request additional reviews in addition to the government environmental regulators. And as a result of this, groups that oppose projects for non-environmental reasons will take advantage of the complex environmental impact process to drag out anything they don't like. So a straightforward change would be to leave the environmental review to government agencies and not private groups.
To me it seems like it would make more sense to address these issues at a regional level - like apartment buildings can go here, houses can go here, and looking at the general impact that those developments would have - instead of doing a very protracted process on a per-project level. At least for common things like housing, maybe not chemical factories. Maybe someone who is more familiar with public policy around urban planning can weigh in on how other locations address these problems and if California's approach here makes any sense, or if it is just some unintended consequence of laws that were maybe a little too broadly-written.
Why are we expanding Berkeley - in a super expensive area for students instead of expanding in Merced (or even Davis) - where is much less expensive.
Berkley doesn't get to tell you to live in a cheaper appartement.
In return, you don't get to tell Berkley where they can open a new campus.
I get that in this case the Judge decided to stop the expansion.
I'm just responding to "Why are we expanding Berkeley" bit.
There's no "we" here. There's only UC Berkley and they get to decide how to conduct business.
as population increases, more will seek a desirable good — UC Berkeley education.
The data you didn't provide might be, for example, a school which could suitably meet the increased demand.
(Whether or not you actually get a higher-quality education at UCB isn't really relevant; the perception, rankings, etc. are what matter when people decide what school they want to go to.)
I'm not saying the other schools have no experts, just that it's a situation where talent tends to concentrate.
Well, they're not independent. You apply to the UC system and you get a decision back telling you which schools you've been admitted to. So the system is free to decide that one campus is better than another one and implement that decision by assigning better students to the favored campus and worse students to the disfavored one.
I believe that's how Berkeley ended up as the 'top' campus in the first place - it was the best one because it was supposed to be the best one. UCLA is different; it "worked its way up" via applicant preference, by having better weather and/or proximity to Hollywood.
It is quite possible (although unlikely) to apply to UC Berkley and UC Merced but only be accepted to UC Berkley.
It’s theoretically possible, but given that UC Berkeley is impacted in lots of places and Merced is under capacity everywhere, not plausible (actually, given certain system-wide guarantees, its far more likely to apply to Berkeley but not Merced and still get offered admission to Merced than to apply to Berkeley and Merced and get offered Berkeley and not Merced.)