Arguably the worst dimension of the whole deal with the UC situation is that it is *actively antithetical to equity goals*, on top of the self-evident absurdity. If no one hires UC graduates because they know the degrees are nonsense, how is that any good for disadvantaged graduates?
I wasnt ready to go right into college after high-school so I joined the army instead.
The army REALLY sucked, but when I got out I was more than ready to go to college. I went to a CC first, took the remedial classes I needed to, then transferred to UCSB
Later I got my CPA and MBA.
I got a great education at the CC. In many ways the classes were better than at UCSB. Smaller class sizes and the semester instead of quarter system.
Plus I saved a LOT of money. Moreover I was not ready to go directly to UCSB. I needed the solid foundation.
There's nothing wrong with going directly to a CC first, and for most kids its probably the better choice
I was very dismayed when reading that op-ed the other day, and considered bringing it up with my colleagues at UC Irvine, but I figured no one needs that sort of downer the week before classes begin.
I’m glad that your colleagues would object. I was a professor for 15 years, and some of mine would’ve objected, too. But not all of them. Pawel’s credentials-not-education ethos is absolutely shared by some tenured professors at research institutions.
What the heck Miriam Pawel! You’re a great journalist and historian of California! I’m a fan of Ms. Pawel’s writing on Cesar Chavez and the Browns. Her work is hard headed and not ideologically self deluded. Crikey. As a graduate of the UC system and former professor in the California community college system I’m very familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of California public higher education. I taught SAT prep to students whose backgrounds ranged from underprivileged to elite for decades. SATs are the best means of selecting qualified underprivileged students for the UCs.
I saw the headline about UCs not needing SAT screening and didn’t bother to read the post. I knew I would disagree — and I really didn't need the aggravation.
But thank you for giving the piece the criticism it deserved.
The UC system has been a haven for homegrown scholars for generations in my extended family. Degrees from Berkeley and UCLA are arguably the best of any public University in the country. It makes no sense to lower standards implied by a four-year degree just hand out more of them.
Gresham’s Law applies equally to paper money and diplomas.
Absolutely. Learning is a far more important and valuable enterprise. Diplomas are valuable that they signify that a student completed certain requirements. But we rely on the entire academic experience, freedom of speech, and freedom of thinking, curiosity and science--to propel humanity toward the future. For example: look to Martha Nussbaum for a definition of liberal education. Democracy NEEDS liberal education--and higher education in every way. The world needs rigorous science, enduring arts, and hard charging social science. Becoming AI driven diploma mills will surely destroy us.
Gotta offer a contradictory opinion here. I think that it is socially useful to credential underqualified people for the sake of increasing equity.
It seems like there is a chicken-and-egg thing with credentialing and developing the foundations necessary to gain qualification for credentialing institutions, and it's about the next generation, the children of the credentialed-but-underqualified. Like, if you credential someone and they benefit from the credentials in being inserted into the milieu of the credentialed, then subsequent generations will take the importance of credentialling for granted in a way they wouldn't otherwise. I think it's obviously important to develop a primary educational system that increases people's qualification for higher education, but I think that doing some targeted aggressive affirmative action attacks the problem from two directions.
Unqualified and uncredentialed people become slightly more qualified and slightly more credentialed over time in a virtuous cycle that is self-reinforcing. Credentials are stupidly valuable in the US in my experience.
Of course, there is a serious problem with deflation in the value of a degree due to some underqualified people being let in. But to me the UC system should think of itself as rationally spending or amortizing a manageable amount of its banked psychic capital to achieve socially desirable ends. Maybe moderating the quantity, maybe messaging differently, but not stopping.
I love learning, I am in a highly competitive university master's program right now and I wish it was harder personally, but I can't get past the fact that certain people were given an apocalyptically raw deal in the form of 2-ish centuries of violent oppression, and this justifies a program which is suboptimal from a pure education standpoint.
I'm fine with directing a lot more resources at historically underresourced areas - Title I funding, etc. I am also okay with some amount of explicit affirmative action for first generation college students and low-income students. But in my opinion it needs to be more like "we recognize that a rich kid's 1400 SAT was probably the result of tutoring, and a poor kid's 1300 reflects similar underlying ability" not "this poor student got an 800 on the SAT but we can give them a degree anyway to try to benefit the next generation". If you do the latter, your entire university system loses all of its credibility. We should do tons of work to improve outcomes for the disadvantaged! But the work to improve outcomes for the disadvantaged has to actually improve *their knowledge and skill levels* or it's all a house of cards.
Arguably the worst dimension of the whole deal with the UC situation is that it is *actively antithetical to equity goals*, on top of the self-evident absurdity. If no one hires UC graduates because they know the degrees are nonsense, how is that any good for disadvantaged graduates?
YES!
Strong agreement here.
I wasnt ready to go right into college after high-school so I joined the army instead.
The army REALLY sucked, but when I got out I was more than ready to go to college. I went to a CC first, took the remedial classes I needed to, then transferred to UCSB
Later I got my CPA and MBA.
I got a great education at the CC. In many ways the classes were better than at UCSB. Smaller class sizes and the semester instead of quarter system.
Plus I saved a LOT of money. Moreover I was not ready to go directly to UCSB. I needed the solid foundation.
There's nothing wrong with going directly to a CC first, and for most kids its probably the better choice
I was very dismayed when reading that op-ed the other day, and considered bringing it up with my colleagues at UC Irvine, but I figured no one needs that sort of downer the week before classes begin.
I’m glad that your colleagues would object. I was a professor for 15 years, and some of mine would’ve objected, too. But not all of them. Pawel’s credentials-not-education ethos is absolutely shared by some tenured professors at research institutions.
What the heck Miriam Pawel! You’re a great journalist and historian of California! I’m a fan of Ms. Pawel’s writing on Cesar Chavez and the Browns. Her work is hard headed and not ideologically self deluded. Crikey. As a graduate of the UC system and former professor in the California community college system I’m very familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of California public higher education. I taught SAT prep to students whose backgrounds ranged from underprivileged to elite for decades. SATs are the best means of selecting qualified underprivileged students for the UCs.
I saw the headline about UCs not needing SAT screening and didn’t bother to read the post. I knew I would disagree — and I really didn't need the aggravation.
But thank you for giving the piece the criticism it deserved.
The UC system has been a haven for homegrown scholars for generations in my extended family. Degrees from Berkeley and UCLA are arguably the best of any public University in the country. It makes no sense to lower standards implied by a four-year degree just hand out more of them.
Gresham’s Law applies equally to paper money and diplomas.
Absolutely. Learning is a far more important and valuable enterprise. Diplomas are valuable that they signify that a student completed certain requirements. But we rely on the entire academic experience, freedom of speech, and freedom of thinking, curiosity and science--to propel humanity toward the future. For example: look to Martha Nussbaum for a definition of liberal education. Democracy NEEDS liberal education--and higher education in every way. The world needs rigorous science, enduring arts, and hard charging social science. Becoming AI driven diploma mills will surely destroy us.
Gotta offer a contradictory opinion here. I think that it is socially useful to credential underqualified people for the sake of increasing equity.
It seems like there is a chicken-and-egg thing with credentialing and developing the foundations necessary to gain qualification for credentialing institutions, and it's about the next generation, the children of the credentialed-but-underqualified. Like, if you credential someone and they benefit from the credentials in being inserted into the milieu of the credentialed, then subsequent generations will take the importance of credentialling for granted in a way they wouldn't otherwise. I think it's obviously important to develop a primary educational system that increases people's qualification for higher education, but I think that doing some targeted aggressive affirmative action attacks the problem from two directions.
Unqualified and uncredentialed people become slightly more qualified and slightly more credentialed over time in a virtuous cycle that is self-reinforcing. Credentials are stupidly valuable in the US in my experience.
Of course, there is a serious problem with deflation in the value of a degree due to some underqualified people being let in. But to me the UC system should think of itself as rationally spending or amortizing a manageable amount of its banked psychic capital to achieve socially desirable ends. Maybe moderating the quantity, maybe messaging differently, but not stopping.
I love learning, I am in a highly competitive university master's program right now and I wish it was harder personally, but I can't get past the fact that certain people were given an apocalyptically raw deal in the form of 2-ish centuries of violent oppression, and this justifies a program which is suboptimal from a pure education standpoint.
I'm fine with directing a lot more resources at historically underresourced areas - Title I funding, etc. I am also okay with some amount of explicit affirmative action for first generation college students and low-income students. But in my opinion it needs to be more like "we recognize that a rich kid's 1400 SAT was probably the result of tutoring, and a poor kid's 1300 reflects similar underlying ability" not "this poor student got an 800 on the SAT but we can give them a degree anyway to try to benefit the next generation". If you do the latter, your entire university system loses all of its credibility. We should do tons of work to improve outcomes for the disadvantaged! But the work to improve outcomes for the disadvantaged has to actually improve *their knowledge and skill levels* or it's all a house of cards.
From a utilitarian perspective, maybe, but the worst NYT op-ed from the past week, purely from the perspective of writing quality, has to be https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/opinion/ella-langley-landman-rural-politics.html