Competition Between UCLA and USC
The rankings are in and UCLA has lost out to cross-town rival USC in the great US New & World Report Rankings. As a UCLA faculty member, I view this defeat to be a good thing. Competition makes us stronger and I believe that UCLA has been complacent. When I taught at Columbia University in the 1990s, I believed that the rise of NYU would force Columbia to stop relying on its fancy Ivy League status and to raise its game. Something similar will now play out at UCLA as USC gets serious about more activities than football and engineering.
As UCLA raises its tuition, it needs to provide a higher quality product. Faculty must do a better job in the undergraduate classroom and the teaching assistants must show up sober and ready to speak clearly to students to help them learn the core material. In this tough job market, we owe it to our students to teach them how to think and to become better problem solvers.
In return for the faculty investing more effort in continuing UCLA excellence, I believe that our Deans and Administrators must also raise their game. There appears to be all sorts of money spent on silly things on campus and in the University of California system in general. Everyone bemoans the growth of "administrators". The President of the University of California owes an explanation for what the non-teaching, non-researching employees of the university actually do all day long.
There also should be a stoppage in building construction. At a time when the faculty is shrinking and the Deans are choosing not to hire full professors (and instead are investing in risky, young assistant professors), there appears to be plenty of money to build new buildings such as UCLA's vaunted future hotel. This shows strange priorities. Human capital > Hotel. Could this equation be wrong?
If USC succeeds at raising $6 billion dollars and succeeds at luring superstar faculty and graduate students to their campus then this will signal to UCLA leaders the power of raising private endowment money and to stop begging Sacramento for spare change that the state doesn't have and doesn't want to provide to the Wizards of Westwood. USC is honest that this game requires cash and lots of it. The more money that UCLA can raise it can be generous and redistribute to the less fortunate.
I wish my Trojan friends well. Excellence is hard to build but it is certainly worth pursuing!
As UCLA raises its tuition, it needs to provide a higher quality product. Faculty must do a better job in the undergraduate classroom and the teaching assistants must show up sober and ready to speak clearly to students to help them learn the core material. In this tough job market, we owe it to our students to teach them how to think and to become better problem solvers.
In return for the faculty investing more effort in continuing UCLA excellence, I believe that our Deans and Administrators must also raise their game. There appears to be all sorts of money spent on silly things on campus and in the University of California system in general. Everyone bemoans the growth of "administrators". The President of the University of California owes an explanation for what the non-teaching, non-researching employees of the university actually do all day long.
There also should be a stoppage in building construction. At a time when the faculty is shrinking and the Deans are choosing not to hire full professors (and instead are investing in risky, young assistant professors), there appears to be plenty of money to build new buildings such as UCLA's vaunted future hotel. This shows strange priorities. Human capital > Hotel. Could this equation be wrong?
If USC succeeds at raising $6 billion dollars and succeeds at luring superstar faculty and graduate students to their campus then this will signal to UCLA leaders the power of raising private endowment money and to stop begging Sacramento for spare change that the state doesn't have and doesn't want to provide to the Wizards of Westwood. USC is honest that this game requires cash and lots of it. The more money that UCLA can raise it can be generous and redistribute to the less fortunate.
I wish my Trojan friends well. Excellence is hard to build but it is certainly worth pursuing!
posted by Matthew Kahn at 9:11 PM
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