New Mission for UC?

The University of California is facing a period of surging enrollments and growth. If the top 12.5% of California’s high-school students are to continue to be admitted, the present nine campuses will have to expand or a new campus will have to be added, or perhaps both. A critical connected issue is whether undergraduate education should continue to take a back seat to graduate programs and faculty research.

UC Berkeley and UCLA, two of the premier research universities in the nation, now have enrollments of approximately 32,000 and 35,000, respectively. In terms of distinguished faculty members and rigorous graduate programs they are part of the educational elite. But in terms of undergraduate education they leave a lot to be desired: huge lecture courses of 400-plus, multiple-choice examinations instead of essays, a lack of focus in the rich offering of courses (especially outside the sciences), a life of waiting in lines, bureaucratic forms and parking-lot stickers. The two largest UC campuses are rewarding to under-graduates who have initiative, but they are also bewildering and alienating.

As the system expands, should the other UC campuses emulate Berkeley and UCLA? Is this possible? Is it wise? The problem with trying to imitate Berkeley is that there is only so much great academic talent. Unless UC is going to boost professors’ salaries well above the national average, the other seven UC campuses are going to continue to have very good professors--but not Berkeley’s plethora of Nobel prize winners.

Some great scholars are excellent teachers, but most professors are better at being one than the other. At the high-pressure, elite research universities--the Berkeleys, the Yales--it is scholarship that matters. The people of California have generously supported UC’s drive to become one of the top research universities in the country. This has been achieved. UC’s next challenge is to dramatically improve undergraduate education. If the University of California can match Harvard and Chicago in research, why can’t it match Pomona and Swarthmore in undergraduate instruction?

How can undergraduate education be improved? By changing the criteria for tenure, by putting money into undergraduate instruction and by resisting the pressure to grow too quickly or too large. Berkeley and UCLA should continue as graduate-research universities, but other UC campuses--Davis, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Riverside, Irvine and San Diego--must rededicate themselves to teaching first, research second. This shift in priorities must be reflected in hiring and tenure decisions. If the reward system is changed, young professors will gladly put more energy into teaching; without a change, teaching will continue to be second to scholarship and grantsmanship.

In research universities, whether public or private, undergraduates get short shrift. Undergraduate bodies support graduate education and faculty research. The smaller UC campuses must reallocate resources and become genuine teaching universities. The university must follow and go beyond the excellent recommendations in the 1986 report, “Lower Division Education in the University of California.” In addition, the smaller campuses must resist pressures to expand beyond 15,000-20,000 total enrollment. The cluster-college systems at Santa Cruz and San Diego should be maintained.

It is up to the people of California to decide just what type of University of California they want. They may decide that it is time to dramatically improve the quality of undergraduate education at the University of California. We hope so.