UC Berkeley and the Case for Public Universities

Sather Tower, known as “The Campanile,” at UC Berkeley

Every couple months, UC Berkeley puts out a release proclaiming that it is the number one public university in the country, parading the results of the most recent ranking. Berkeley websites and social media follow in lockstep, repeating the claim that Berkeley is the top public university in the country–and even in the world.

It’s all rubbish.

Well, I’ll take that back. Sort of. Berkeley is the #1 public university…because it is the #1 university, period.

If you winced, I doubt that your reaction has anything to do with ratings or rankings per se, whether they’re carried out by the mainstream media, the government, or universities themselves. Because even when Berkeley finishes at the very top, popular perceptions somehow lag, helped along by Berkeley’s own media that insists on trumpeting it as the #1 public university. This implies that Berkeley can never be #1 overall–even when it is.

For instance, in recent years, Forbes Magazine and the National Research Council (the arm of the US government that monitors academic activity) have rated Berkeley the #1 undergraduate and #1 graduate universities, respectively. US News perennially ranks Berkeley’s undergraduate engineering, computer science, data science and business programs #1 or in the top 3 nationally. Many of Berkeley’s graduate programs like English, chemistry, computer engineering and electrical engineering are ranked #1 by US News, which bases departmental rankings solely on the input of leaders in the respective fields. I am not cherry-picking these results: Given the skyrocketing demand for STEM graduates, these programs happen to be the most coveted and competitive majors across the country. That Berkeley is at the top in all of them–at both the undergraduate and graduate level–is an impressive feat.

Yet the mainstream media rarely mentions the fact that, for instance, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Intel co-founders Andy Grove and Gordon Moore, and founding Google CEO Eric Schmidt–like many tech legends–all went to Berkeley. And these are arguably the most influential consumer electronics, semiconductor, and internet companies, respectively. Meanwhile, the media goes to great lengths to point out that Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page went to Stanford, and that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft founder Bill Gates went to Harvard. Indeed, Hollywood lionized Zuckerberg with his own biopic which is largely set at Harvard (even though Facebook’s roots were actually at the University of Massachusetts, a public school).

In short, even though Berkeley has recently been ranked the #1 undergraduate and graduate university, and is perennially ranked #1 in hot fields like engineering and data science, it somehow lags behind its private university peers in perceived quality and prestige. I think this is due to a profound and persistent bias in America against government and public institutions which must be corrected if we are ever to reclaim our democracy. We will return to this notion later, because it helps explain why so many resist the notion that Berkeley–or any public university, for that matter–could possibly be the #1 university, period. But by now, you are probably wondering what actually makes Berkeley #1, putting aside popular perceptions.

Simply put, because Berkeley has the best and brightest students, who excel inside the classroom and beyond. Berkeley freshmen step onto campus with perfect or near-perfect high school GPAs and transcripts packed with AP courses, backing it up with sky-high test scores. Together, they make up the most racially and socioeconomically diverse campus of any national university. On personal factors, the dynamism of Berkeley’s campus speaks volumes about our students’ character, maturity, and engagement with the world: Our campus newspaper, radio station, debate and speech teams, Model U.N. and a cappella groups regularly garner national awards. But it is our storied history of activism and social justice that truly puts us head and shoulders above everyone else. While Harvard’s admissions office boasts that it finds students who will be famous in twenty years, Berkeley finds those who send shockwaves around the world before they even graduate.

In fact, Harvard may soon be a direct beneficiary of Berkeley’s legacy of protest: Harvard’s case against President Trump’s ban on international students may well rest on the powerful protections on free speech won by Berkeley students who founded and led the Free Speech Movement. Taking the fight for justice overseas, they also built the Third World Liberation Front and, with corporate divestment from South Africa, led the collegiate fight against Apartheid, inventing a means for pressuring the powerful to effect social change across borders. Corporate divestment is now being used by other colleges to promote peace in the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.

Closer to home, the very makeup of our campus reflects this crusade for social justice: Without resorting to the discriminatory or secretive admissions policies characteristic of private universities, Berkeley has created a far more diverse campus than any of the Ivy Leagues and other private universities, containing no racial majorities since 1991. It is especially welcoming to those without means or connections. Berkeley admissions, unlike the Ivies, is elite but not elitist and is staunchly incorruptible: There is no way to buy your way in. And, compared to the Ivies, Berkeley has double the percentage of Pell Grant-eligible students. This means that Berkeley educates more poverty-stricken students than all of the Ivy League universities combined.

None of this comes at a sacrifice to student quality. Again, without resorting to the Byzantine admissions schemes contrived by the Ivies, Berkeley creates the most diverse student body with the best students. For starters, the school is tied with Caltech–arguably the #1 technical school–for the percentage of students in the top 10% of their high school classes. The comparison to Caltech is meaningful due to its diminutive size–at under 1,000 students, it is smaller than most high schools–and because it is well-known for upholding an objective, transparent admissions process that forbids legacies (like Berkeley). That Berkeley, a university thirty times its size, can be as selective on this metric is truly impressive.

But some might argue that class rank is a questionable criterion, citing alleged differences in quality between high schools. Along the same lines, they would insist that it is meaningless to compare GPAs from different high schools. I disagree, because, as mentioned above, top students tend to have courseloads packed with AP courses whose content is highly standardized (after all, the point is to prepare students for AP exams, which are standardized tests). Moreover, admissions offices have access to reams of data on the curricula at every high school in the US. But, fair enough: Perhaps it helps to employ a common metric like the SAT. And, admittedly, Berkeley comes up a bit short on this basis, with scores on the old SAT about 75 points under the “average” at the Ivy leagues (I use the “old” SAT here because it’s backed by a quarter century of statistics, while the current SAT was in use for only a few years before annual data was thinned by the pandemic and the Test Optional era.)

To be sure, a 75-point margin seems significant, but I would argue that it isn’t. Keep in mind that the SAT “averages” published by colleges are actually the midpoint of the interquartile range: Who knows what’s going on in the bottom quartile at Harvard? Actually, we can make a good guess: It most likely contains the offspring of celebrities, legacies or rich kids whose parents paid handsome sums to secure a spot. Berkeley sociologist Jerome Karabel dubs this cohort the “happy-bottom-quarter “ in The Chosen, his magisterial study on Ivy League admissions.

But even if you take Ivy SAT figures at face value, they mean little until they are put into the context of demographics: Numerous studies demonstrate that SAT scores closely track socioeconomic status independent of robust indices of achievement like GPA. Put bluntly, rich kids have an unfair advantage over poorer kids. Thus, schools who have richer kids will have higher SAT scores, everything else being equal, than schools with poorer kids.

In a word, Berkeley’s students are just as smart as their Ivy league counterparts, just poorer: As mentioned above, Berkeley has about twice the percentage of students that qualify for Pell grants–a straightforward index for poverty–as the Ivy league and even elite public schools like the University of Michigan. And when you consider transfer students–one-fifth of the student body at Berkeley–you’re looking at triple the Ivy rate: About 45% of Berkeley transfers are Pell grant-eligible. Impressively, Berkeley has nearly twice the percentage of students who are the first in their family to attend college; these families tend to be poor, working class immigrants.

In brief, the average family income and wealth of students at the Ivy leagues is substantially higher than those from other private schools, let alone public universities. The New York Times has published detailed socioeconomic data on hundreds of universities, placing this fact in sharp relief. For instance, one in five Ivy League students sits in the top 1% of family income, while less than one in twenty-five belongs to this rarefied category at Berkeley. And, over two-thirds of the students at the Ivies hail from the top 20% in wealth. This is emblematic of privilege at top private universities–and its near absence at Berkeley and the other UCs.

Thus, Berkeley and the UCs have a longstanding track record for raising high achieving, low-income students out of poverty–arguably the chief purpose of higher education in America. According to Forbes Magazine, this helps explain why UCs do so well in their annual national rankings, stressing that “the times demand a ranking that accounts for inclusivity, not exclusivity, and rewarding colleges and universities that are engines of the American Dream for the many and not a privileged few.” Fittingly, Berkeley ranked #1 in a recent year, besting all the Ivy League schools. Bear in mind that while Forbes invokes measures to gauge opportunity, it also employs the rigorous academic criteria common to other mainstream rankings. These figures reveal important demographic trends, namely that many Berkeley students are immigrants who grew up in households in which English was not the primary language. This introduces predictable obstacles which may not be completely overcome by SAT time–a critical issue on timed tests where reading speed is paramount.

Thus, a 75-point or even a 100-point gap is practically meaningless–less indicative of an achievement than an income gap. This would predict for less access to amenities like SAT coaching or private schooling that inflate the scores of the rich. Controlling for socioeconomic factors, then, suggests that Berkeley students are actually on par with their counterparts at private universities on testing. More importantly, the relatively narrow test score gap in the face of profound socioeconomic and linguistic obstacles indicates intangible qualities like resilience, determination, grit, and the ability to overcome hardship–virtues that are demonstrably more vital to life outcomes than academic achievement.

After all, the typical Berkeley student is more likely to come from a poor immigrant family that speaks a language other than English than the typical Yale or Princeton student who hails from an upper class white family that speaks standard English and has generations of accumulated wealth. I tutored at Oakland inner-city schools during my time at Berkeley, so I was well-acquainted with the obstacles faced by immigrant students. There is also a strong likelihood that the Ivy league student was recruited “in-house”: nearly one out of six students at the Ivy leagues and other universities like MIT and Stanford is a legacy admit who enjoyed a healthy boost in the admissions process.

At Berkeley, however, there is no way you can buy your way in, whether it’s through legacies or by literally writing a big check. The latter are the “development” cases whose families contribute large sums to secure their child’s spot. Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, reportedly got the nod on receipt of a $1 million check to Harvard’s Development office. Not surprisingly, many of these development cases don’t make the grade, so they are instructed to defer matriculation by at least a year. This means that their test scores and other subpar numbers do not factor into the freshmen statistics that make it to press.

No matter, the Ivy leagues would insist: It’s not really about SAT scores or grades anyway, but about the intangible qualities that reflect one’s individuality and character. Sounds nice on paper, but then why keep the process under strict wraps? Because they likely have something to hide. Private universities would insist that their criteria are meritocratic, if fluid and decidedly subjective. But the recent Supreme Court case regarding ethnic discrimination at Harvard suggests otherwise: Admissions data made available under subpoena revealed practices that seem arbitrary at best and discriminatory at worst. In numerous cases, interviewers gave Asian applicants positive scores on a “personal” rating scale, while the admissions office gave the same applicants equally negative personal scores, essentially canceling out the ratings of interviewers–the only officials who actually met with applicants. At best, this speaks to the inherent unreliability of subjective measures; at worst, it indicates a concerted effort to mar the applications of Asians to sabotage their chances of admission.

I am not here to argue that Harvard discriminates against Asians, which is a separate issue. I am far more interested in what this case reveals about private university admissions in general: that the subjectivity and lack of transparency of “holistic” admissions gives private universities the license to choose whomever they want with little regard to fairness, merit or even legality.

This comes at no surprise to many educators, including one of Harvard’s own, psychology professor Steven Pinker. In a scathing critique in The New Republic, he called Harvard’s “holistic” admissions an “eye-of-newt-wing-of-bat” scheme, likening it to the fabled witch’s brew swirling with strange and foul ingredients. Not that Harvard alone should be consigned to medieval times: it is merely the highest profile of the elite private universities, hence its role as ground zero in the popular movement to reform college admissions.

But, why does the public even care about reforming private universities? Shouldn’t Americans be focused on what they can directly control, i.e., public universities? Unfortunately, there seems to be a strong bias against public institutions and public education in general. Which hardly makes sense, since it is private institutions, not public ones, that more often find themselves at the center of lurid controversies, from the “Varsity Blues” admissions scandal to investigations of high officials for misconduct: Just in the last two years, the presidents of Harvard and Stanford were forced to resign following charges of plagiarism and falsification of research data, respectively.

As we saw earlier, there is also the ever-present specter of elitism, rooted not just in old money but in the manner in which these schools select the very people that make up the university–the students–characterized by Pinker’s “witch’s brew”: a secretive, nontransparent process that can be bought. Indeed, their own hubris essentially forces them into secrecy, which plays directly into the image of exclusivity that is almost synonymous with the Ivy brand. In short, these schools practically need to contrive nontransparent, inscrutable admissions schemes to justify rejecting thousands of bright scholars who are just as qualified, if not more so, than the ones given the privilege to pass through the gilded gates.

Public universities like Berkeley don’t have this problem. Transparent, more objective and, therefore, fairer, their admissions systems stand in stark contrast to those at the Ivy Leagues and other private universities: Anyone can walk into the University of California headquarters in Oakland and demand a point-by-point review of admissions proceedings at any campus; the same sort of records from a private university is equivalent to a trade secret like the Coca-Cola formula, requiring strenuous legal manipulations to uncover. Indeed, the NY Times reported in 2018 that Harvard “fought furiously” to keep its admissions records secret when its own investigation revealed systematic discrimination against Asians. Now, if Berkeley or UCLA did do something illegal, a cover-up would be all but impossible: As public institutions, records are freely available. Thus, when Berkeley and UCLA were suspected of discrimination against Asians in the 1980s, evidence quickly surfaced, forcing the University of California to take decisive action. More important, as public institutions are charged with the task of educating all who handle the work and thrive. So, they focus on making room for them–not devising elaborate schemes to keep them out.

The Ivy leagues justify their miniscule acceptance rates by asserting that they are the natural outcome of choosing only the very best, touting their “holistic” admissions schemes as the means to find students who shine both inside and outside the classroom. Curiously, this implies that secrecy and non-transparency are inherent to this process, which after all will presumably yield students that contribute to campus life and, one day, change the world. By this measure, Berkeley–while operating transparent admissions–practically blows Ivy League kids out of the water. As described above, Berkeley students perennially win national awards for campus activities like debate and radio broadcasting and have been at the forefront of virtually every social justice movement since WWII, creating the blueprint for activism that is being followed by Columbia, Yale and other schools in the current protests against the war in the Middle East.

In the 1990s, Berkeley protests against the impending UC ban on affirmative action were so forceful that they inspired Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien to stand with his students–and against his own bosses, the UC Regents–arguing in a 1996 New York Times Op-Ed against the ban, detailing his personal experience as a Chinese student in the deep South which brought him up close to the barriers that Blacks face in this country. Tien would later spend his own money to found an initiative to prepare underrepresented minorities for college. This program, called the Berkeley Pledge, has since been copied by 39 other states. Nearly thirty years later, Tien’s example stands as a bracing message to officials at Ivy league universities who have essentially colluded with their Trustees and the authorities to arrest and even deport their own students–many of whom are legal immigrants. But protecting, promoting and providing opportunities for the poor and disenfranchised comes naturally to Berkeley students and officials alike. It is deeply inherent in our Mission, in the way Berkeleyans view higher education itself: as universal, and therefore to be enjoyed and led by all the people–and not by the privileged few.

In other words, Berkeley is focused on finding the best and brightest and giving them opportunity–not rejecting them. So, its outlook is inclusive, not exclusive, and its admissions is transparent, not inscrutable. Thus, it is truly open and universal–what a univers-ity should be. Fittingly, Berkeley and the UCs have a special “weapon” that truly demonstrates their openness as well as academic excellence. This is another unique feature that sets them apart from private universities: transfer students.

Of course, all universities, including the Ivy leagues, accept transfer students. But transfer students are an integral element of the UC system, according to the vision spelled out by President Clark Kerr sixty years ago: to support and promote high-achieving scholars no matter their life circumstances. Central to his vision was giving older students, who were often poor and forced to join the workforce after high school, a second chance. Realizing that poverty and poorly-funded high schools thwarted many from reaching their potential, President Kerr boosted the academic rigor of community colleges, closely aligning their curricula with the University of California, so that older students could strengthen their records, thrive at the UCs, and achieve their dreams.

The result is that the typical Berkeley transfer is arguably superior to entering freshmen: the former typically boasts a year or more of actual college coursework and a near-perfect GPA; the latter has high school coursework which, at best, is merely college-level. Transfer students usually have significant work experience, often in the field that he or she aims to pursue after college. Furthermore, 44% of transfers are the first in their family to attend college. And to repeat, 45% of transfer students to Berkeley qualify for Pell grants, compared to 30% for entering freshmen, making their accomplishments all the more impressive.

That Berkeley welcomes over 5,000 transfers each year–on average poorer, older, and with years of work experience–exemplifies the spirit of openness and inclusivity that is central to the concept of a university. At this point, you might ask: How can a state-funded university be “universal” if its express mission is to serve the members of its state? Indeed, many claim that this is the fundamental reason why Berkeley, despite its vaunted academics, cannot be the top university; because, they claim, a state school cannot be a national one.

But in fact, most of the UCs have long been de facto national universities; Berkeley and UCLA attracted national and international scholars practically at their inception. As an alumnus who was born and raised in rural Delaware, I am one of these proud out-of-state beneficiaries, as were two of my freshmen roommates and most of my friends. So was the previous attorney general of my state. So, I was far from unique: Over 20% of Berkeley students are non-residents and, because of its size, this means that the number of non-residents at Berkeley actually equals or exceeds the total enrollment at each of the Ivy leagues schools. Nevertheless, merely having a large percentage of out-of-state students does not make a university “national”; over 60% of the students at my state’s flagship, the University of Delaware, are out-of-state; but the U of D is not considered by most to be a “national university.” Thus, it is not so much about numbers but about a school’s ability to attract scholars from everywhere. This answers the charge that state schools have a distinct mission from private schools, so they cannot be compared to national universities, let alone compete with them.

This is not my opinion; it is common knowledge. After all, public universities like Berkeley and UCLA rank highly not just in public university rankings, but in mainstream, national university rankings. When Forbes ranked Berkeley the #1 university, above the Ivies and a certain school across the Bay, it was sending a message about what they believed a university should be. Disappointingly, Berkeley clings to the notion that it is merely the top public university. Maybe this is just being conservative, but then why do multiple Berkeley websites–for admissions, transfer, Berkeley extension, and Berkeley Global–tout Berkeley as the #1 “global” public university? If it isn’t proper to compare ourselves directly to private universities in our own country, then what business do we have comparing ourselves to public universities in 195 other countries, each with its own concepts of liberal arts and professional education?

So, we are at a turning point: If we’re comfortable comparing ourselves to public universities in 195 countries and claiming that we top all of them, then we must be ready to compare ourselves directly to elite private universities–and not just elite public universities–in our own country. After all, American universities, whether private or public, share concepts of undergraduate and graduate education. So, we cannot dodge direct comparisons just because we are a state school and answer to the Board of Regents, any more than private universities like Harvard or Princeton could dodge such comparisons to UCs because they answer to a Board of Trustees. Put it this way: The Ivies don’t say, “We’re the best private universities, not the best overall, because we mostly educate rich people. Thus we can’t compete with public universities that provide more opportunity and are fully transparent about who they let.” They simply pretend that their inherent elitism isn’t really a factor when, if anything, it should probably disqualify them. After all, the ingrained elitism of Ivies and other private universities described above is antithetical to the universalism espoused by the very concept of “university.”

By contrast, the openness, transparency, and inclusiveness of public universities deeply manifests the spirit of free academic inquiry and the essence of democracy. In other words, public universities, by virtue of their very mission and operation, hold the standard of what a great university should be. Therefore, the very best universities are public, by definition.

If we embrace this fact, then we must therefore be ready to assert that UC Berkeley, as arguably the best public university, is the best university, full-stop. Already, major undergraduate programs, like data science, engineering, computer science, and business, have been ranked at the top or very near the top by mainstream outlets, tied with private universities like MIT and Stanford that somehow garner more prestige and press. This is quite the accomplishment, given the decades-long push by industry and government to strengthen STEM programs at colleges across the country. In other words, by tying MIT and Stanford in engineering and computer science in their own territory–Stanford sits at the center of Silicon Valley, while MIT is the world’s premier technical school–Berkeley has proven that a public university can be just as good as private universities, if not better.

Now, if we are unequivocally #1 in the cutthroat STEM race, then we can do the same for the liberal arts. After all, we are practically there already, given the high selectivity of our admissions and the #1 ranking of many of our humanities departments. I have faith that our educators–the top scholars in the world–can deliver, whether it involves beefing up freshman writing programs, offering advanced seminars taught by professors, or requiring undergraduate research.

When you look at it, the competition doesn’t come close. Our students are top-notch academically and make waves outside the classroom, from racking up awards for the Daily Cal to leading the fights for free speech. We are far more diverse than any of the Ivies and elite private universities: no group, except women, constitutes a majority. About a quarter of the student body at Berkeley is Hispanic–twice the proportion at the Ivies. We have twice the proportion of students who are eligible for Pell Grants, and nearly twice the proportion who are first-generation college students. We achieve all these feats thanks to an open, transparent, and incorruptible admissions process, avoiding the secretive measures employed by private universities that simulate diversity while preserving elitism. To this point, Berkeley, like the UCs, has a robust mechanism for bringing in thousands of transfer students each year, giving a second chance to older, poorer students. Finally, we truly serve the nation, educating more nonresidents than the total enrollments of Harvard, Yale, or Princeton.

In short, Berkeley is elite, but not elitist, opening its doors to all who can handle the rigors of a Berkeley education, whether near or far. Thus, it is truly universal, fulfilling the true spirit of a University. In this, we are not alone, sharing that noble vision with our sister schools in the University of California and with elite public universities across the nation.

The case for the University of California, Berkeley, then, is the case for public education. It is the case for transparency over secrecy, for inclusivity over exclusivity, and for populism over elitism. It is, in essence, the case for the people, for democracy. Fiat Lux.

Jose Pamintuan, May 23, 2025