Although the UC system is considered the pinnacle of Californias postsecondary education system, some feel the practical education available to undergraduate students undergraduates is often not as complete as that found at http://www.calstate.edu/ California State Universities, or even many community colleges.

These individuals believe there are a number of reasons for this, but assert that the basic reason is that the UC system focuses very strongly on research and graduate education.  Then again, maybe the fact that the UCs emphasize research and graduate education is a strength rather than a weakness  read below for pros and cons.

In the UCs, there are a number of opportunities for Student Influence.


I originally created this page out of frustration with the way I felt many undergrads were being shortchanged in favor of research and other priorities (disclosure: when I wrote this, I was NOT an undergrad, although I had been in the past, and I was a TA working with undergrads in the past as well). I think however, that at this point a more balanced page would be more helpful (along with a name change). Any objections before I rewrite?  Users/EricKlein

 The benefit of this focus is that the UC system has many of the best researchers in their fields and provides some of the best graduate education to be found anywhere on Earth. The downside is that a lot of choices that the UC makes to optimize research benefit wind up damaging undergraduate education. The way I think of it, the UC system is basically a prep school for grad school, while the CSU system is a prep school for the business/real world.

 Some examples of this phenomenon:
   Sometimes a professor who may be one of the very best researchers in their field may also be a very poor teacher (I had a few of these as an undergrad at UC Santa Barbara).
   The undergrad classes in the UC system usually seem to focus much more on theory than on practice. The upside of this is that many undergrads at UC schools have very good theoretical underpinnings when they graduate, which can serve them well, especially if they plan to attend grad school. The downside is that they are abysmal at the practice of their trade. Im most familiar with how this relates to computer science. I was fortunate in that I worked my way through school by programming, however many of my classmates with less practical experience during college had horrible coding skills, and were not all that in demand by local employers as a result. In contrast students attending Cal Poly SLO,  or even from the local Santa Barbara City College often had better coding skills due to the better teaching at those schools.
    It sounds like you were expecting a software engineering degree instead of a computer science one.


 I dont mean to speak ill of the UC system, because it really is an excellent system (especially for grad school). I feel like they could best serve the undergrads though by doing one of two things:
  1. Being upfront about their priorities, tell students that if they want a practical education, their best bet would be a CSU. Also let the business world know this as well, so that there is no prestige loss with having a CSU degree as opposed to a UC degree. Let everyone know that the UC is all about research, and not making any apologies about it.
  1. Hire more lecturers who are excellent teachers. Let the professors who want to just do research, just do research. Make sure all TAs have not only taken training, but also have passed some basic tests of teaching ability (and communications skills). Make sure those same TAs are given as much support as possible to be good teachers, and to improve. Also, add more internship/coop opportunities with industry, so that students can get more practical/handson experience in their field. Make sure students not only know about these opportunities, but ideally require undergrads to take advantage of them (or very, very strongly encourage it). Emphasize the hiring of experienced people from industry as lecturers (or even professors). It is much easier to learn practical job skills from someone who actually has them.


Ive noticed that few davis students actually go onto to graduate school so for the majority of students its not really a prep for grad school. Most students attend UCs instead of CSUs because they have better reputations. Users/BryanBell


Do you have proof/statistics/studies that prove the claims made on this page?  Users/SummerSong ss
  Its a hard thing to quantify. Who would pay for such a study? Undergrads?  Users/ArlenAbraham arlen
  I absolutely do NOT have hard proof. The statements above were based purely on anecdotal evidence from my own experiences, and the experiences other have told me about. I have no problem with somebody rewriting this to show that it is opinion and not fact. I dont know of any formal studies showing this, nor do I expect any to be funded (although it would be quite interesting). Users/EricKlein ek


I have generally heard the most effective use (financially and educationally) of Californias higher education is 2 years at a JC, Bachelors from a State, and Masters/PhD from a UC.  Davis is a great research university, but with the publishing requirements, a fair portion of the faculty are more concerned about their research, and less about teaching, I have have several professors who were obviously brilliant, but lousy teachers. Users/RogerClark
   I dont necessarily disagree with the sentiments expressed on this page, but I have a hard time accepting conjecture as fact.  Maybe the page should be reworded and presented as an opinion?  Users/SummerSong ss
   I dont think the burdens on a UC professor make them weaker professors.  In fact, UC professors generally have a far lighter teaching load than Community College professors.  And they often teach fewer classes than Cal State professors.  So on the one hand, they could very easily have a great deal more ability to really focus on the classes they teach.  On the other hand, if youre teaching the same course over and over again, its not going to require much preparation anyway.  So it really comes down to who the people are, in my view.  I think the problem (to the extent there is one) is that too much responsibility falls on TAs and also the criteria for which the great intellectuals who are hired at UC Davis more emphasizes research accomplishments, while teaching ability is seen more as an added bonus.  But honestly, hiring the most brilliant people you can isnt a bad way to go.  Some of them may be terrible teachers (and great researchers), but I think the vast majority of them outshine most human beings in both teaching and acamdeic research.  Users/JaimeRaba

20050923 22:39:54 nbsp Hm, interesting to see this discussion, as a professor.  The problem, from our end, is class size.  Honestly.  Its incredibly hard to teach a large class unless its solely factbased.  No matter how good a teacher you wish you were, and how hard you prepare, you know you are losing the top 5% and the bottom 20% of students.  You want to know them, individualize the learning a bit, and you end up just trying to figure out how to get papers back without wasting class time.    You end up relying on memorization/regurgitation way more than you want to, because other teaching techniques are so difficult to implement with lots of students.  Then UC students are inculcated into the lecture system such that other methods can really frustrate them.  On top of all that, research is indeed what gets you promoted, so you cant skimp on that either.  Not offering excuses for bad teaching, here, just want you to know some of our obstacles.   Users/BethFreeman
  Thanks for offering the other side of things in a calm and respectful way. Users/KenjiYamada

20051215 15:10:25 nbsp Ive missed something  is UC supposed to be a highend vocational school?  I thought UC was supposed to provide education, not job training.  A lot of the money for UC is provided by the public, and the public should get something in return.  Traditionally, the argument has been that the public gets in return a body of citizens able to think more clearly and responsibly, especially about public issues.  This is not to say that UC is doing well at providing education even in the sense I have described.  But if you are looking only for job skills which will benefit no one but you and your future employer, then it is unrealistic to want the state (or, in the case of private universities  generous donors) to pay for so much of it. Users/AlexanderWoo
  So... what do you mean by education if not job training? Isnt job training in the public good? Doesnt the public have an interest in training people to fill needed positions in society? I realize that there are other aspects to education aside from job training (such as creating a more well rounded person), but I dont see why that should require that the job training aspects should be neglected. Im not saying that the UC should become a glorified vocational school, but I do think that a college has an obligation to its students to see that they are employable after getting a degree.  Users/EricKlein
   Well, heres the thing. UCs are highereducation. They are! Theres no two ways about it. Traditionally in many countries, schools are set up the same way. Theres the university, which is devoted to education. And then there are vocational schools devoted to more realworld practical experience. I dont think that the UC system is lying about its intentions by offering us an education based on learning about the subjects we ask to learn about. Now, mind you, I think the concern raised here is a tiny bit valid in that I get a sense after all my classes of being pushed toward academic research as a career; which in my case doesnt seem that practical. But I am not leaving this school; I consider it more my fault for not thinking more clearly about the fact that this is a research university. Beyond that I dont think that this school doesnt offer real world experience. More than 2/3 of my friends keep part time jobs and go to school, and just going to Davis can be a responsibility by itself! You learn a lot about timemanagement, improvement of performance, how much performance matters (grades on your record), how to keep a cool head in many situations ... the list goes on and on for me. The difference in the real world (what little Ive experienced it) is that the deadlines are more concrete and there is a bottom line. Unfortunately, UCs dont attempt to teach you that. However, to say that were not employable after a degree is rather bullcrap. The job market has consistently advocated a university degree over many other kinds for the best jobs offered. SS
   As an example of what I mean by education, I refer to an issue tangentially raised by the http://daviswiki.org/IKEA/Talk?actionrecall&version46 IKEA page debate.  I would want anyone with a degree from UC Davis to either (a) know that it was fairly common for German teenagers to join the Hitler Youth, or (b) be responsible and clearheaded enough, and have enough general knowledge about human society, to consider the possibility that being in the Hitler Youth was common and fairly benign and check to see if this was the case before taking any serious action (such as advocating boycotting a store) based purely on someone having been in the Hitler Youth. Users/AlexanderWoo
    Im so remarkably happy for you. My intention of writing that was not to have people boycott IKEA. Ask yourself a question: how many people, oh wait, dare I say, university students, actually knew about Kamprads involvement at all? If you think the number is considerably large in any way, youre delusional. My point is that people who are educated should more readily be educating themselves (I dont think they do as much as would appease me). Thats the main point in addressing something like that about Kamprad. Whether or not people boycott IKEA based on that information is their own choice. Maybe that information isnt enough for them. Maybe reading that, theyll be prompted to find out more. That would be great! SS

20051216 04:17:16 nbsp I, for one, am disgusted by the number of courses that I have taken as an undergrad in which the instructor had such a thick foreign accent (or equivalently bad vocabulary) that his/her words became gnarled to the point of unintelligibility.  I wouldnt say that these instructors have comprised the majority of the instructors in all the courses Ive taken, but they have comprised the majority in some of the most vitally important courses of my education, which is a complete shame.

The UCs intensive research focus aside, they should hire instructors that have a full mastery of the English language, or, permit only people that have mastery of those skills to teach, so long as they have some minimum qualification of understanding the material.

That is, if the goal is education (it should be).

Regarding the UCs focus more on research rather than undergrad care, I have no problem with that, so long as the university clearly sends that message to applicants (they didnt, to me). Users/JohnNapier

20051216 15:18:00 nbsp I had one guy tell us that he wasnt being paid enough to teach us and didnt want to be there.  He said we should drop his class and sign up for the other guys section because he gets paid more and should have to deal with us instead of him. Users/MarieHuynh

20070503 20:00:49 nbsp I cant really respond to the above, but I can fill in things from my own perspective.

The University of California (UC) system is designed to be research oriented; the California State University (CSU) is designed to put teaching before research.  Does that mean youll get a better education at a CSU?  Maybe, maybe not.  In part, it depends on what youre looking for, but also, experiences will vary wildly from school to school, from department to department, and from professor to professor.  Does it matter to you whether your professors are top in their field, actively doing research and staying current?  Then perhaps the UC is a better place for you  but plenty of CSU professors are good researchers, too.  Then again, it might be a mistake to think that CSU professors have tons of time to devote to students  they have very heavy teaching loads, and are expected to do some research, regardless.  Bottom line: the truth is that most faculty become professors because they want to research  grad school is a long, expensive haul for those who want to teach.  Listen to the recommendations of your friends, and choose accordingly.  (That is, choose the professors who obviously care about their teaching  if you choose classes only because they are easy or because the schedule is convenient, then you get no sympathy from me).

Personally, I bucked the norm and went to grad school so that I could teach, because I wanted to teach and couldnt see myself teaching high school.  By the time that the ink was dry, I found that I loved both teaching and research.  But it can be hard to balance both.  Sometimes I think that students dont have a complete understanding of all the demands on a professors time.  (Sometimes professors dont have a complete understanding of all the demands on a students time, either, but thats a story for the students to tell).  So, heres a partial list:

  Research responsibilities:
   Experiments/literature review
   Writing papers and books
   Presenting papers at conferences and colloquia (and the preparation that entails)
   Refereeing papers for journals (academia runs on peer review, but someone has to do it)
   Writing book reviews
   Communicating with colleagues in the field, giving feedback on their papers
   Staying current in the field (reading books and journals, attending colloquia and conferences)

  Teaching responsibilities:
   Doing the assigned reading (I dont have it memorized!)
   Preparing lecture notes
   Lecturing
   Holding office hours
   Holding virtual office hours (email, etc.)  what used to be confined to weekdays has now spread to evenings and weekends
   Grading exams and papers
   Coordinating with TAs
   Supervising graduate dissertations, serving on diss. committees

  Committee responsibilities:
   Department committees
   Collegelevel committees
   Universitylevel committees
   Other positions such as department chair (good luck getting research done), graduate advisor, etc.

Being a professor is a very fulfilling job.  In fact, it feels funny to call it a job, because it ends up permeating every aspect of your life.  But one basically has to accept that there is an infinite amount of work to do and no one to set any boundaries but oneself.  Professors work insane numbers of hours with the benefits being that they can choose those hours and what they work on (for the most part), not to mention the excitement of seeing young minds think and explore.  So, yes, some professors are neglectful of undergraduates, some of them are at UC Davis, and thats a problem.  However, also understand that professors have a lot of obligations to fulfill, and occasionally, we try to have lives, too.

Users/CovertProfessor

  Very good points. Back when I originally wrote this page, I was quite undiplomatic in my naming of the page. The result is something that is really unfair to most of the professors at the UC, and somewhat insulting. My beef was never really with the professors themselves, but with the way the UC system is presented to the public as a whole, and more specifically the way it is presented to prospective undergrads and to a lesser degree, to potential employers. I think the UC system is extremely valuable, and would not want to see it diminished. I very much value my education both at UCSB and here at UCD. My only real point in creating this page was that I felt that quite a few students came to the UC expecting a practical education, the result of which would be real applicable skills that they could use to get a job, and were left with something other than what they expected. Similarly, the UC is promoted as being the pinnacle of Californias education system (and in many ways it is). Many employers therefore view a degree from a UC as somehow more valuable than one from a CSU. In both of these cases, the way the UC is put forth and promoted does a disservice to the public (and to some extent to the UC itself). I dont view an education from a UC as inferior to one from a CSU, but I do view it as substantially different, and in general not as useful for learning skills that can be applied to a career outside of academia. Im not even suggesting that should change, only that the UC should reconsider the way it markets itself. If it doesnt want to remarket itself, it would be nice to see it try to cover the gap between students (and employers) expectations, and reality. Again, I dont believe that this is necessarily something for individual professors themselves to be involved in. More likely this would be something done at the administrative level: either to change marketing, or to initiate programs to ensure better practical skills for those who want them (more accessible coop programs w/ industry, more nutsandbolts sorts of classes offered, etc.). Users/EricKlein ek

   Well, I wasnt insulted by it; I certainly do think that some professors, at the UC, the CSU, and elsewhere, neglect their undergraduates.  I would be surprised to learn that it was any worse at UCD, but I havent been here long enough to know that.  And I cant comment on how UCD markets itself, not having looked at much of the materials.  But your comment raises two questions: 1) Is the job training the primary purpose of a college education?  and 2) To the extent that job training is a goal of college education (even if it isnt the primary goal), is this goal best achieved through skills training?  Is it best for employers or for students?  With regard to question #1, we could obviously get into a long discussion about the purpose of higher education, so I will just claim without argument that the following are at least as important, if not more important: becoming a person who is broadly educated in arts, letters, and sciences, knowledgeable about the world, its history, and its cultures; becoming a person who is in the habit of thinking and questioning, a person who can argue logically and coherently as well evaluate the arguments of others; becoming a person who is excited about learning, so that college is only the beginning of the learning process, and not the end; becoming a person who is prepared to engage in our democracy and our society as an informed and thoughtful citizen.  I do believe that the CSU also has these goals, although how much they are stressed may differ from campus to campus and within campuses as well.  With regard to #2, with economies and technologies changing so fast, it might not actually be in students best interest to graduate trained in a specific skill.  They might have an easier time getting a job upon graduation, but if they have not learned to think they will have a tough time once those particular skills are out of date.  It is true that some employers look for specific skills, rather than smart people who are broadly educated and who can think and learn.  I happen to think that those employers are shortsighted, and they would do much better to hire the aforementioned smart people.  So, if there is anything that needs changing, in my view it is the employers and not the university, and those of us who are connected to academia in any way would do well to make that case whenever and wherever we can.  Users/CovertProfessor

20100422 12:08:36 nbsp I was a community college student, from my experience the majority Professors Graduate from UC have more difficult skills in teaching vs. Professors Graduate from CSU plain and simple. I learn well instructors from CSU! UC may be good with research, but if CSU allow to do research/medicine, give out more doctorate, I see CSU probably come out superior. Users/news1001
