New Mission for UC System

Your editorial contains some rather ill-considered suggestions for the UC system. In particular, your suggestion that “Berkeley and UCLA should continue as graduate-research universities, but the other UC campuses . . . must rededicate themselves to teaching first, research second” is quite shortsighted. As a graduate student who is completing his Ph.D. at UC Irvine, and who attended UCI as an undergraduate, I feel that to follow your suggestion would injure both the undergraduate and graduate studies at UC.

When I applied for admission to UC as an undergraduate, the major attraction for me was the opportunity to work under persons striving to extend the bounds of human knowledge. It is true that some professors at the UC campuses have poor teaching skills. However, I’ve found that, in general, professors who are active in research bring a perspective on their subject lacking in professors who focus exclusively on teaching. They focus on the questions in the field, portraying it as a dynamic search for knowledge rather than a static body of facts. This difference isn’t readily apparent at the freshman level, but affects upper-division instruction tremendously. Attending a research university also allowed me to become involved in research as an undergraduate.

Concentrating the graduate populations of the UC system to two campuses would have two effects. First, since fewer graduate opportunities would exist, many students, particularly low-income students, would be prevented from continuing their education. Second, since the professors at those two schools would have more students to serve, the opportunity for personal contact between professor and student would be virtually lost.

Your editorial staff would be well-advised to examine the on-going efforts at the UC campuses to improve undergraduate education. The UCI Tutorial Assistance Program, and the continuing programs to improve the faculties lecture skills are but two examples of this.

TIM SHIMEALL

Anaheim