[A] controversial letter, written by [University of California San Diego] Sociology Professor Andrew Scull and endorsed by 22 other professors from various departments, said the state can not support a 10 campus system any longer. [The newspaper article doesn't say to whom they sent the letter, but let's assume it went to the head of their university. ]
“It’s simply not the case that all campus entities are of equal value to our goals,” reads the letter.
UCSC officials said Monday they would not publicly comment about the letter because it “did not deserve to be dignified,” in any way.
One part of the letter, which gives other solutions to the UC budget issues, reads, “we propose that you urge the President and the Regents to acknowledge that UCSC, UC [Riverside] and UC Merced are insubstantial measure teaching institutions… whose funding levels and budgets should be reorganized to match that reality.”
Insubstantial measure teaching institutions. That’s gotta hurt.
Let me see if I can find the whole letter somewhere…
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Okay, so here’s a good deal more, from a Merced newspaper:
First, the letter.
Oh: “In substantial measure, teaching institutions…” Okay. That’s not so bad. Must admit the way the bad article up there had it confused me.
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Monsieur Scull has assembled an impressive array of department chairs. That’s something else the original article doesn’t say; all of the signatures are from chairs, with a good mix of hard and soft sciences. UD figured weenies from philosophy and history and music wouldn’t be there; only cruel cold engineering types… But there they are (English, however, doesn’t show up).
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Ready, set, populist boilerplate!
These sun-soaked, fish taco-eating egotists want to protect themselves by picking on the weakest links. … Rich folks in the cities love to load their gullets, but they can be downright snobby toward people and places producing anything that can’t be uncorked, decanted and poured. … A selfish and bad idea, rife with snobbery, arrogance and condescension by some pontifical, pretentious profs.
That campus they’ve got down there in tony La Jolla, where some two-bedroom condos — I kid you not — list for $2 million? Shutter the university, sell everything off and start all over in Brawley.
The hubris in Scull’s tone, to say nothing of his conclusions, are outrageous. … How dare Scull and his signatories deem this campus “less than equal?”
SOS says: It’s all crap. It’s crap writing. Why?
Could’ve been written by a machine.
Last one – worst one – first. The work of a woman who’s a grad student at UCSD and teaching at Merced. It’s got it all — out of control emotions, the taking of righteous umbrage … how dare… outrageous… deem… Flounce your skirts back to the nineteenth century, little lady. No one’s listening.
The first excerpt is also a stuttering load of crap, a chaos of working class hero cliches featuring taco-decanting professors.
The middle one is the least problematic. It’s concise and kind of nice, with its strong detail about the cost of condos in La Jolla. But tony? I kid you not? The facts on the ground are all you need. Just go with the condo price and lose the can-you-believe-this shit.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:14AM
UD, I can’t get the address past your spam filter, but if you Google the following words together:
Scull
Hallin
Letter
UCSD,
it’s the first result (something called Chris’s Blog Archives).
July 14th, 2009 at 6:16AM
Speaking of screwed up, the formatting on this post is a bit weird. Intentionally so?
July 14th, 2009 at 6:26AM
BTW, if you read the original letter, the killer quote is "in substantial measure teaching institutions" – not "insubstantial." Setting off the clause with commas would have helped avoid confusion there.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:33AM
TAFKAU: Thanks. I found the letter, and I think my link to it works.
Alan: My blogmistress updated my Wordpress software yesterday, and it’s possible that changed formatting in some way. Let me take a look.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:34AM
Yeah, it looks OK now in Explorer.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:42AM
Thanks.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:57AM
It’s a stunningly arrogant and ignorant letter (whiny, too, of course, but it was written by an academic). Several states much smaller than California have multiple flagship institutions, including cases where both belong to the prestigious Association of American Universities–Indiana and Purdue, Iowa and Iowa State, UT-Austin and A&M, SUNY-Buffalo and Stony Brook (both in New York, by the way, a state that Scull insists lacks a flagship campus).
The strategy is also dumb. In order to stave off severe short-term cuts–one suspects that the real incentive is to avoid having their own paychecks reduced–Scull and his colleagues invite the state government to employ a divide and conquer strategy in dealing with the University. Part of the political strength that UC enjoys results from having research campuses scattered throughout California. United we stand and all that.
Plus, the idea that a state with a population roughly equal to that of Canada should only have seven comprehensive research institutions (and Scull clearly has his doubts about four of those) is ridiculous. While Riverside and Santa Cruz may not have matched the prestige of their sister UC institutions, they hold their own quite adequately in any nationwide survey of colleges and universities (e.g., the much maligned US News rankings). Why would the citizens of California want to give that up just so Professor Scull and his fellow chairs can avoid sharing the pain of a deep recession?
(And speaking of the US News rankings, Scull’s own Sociology Department appears to be tied for fifth place among UC campuses. Since his letter claims that California really has only three comprehensive flagship campuses, it appears that he himself is leading an underperforming unit. One can only hope that the budget cutters don’t notice!)
…and no, I do not work at any of the affected campuses, though I am a UC alum.from many years ago.
July 14th, 2009 at 7:23AM
Your point about Scull’s own department is a good one, TAFKAU.
July 14th, 2009 at 7:52AM
Heavens to Ford, I didn’t realize that fish tacos were elitist! Since I’m a populist, I guess I’ll have to stop eating them…
There’s a nice place right beside Minnehaha Falls – which is bone dry by the way – where you can buy fish tacos and a beer for under ten bucks. Why even black and brown people were there buyin’ ‘em on Sunday.
Better get down there and picket those elitists right away, now that marchin’ orders have been given.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:00AM
Massachusetts has no flagship campus? The folks in Amherst are feeling a stinging backhand right now ….
July 14th, 2009 at 10:14AM
I was thinking the same about Rutgers New Brunswick.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:01AM
To the outsider, well away from California, the two famous campuses are UCLA and Berkeley. UCSB, UCSC, UCSD are part of the background alphabet soup. Scull may find that public perception doesn’t help his particular cause.
Having snarked, though, I have to say he’s basically right. UC’s response to the crisis is inadequate. They’re salami-slicing and hoping that next year it will all be OK and we can get back to normal. But next year it won’t be OK.
July 14th, 2009 at 5:49PM
This letter is a sadly misguided effort, and one can only hope that it won’t harm UCSD as much as it might. The chairs who didn’t sign doubtless appear pusillanimous to Scull and his backers, but perhaps it dawned on the non-jurors that 1) UCSD is not Berkeley, or even UCLA (which at least has full-page ads in the New York Times to testify to its self-importance), and does not have the local or national prestige of the true flagships–were the system or the legislature to accept the letter’s reasoning, they might well see fit to whack UCSD along with the other ‘lesser’ branches in order to spare the two with strongest claims to excellence; and 2)neither the system nor the legislature nor the citizens of California are in fact likely to accept this reasoning, not least because when you get right down to it the people who pay the bills at universities–public or private–tend to cling to the quaint notion that teaching students is the principal rationale for the existence of such institutions; and 3) attempting publicly to knife colleagues at sister schools in the midst of a crisis is unlikely to reflect well on the character or judgment of the knife wielders, either inside or outside the university system–one ought not lift that knife at all unless one can be sure of a swift kill.
July 14th, 2009 at 8:14PM
Hmm…
Just to point out that there are at least two parallel systems in California. We all know about San Diego State from this blog. Rather than cutting back on schools such as UCSD maybe SDSU and other schools like this should go?
I note that in Minnesota we have a similar situation. Some state legislators have told me that they would RATHER give money to the MnSCU schools, e.g. St. Cloud St., Mankato St., Winona than to the U of M system – Twin Cities, Duluth, Morris…
When the long knives come out for fights over money between schools and system in a state it is going to get very, very ugly.
Also, I wouldn’t knock UCSD too much. When the long overdue NRC rankings of graduate programs come out, I think UCSD will do pretty well. One of my students in the biological sciences thought long and hard about UCSD and Berkeley and came down on the UCSD side. There are a lot of very good people there. Last I heard they had a very well rated program in biomedical engineering which is one of the new trendy fields.
July 14th, 2009 at 8:51PM
UCSD occupies a strong niche in the biological sciences, and, whatever its failings, is a genuine research institution. I’d take objection to including UCSC on this list, but in every other respect, the letter is right. Merced was simply a bad idea, and UC officials more or less admitted that it was an effort to up the systemwide underrepresented statistics by appealing to minority students in the Central Valley looking for ‘practical’ careers (nursing, etc.) These needs would be better addressed by the California State system, which has been answering them for years. The planned piecemeal cuts are only going to lower the quality of education and research without helping any part of this behemoth get leaner and fitter. Cut Merced, at the very least.
July 18th, 2009 at 2:36AM
I am shocked that so many faculty signed that letter. They must know that a good portion of UC’s money comes from external grants and contracts. Both Riverside and Santa Cruz have quite an impressive record in engineering and sciences (Merced is too young to be brought into this comparison and needs to be given time). In many cases, their record is stronger than in the same depts. at UCSD. Many of the dept. chairs know this – yet they signed on to it! Funding not only brings money, but also prestige and a recognition that relevant work is going on. I could not find much in this regard in Scull’s resume; yet he has the temerity to suggest that tax payers keep paying his salary even at the cost of destroying the entire UC. And so many chairs, notwithstanding their better senses, signed on to it! Did they really sign the final draft of that letter? I would like to believe that I work with more sensible colleagues.