BY ALVARO HUERTA
Full disclosure: I have deep roots to UCLA. I obtained my bachelor’s degree in history and master’s degree in urban planning at this prestigious university. My wife Antonia, brother and brother-in-law also attended UCLA. As a visiting lecturer, I recently taught an urban planning summer course. Additionally, while completing my dissertation (UC Berkeley), I’m a visiting scholar at UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center.
That being said, based on my observations over the years and regular contact with staff, faculty and students, I don’t believe that the academic quality of UCLA is on the decline. While the quality of UCLA’s faculty and research continues to be among the best in the world, the intellectual capacity of the students and their dedication to making positive contributions to society, I believe, represents the best that the university has to offer.
For instance, the students in my summer class, Planning for Minority Communities, consisted of hardworking, intelligent individuals who have the capacity to not only understand society and all its complexities, but also the commitment to change it for the public interest.
Isn’t that the purpose of the ideal public university?
While many students seek to secure their financial future by pursuing higher education, I’ve been fortunate enough to teach, mentor and collaborate with countless UCLA students and faculty who have dedicated their lives to serve less fortunate individuals from America’s barrios and impoverished areas. This is what makes UCLA an outstanding university.
My only challenge to UCLA and its leaders is for them to aggressively pursue and increase the number of minority and working-class students from disenfranchised communities that don’t have the same access to human capital and social capital found in privileged communities.
Huerta is a visiting scholar at the Chicano Studies Research Center and at the department of urban planning.
BY ANDREW SABL
Of course instructional quality is declining. It’s a matter of arithmetic. Last year’s huge budget cuts followed on smaller, cumulative cuts for at least a decade. Fee increases can’t fill the whole gap; students rightly complain that classes are closing just as fees are increasing. While it’s hard to get hard numbers (which might prove very embarrassing), few deny that our per-pupil spending on undergraduate instruction, once roughly in the ballpark of top private universities’, has by now fallen to a fraction of theirs. We are certainly used to “doing more with less.” But we can’t do several times more.
Resource gaps bite hardest in teaching critical thinking and writing, which is by nature labor intensive. Social science and humanities departments used to offer many small, writing-intensive seminars: no longer. Lecture classes used to have teaching assistants who led discussion sections and helped students with papers. In almost all courses, these have long since yielded to readers, paid too little to do either. As a result, UCLA students no longer get rigorous instruction in these areas. And employers know it.
Many believe such candor will sap morale. I disagree. Our supporters will feel urgency only when given truth. Students who reflexively oppose fee increases must be told that past levels of state support for the UC won’t be coming back. Taxpayers (or parents) who think they can be both anti-tax and pro-UC must be reminded that a university can’t uphold the standards of Stanford on the budget of Ole Miss. Faculty who brag about how little they have to teach must remember that this is a university, not a think-tank. And alumni who wonder why the University of Southern California is beating UCLA in the college rankings should consult a mirror: Trojans give, Bruins don’t.
UCLA still has outstanding faculty, students, and staff ““ who lack nothing but the resources we need to do our jobs. We can turn things around, but only if we stop denying that we’re headed for a cliff.
Sabl is an associate professor of public policy and political science.
BY ANN KARAGOZIAN
The term “academic quality” means different things to different people. To most undergraduates it probably represents the quality of instruction, the range of courses offered in different disciplines, and the intellectual stimulation that the university environment provides.
Graduate students would probably add to the above the scholarly vibrancy of research activities and seminars in their chosen field. To faculty, academic quality likely includes all of the above, in addition to institutional resources and facilities that enable one to perform and guide cutting-edge research and scholarly endeavors.
By all of these measures, UCLA’s academic quality has been on the rise for a number of years. You’d be hard pressed to find many universities with as great a range of high quality educational and research programs as are currently available at UCLA, although vigilance in maintaining our high quality is absolutely essential, especially in an era of economic stress.
At a completely different level, though, the nature of the academic environment is quite different today from what it was, even in the recent past. Today, students have nearly instantaneous electronic access to course materials or solutions for problem sets, or even to course lectures themselves. The days when one had to physically go to the library to look up reference material or photocopy solutions are nearly gone.
This change surely enhances academic quality, but do students today actually learn material any better than in the past? Sometimes it seems that such easy access to learning materials, especially within the classroom, can lead to a more passive type of learning experience.
Why take copious notes during class if the instructor has already made them available on the course website? Why bother to ask questions of your teaching assistants or professor during office hours if you can just download or Google the answer (which may or may not be the correct one)?
Instant access saves time, but in some ways it robs us of the ability to develop as active learners and scholars. Development of critical thinking and questioning skills begins with an active engagement in the educational process, for all of us at UCLA!
Karagozian is the chair of the Academic Senate.
BY ABEL VALENZUELA JR.
For a long time and particularly during the past two years, UCLA has suffered huge financial blows from California’s depleted coffers, despite administrative and academic leadership to mitigate their harm.
Our campus has suffered in various ways.
For example, services that complement our academic mission have eroded or disappeared. Students have faced the brunt of these cuts, paying more in tuition for fewer services.
Students from low-income families in particular are disproportionately impacted, forcing many to withdraw.
Resources to support graduate students have been reduced or eliminated.
Many other examples exist.
No doubt, the academic quality that we offer to our student body, in a broader context, has suffered.
That said, I don’t believe that our core academic quality has declined to a point of no return ““ UCLA continues to attract the best students (undergraduate and graduate) from California and elsewhere, and we continue to recruit and retain what is arguably one of the best faculty anywhere in the world.
At UCLA, we continue to discover and impact science at the highest level of academic rigor and influence.
Graduate students still select UCLA as their top choice, and they impact our academic mission in innumerable ways, including research, publishing and teaching. Undergraduates are equally impressive.
They bring stellar credentials and also contribute to UCLA’s academic mission, including research.
UCLA’s core academic excellence remains intact, though I worry that our future is in grave peril.
Until we better convey UCLA’s economic and societal impact to California (and the rest of the world), we will be subject to draconian, short-sighted and damaging budget cuts that over the longer term will erode our academic quality and ability to maintain our stature.
Sustained investment in UCLA by our alumni, donors, legislators and others is crucial to our excellence.
We must do more including harnessing UCLA’s location and our comparative advantages to drive development dollars and long-term investments.
Valenzuela is the chair of the Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana/o Studies.