Silicon Valley University Asks Professors To Offer Students Affordable Housing (fortune.com) 171
Housing in Silicon Valley is getting so expensive that the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) petitioned 6,000 faculty and staff members to consider offering students "a room in your home." The college's housing director David Keller wrote in a letter that there are "several hundred students" at the university who don't have "housing guarantees" and need support. Fortune reports: Silicon Valley is notorious for its high living costs. And, according to the report, Santa Cruz and its surrounding areas have far more single-family homes than affordable apartments. Worse yet, a senior at UCSC told the CBS affiliate that some "landlords are kind of jacking up the prices because they know about this." The student, Leon Pham, told CBS that he'll pay $1,100 per month for a small room in a shared house.
Still, there are potentially negative implications to schools asking for professors to rent rooms in their homes to students. Professors are still required to fairly judge student work, and a healthy separation between professors and students is usually what colleges want. The housing crunch, however, might have forced the university's hand. And a spokesperson from the school told CBS that the college has policies that govern "the conduct of students and professors."
Still, there are potentially negative implications to schools asking for professors to rent rooms in their homes to students. Professors are still required to fairly judge student work, and a healthy separation between professors and students is usually what colleges want. The housing crunch, however, might have forced the university's hand. And a spokesperson from the school told CBS that the college has policies that govern "the conduct of students and professors."
Not Silicon Valley (Score:2, Insightful)
Santa Cruz is in Silicon Valley?
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But they are both not of course. Because neither are in the Santa Clara valley.
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Re:Not Silicon Valley (Score:4, Informative)
It is considered as such by some. So is San Francisco which is even farther away than Santa Cruz.
The "valley" in Silicon Valley is Santa Clara Valley. Neither San Francisco nor Santa Cruz is in the valley. SCV is bounded by the Santa Cruz Mountains on the west (the city of Santa Cruz is on the other side of these mountains) and the Diablo Range on the east.
Santa Clara Valley [wikipedia.org]
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Boundaries aren't static when you're not talking about a geographical feature. What would be considered the suburbs of almost every major US city are further out than they were 20 years ago. Silicon Valley started as Santa Clara Valley, but its grown since then.
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And yet, areas as far away as Oakland are affected [independent.co.uk].
For smart people, these corporations in Silicon Valley (proper) are incredibly short-sighted—either that, or they don't give a shit about the community they are located in.
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Somebody is geography-challenged. If you are crossing over to "Silicon Valley", you wouldn't cross the Bay Bridge.
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I congratulate your intelligence in being able to follow this very short thread successfully. Congratulations!
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Congratulations on your excellent life-decision-making skill!
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I'm glad I posted as AC so there is no record of me proving I'm an idiot.
FTFY.
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Silicon Valley is generally described by people in the area as stretching up to San Francisco and down to Santa Cruz. And the housing struggle is pretty much the same all the way down, although it gets better in the Santa Cruz area.
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Lived there. We called it by both terms, frequently. Silicon Valley stretched all the way from San Francisco to SantaClara, and was the tech corridor. Nobody EVER said it didn't include San Francisco. Time to get out of the 90s and learn modern reality.
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I suggest you stop tilting at windmills, people, including the people who live there, haven't considered "Silicon Valley" to be a synonym for "Santa Cruz Valley" for a good 20 years. San Francisco was considered part of the Valley when I was first doing tours there on interviews 20 years ago. You may not like it, but its reality.
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Re: Not Silicon Valley (Score:2)
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You beat me to pointing out the obvious. No it isn't part of the "Valley" In fact it is on the other side of the hills that form the "Valley."
Re:Not Silicon Valley (Score:5, Funny)
Santa Cruz is in Silicon Valley?
No silly, Santa Cruz is the Hispanic guy that gives presents to children at Christmas time.
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So, then is Santa Craws the Asian guy who gives presents to children at Christmas time?
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So, then is Santa Craws the Asian guy who gives presents to children at Christmas time?
Oh, we are both lucky we're pseudonymous tonight. But yeah, he is.
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Only to the children with A+ grades.
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You win the thread
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The headline is straight up wrong, but I think it's interesting that this sentence in the summary could actually be using SV correctly. Santa Cruz does see the spillover from SV's refusal to build more housing.
Really they should have used Bay Area throughout because it's the (mostly interconnected) Bay Area housi
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"Santa Cruz does see the spillover from SV's refusal to build more housing."
Sure, but that's more a problem for commuters than home-seekers. Home prices in Santa Cruz are still higher than most of the valley.
"Really they should have used Bay Area throughout because it's the (mostly interconnected) Bay Area housing market that is relevant to the discussion."
Nope. Santa Cruz is not in the Bay area either. That refers to the San Francisco Bay, but Santa Cruz is on the Monterey Bay. Santa Cruz county is its own
I have an idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
The university could set up its own living accommodations. That way, students could live right on university property, at a reduced rate, instead of having to hunt for overpriced spaces in the town. They could make them basic, 150-square-foot living quarters - room, bed, with a communal bathroom - without all of the bells and whistles that seem to make university living cost so much.
There's an ancient word for such living spaces: "dormitories."
Re:I have an idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ah yes, the slogan of the right wing: "You peasants don't deserve an education at the university you desire".
Re:I have an idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah yes, the slogan of the right wing: "You peasants don't deserve an education at the university you desire".
Why turn this into a left/right thing?
Up until a couple of years ago I was driving a 15+ year old vehicle. When it gave up the ghost I had to get a new one. Now, I desired Lamborghini Huracan because I thought it would best meet my transportation needs. I looked at the price, however, and realized it was not possible for me. Now, at this point, I had two possibilities: 1) take out a loan larger than a typical home mortgage to buy the Lamborghini; or, 2) go with something more affordable. I went with 2 and bought a small Honda (without a loan). It turns out that the Honda gets me from place to place just fine and not having a car loan has some considerable benefits.
Now, when it comes to college, people have to separate what they want from what they need. Sure, everybody wants to go to a top-flight school in a trendy city. But not everybody can afford that. So, people have to decide whether the actual education is more important than the cachet of the name and location of the school that they attended. For the vast majority of people who borrow to attend college, the benefits of emerging with smaller debt (or none at all) is far an excess of the benefit of attending a school with name recognition that is in a trendy city.
Is this perfect? Nope. But if you don't think that what I suggest is part of the solution to the student loan and cost of education crisis, then you are just sticking your head in the sand.
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I don't think you understand the University of California enrollment process. You don't get to select the campus you want, you get to request it. If you are only willing to accept one campus, you will likely be rejected even if you otherwise qualify, because there are lots of students who aren't so picky. This is made worse because a certain number of "foreign exchange students" are accepted. This number is artificially high because they pay higher rates and are thus more profitable. Many of the campus
Must be an exception for locals (Score:2)
No problem a decade ago with a different UC campus that was local to home and work, again, all three in the same town. Grad school this time.
Decades ago the most economical housing solution was getting together with three others you knew and trust and the four of you rent a four
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Maybe they didn't keep that policy (without knowing which one). At the time I applied you could apply to just your favorite campus, with a large chance of being turned down. Later I was told that this only applied to certain campuses. Later still I was told they were harmonizing the policy across the university campuses. Shortly after that I graduated and stopped paying attention.
Also, the year before I applied at certain campuses you could specify that this was the one you wanted, but other campuses di
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It became a left/right thing when you put one of the Right's favorite ideas into play.
0.o Nothing in the TFA said anything about student loans or the cost of education - they're entirely irrelevant to the question at hand. (Which is the cost of living in San Jose.) You literally have no fucking i
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A key item here is that the University of California is mainly paid for by taxes...which everyone pays. (OTOH, enrollment costs have skyrocketed over the last few decades, so that statement may be based on old data...and perhaps it's just "...largely paid for...".)
Re: I have an idea... (Score:2)
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That assumes that schools are commodities with no difference between them. I know little of this institution but I'm guessing that being in that area with a lot of tech companies is probably a big draw for people looking to get jobs at said companies.
Re:I have an idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
That assumes that schools are commodities with no difference between them.
It does not make that assumption. It makes the assumption that the students (and possibly their parents) make an honest assessment of whether attending UCSC and graduating with, say, $150k in debt is a better long term value than attending their local State University and emerging from that experience with like $20k in debt.
Will attending a local State University affect employability out of school? Possibly. While it affect life long earning potential? For 99%+ of people that is highly unlikely. The correlation in earning potential has to do far more with the field in which a degree is earned than it does the school which one attended.
I suspect that most people who rack enormous debts in school do not actually consider the alternatives.
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I am not sure what is going on with the Troll/Overrated mods (actually, I think I know).
Either way, what is troll-ish about the idea that higher education is an investment in yourself and in society and looking the cost/benefit in those terms? The value which one derives from the investment should be commensurate with the investment that is made.
The value does not have to be strictly monetary. But let's face it, if you are not fortunate enough to come from a family that can foot the bill for an overpriced
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Because the sporting programs make a lot of money since they use free talent. They draw large crowds also. So your best bet is to be smart and play sports.
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That's a great idea if you want to crystallise your class system so only the rich can attend the good universities.
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And what the hell is wrong with that?
*Nothing* prevents other schools from offering the same courses with the same quality of instruction.
Quality of instruction is only one of the benefits of attending a particular institution. So attending one elsewhere with the same quality and courses will not be as good, as it won't have the same reputation. Reputations can take decades to establish.
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The University of California is largely paid for by taxes, so yes, a university education should be a right, subject only to being an adequate student. Even that limit only to prevent wasting the time and effort of the professors.
Re: I have an idea... (Score:3)
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I think if it was that easy then there would be no housing problem in San Francisco in the first place. It's a problem the city has created for itself, such as by limiting buildings to 40 ft in height. Where are these new dorms going to be put? At least renting out extra rooms (presuming there are some) can be done instantaneously in response to an unusually large incoming class. Erecting new dormitories, if that's even possible, not so much.
IMHO the university's best long term bet is to move entirely. T
Low density coastal forested hilly region (Score:2)
Santa Cruz's draw is that it is in low density coastal forested hilly region. It is not like San Francisco nor Silicon Valley.
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"Where are these new dorms going to be put?"
In one of the gigantic fields between the campus and the town, which the University already owns, and barely uses. People don't want them built there for cosmetic reasons, but the University has more than enough space to build housing for all of its students.
Re: I have an idea... (Score:1)
Add chapter 11 and 7 to student loans that will fix it
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Forget the tuition money, they have a $190M endowment. That's money they can get at without asking the state for a dime.
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I 2nd that Go Slugs. I lived on campus because I could not afford anything off campus and did not want to live like a troll on the beach. I transferred in from DVC (tinker toy tech) Jr college, a long time ago in a galaxy far away.
Fiat Lux
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If they had enough housing space on campus, this article would never have been written. ...and if you were half as smart as you think you are, you might have learned of a thing called "sarcasm."
This is UCSC we're talking about (Score:5, Funny)
Half the professors are probably already living in their cars themselves.
Re:This is UCSC we're talking about (Score:4, Funny)
They're asking the wrong people (Score:4, Insightful)
The faculty and most of the staff are almost as screwed over as the students themselves. They're not the comfortably tenured gentry with huge studies in lavish mansions some people are thinking of. It's the top brass that have locked down that lifestyle for themselves. In turn, rich landlords who've inherited ownership to huge sprawls of real estate the normal person can hardly afford a closet in are the price-gouging profiteers with little interest in the actual health of those living there. I think the ones renting out giant victorians they got with their trust fund just to cover their monthly wine bill - yes I'm thinking of specific actual people I've encountered - are the ones whose resources exceed their current contribution or merit, and might need to foot some extra bills. Hey, they used to call that noblesse oblige.
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Exactly this - they should be asking all the provosts, chairs, vice presidents, directors, presidents, chairmen, boardmembers, and deans.
Fuggidaboudit (Score:5, Insightful)
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Especially when you pronounce it "pound me too"
Somehow I reverted back to always pronouncing '#' as "pound" instead of "hashtag" - it makes many of those tags much more interesting...
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We live in the age of #metoo.
It's dreadful, really. Women and men in weaker positions getting all uppity and refusing to just shut up like good little peons.
Any professor that would house a student is just asking to lose their career.
You've certainly demonstrated we live in the age of wild fearmongering.
Re:Fuggidaboudit (Score:5, Insightful)
We live in the age of #metoo.
It's dreadful, really. Women and men in weaker positions getting all uppity and refusing to just shut up like good little peons.
Any professor that would house a student is just asking to lose their career.
You've certainly demonstrated we live in the age of wild fearmongering.
You're completely missing the point. Ol Olsoc isn't saying that sexual misconduct is acceptable or that people should remain silent about abuse against them when it happens.
What he is saying is that students sharing living space with professors is the sort of arrangement that is only a matter of time before a problem arises. On the positive side, the #metoo movement likely dissuades professors from participating if they don't have enough self control to keep their sexual encounters limited to consensual ones.
On the negative side, a false accusation would still be career ending. Even if the argument is that such accusations are infrequent, it's a tough sell to try and argue that the number of false accusations would decrease when students and professors are sharing living space.
But let's assume that every student and every professor manages to avoid non-consensual sexual encounters with each other, 100% of the time.Given that a university is far more likely to side with a student than a professor in a he-said-she-said situation, it's still risky for other reasons. If jewelry suddenly goes missing, how would one even attempt to investigate the student? How many rules is the professor allowed to set about what the student can and cannot do in the professor's home? Does the professor have the ability to evict a student if they so choose, or are they required to keep them through the semester?
Really, the answer is that the college needs to expand the number of on-prem dorms and be done with it. There are so many ways this can turn into a massive issue for everybody.
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We live in the age of #metoo.
It's dreadful, really. Women and men in weaker positions getting all uppity and refusing to just shut up like good little peons.
Any professor that would house a student is just asking to lose their career.
You've certainly demonstrated we live in the age of wild fearmongering.
You're completely missing the point. Ol Olsoc isn't saying that sexual misconduct is acceptable or that people should remain silent about abuse against them when it happens.
And make no mistake, I am saying that if someone is a victim of sexual misconduct, there are appropriate venues like the legal system and the police.
For some strange reason, there are people who cannot grasp the simple concept of risk versus reward, and cannot understand that it is not fear.
A good example is if I get up in the morning and there has been an ice storm the evening before, I do a RvsR analysis. I like going out to breakfast. I wake up slowly, and enjoy a few cups of coffee to get my mind r
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Ask em if they put their seat belts on when they get in the car. It's not because they're planning on getting in an accident, but on the 1% chance (or whatever) that they might get in an accident that day. SJW's are thick but they'd have a hard time failing to see the logic in the comparison.
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Ask em if they put their seat belts on when they get in the car. It's not because they're planning on getting in an accident, but on the 1% chance (or whatever) that they might get in an accident that day. SJW's are thick but they'd have a hard time failing to see the logic in the comparison.
Excellent analogy. What happened here is that the accusation became the conviction. So while there wasn't a large chance of being accused, the results were ruinous if you were. So why interact other than what is absolutely necessary? The problem is that you don't know, and the woman has the rest of her life to decide if she wants to destroy you.
Why take off the seat belt?
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Just to refine the point a little (since I can't stand those people) I'll ask them if putting on their seat belt means the SJW plans on driving drunk or watching a movie on their phone while behind the wheel. Or....maybe they're just taking reasonable precautions because an unlikely event can be disastrous, not because it's a sign of guilt or not being able to control themselves.
I'm a little surprised that it was an Asia Argento who put some breaks on the #MeToo witch hunt, instead of another Duke Lacrosse
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Just to refine the point a little (since I can't stand those people) I'll ask them if putting on their seat belt means the SJW plans on driving drunk or watching a movie on their phone while behind the wheel. Or....maybe they're just taking reasonable precautions because an unlikely event can be disastrous, not because it's a sign of guilt or not being able to control themselves.
I'm a little surprised that it was an Asia Argento who put some breaks on the #MeToo witch hunt, instead of another Duke Lacrosse incident blowing up in their faces.
The Keillor travesty, the bad date with Aziz Ansari, and the Woman who likes to collect photos of 12 year old boys and fuck them. This is not an anomaly. There will be more to come. I do think that society now understands the nature of the movement, and many of it's adherents, so that is fortunate.
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I think you are wrong in asserting that the University would be more willing to side with the student. What they would do, however, is whatever it takes to sweep the event under the rug. That may appear to be the same, but it has many different secondary effects.
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We live in the age of #metoo.
It's dreadful, really. Women and men in weaker positions getting all uppity and refusing to just shut up like good little peons.
Any professor that would house a student is just asking to lose their career.
You've certainly demonstrated we live in the age of wild fearmongering.
Make no mistake, for prudent men, it isn't fear. It is a simple risk versus reward analysis. You start off with the risks. Some pretty simple things can destroy your career, and there will be no chance to defend yourself. I use the winking as sexual harassment example quite often. You have to second guess anything that you say. The rewards? It is rather difficult to find any - can you?
The problem is not that people should be punished for unwanted sexual imposition upon another. That is established law. T
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Unfortunately, the law has a long history of favoring those with power, and especially those males with power, and especially those males of the dominant social group with power.
So while it's quite reasonable to doubt a lot of the accusations, it's also quite reasonable to believe that they didn't dare take their case to court without respect to whether it was valid or not.
Trial by social media sure isn't guaranteed to produce justice, but neither is the legal system. And people are strongly disposed to pi
Legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this legal?
In my country it is illegal for students to live in the home of any of their teachers unless they are related because the teachers are in a de facto position of power over the students.
It creates a slippery slope of potential problems including things like molestation "hey, want to be kicked out of the school? Don't tell anyone what happened."
It's legal for teachers in America to allow students to live with them?
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Re:Legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone who's house you live in is already in a position of considerable power. If they kick you out, you're homeless. It's better to provide laws protecting tenants than to not let anyone ever live at anyone else's property.
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And the rules are already there
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Do you mean there is an actual law, or just your university regulation? What is your country? I guess some weird one like France :))?
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#metoo! (Score:2, Insightful)
Any professor dumb enough to do this deserves whatever they get, particularly if the student is female.
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So maybe they should bulldoze that football field (Score:1)
and put dormitories in it's place.
But we'll never do THAT
Administrators (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a better idea (Score:1)
Clearly not an econ major. (Score:2)
"a senior at UCSC told the CBS affiliate that some 'landlords are kind of jacking up the prices because they know about this.'"
Isn't supply and demand day one in business school?
Valley go home! (Score:2)
Do what I did and pitch a tent in the redwoods behind campus. Bonus: You can tell your advisor a cougar ate your dissertation.
Fiat Slug!
The root cause is NIMBYism (Score:2)
Previously ridiculous stories about how people are trying to cope with the housing crisis are becoming commonplace, but all of it is a band-aid. The real problem is that the Bay Area has refused, city by city, to build sufficient new housing. Delusional NIMBY homeowners believe that they can block all new development and prevent their city from ever changing. Meanwhile, their children moved out of state, service workers commute hours each way coming in from Stockton, car traffic gets worse because so few ca
Re: The root cause is NIMBYism (Score:2)
I'd let a coed stay at my home (Score:2)
Any SJSU takers ?
http://www.sjsuspartans.com/sp... [sjsuspartans.com]
Perspective (Score:1)
If I may add a little perspective here, When adjusted for inflation that is within a factor two of what I paid for a small one room apartment above a drugstore on the intersection of State and Packard in Ann Arbor while I was an engineering student at the University of Michigan. This problem is NOT new by any means.
{o.o}
This reminds me of my local Walmart (Score:1)
that was running a food drive for their own employees. Nothing like asking others to deal with the problems you caused yourself.
Why should the students get special treatment over the swaths of blue-collar workers with the same problem?
Oh that's right, secretaries janitors and food service employees aren't a blip on their radar.
How about asking the corporate officers of these companies to pitch in and host a bunch of people in their mansions?
Oh that's right, most rich people exp
Everything about this story is wrong (Score:2)
Everything about this story is wrong, or at least half-assed. Santa Cruz is not in the silly valley, first and foremost. It is on the other side of the Santa Cruz mountains from there. Second, and more importantly, it ignores the cause of the situation entirely: it is 100% the university's fault. They are behind even their own promises to build housing. The current debate is over whether they should build some in "the meadow", an empty field which lies between the campus and the town. They promised never to
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My understanding is that they are not so bound in this instance.
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My understanding is that they are not so bound in this instance.
Meaning specifically this meadow? I'm somewhat confident some of the land around UCSC consists of some type of preserves.
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Meaning specifically this meadow?
Correct.
I'm somewhat confident some of the land around UCSC consists of some type of preserves.
Yes, the land around its land. It's bordered on one side by Pogonip, and on another side by Henry Cowell. Further, 410 acres of the campus itself are "protected natural lands" [ucsc.edu]. However, the campus totals 2,000 acres. A quick back of the envelope calculation :) reveals that this leaves over 1,500 acres.
They can't just go developing randomly though, because people will protest pretty much regardless of what they do. However, people will protest most strenuously if they try to cut down any redwood tree
Foxes/chicken coops (Score:2)
Santa Cruz is not in Silicon Valley (Score:2)
It appears the writer or Slashdot editor has zero clue about what a "valley" is and fails to realize that Santa Cruz is a city located on the coast of California, on the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains which separate it from the actual geographical valley referred to as Silicon Valley.
That clarified, 12 years ago I happened to look for affordable housing in the communities surrounding Santa Cruz (the city itself has been trashed by drug addicts and illegal aliens.) Pricing for a room in someone's hom
coastal area with hills and forests, and preserves (Score:2)
UC not a trade school (Score:2)
The simplest solution is to allow professors to host only students of different majors so that it's very unlikely they will ever be in a class together.
The UC system is not a trade school, it is a university, you will be taking classes outside of your major so that you acquire a broad and more complete education.
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How many gen ed (or whatever you call them, we don't have them) courses are you going to take? Fewer than the number of departments, I'd suspect.
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How many gen ed (or whatever you call them, we don't have them) courses are you going to take? Fewer than the number of departments, I'd suspect.
You can't predict departments. Say general ed requires a four unit biology class, some qualifying classes will come from departments other than biology. For example a geology class that focuses on paleontology. Much of general ed works this way, specifying an area of study not a department.
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They take the students' money, and have no accommodations for living.
Another scam.
It's even more of a scam than you think. UCSC promised to build more housing decades ago and didn't. That's how we got to where we are now. Literally twenty years ago I had to rent a room in a house because I couldn't afford anything else, and I was working for Cisco at the time. Part of that was that they were sleazy enough to never pay me a real wage; they hired me as an intern to be a lab admin in spite of my not being a student anywhere, and they promised to convert my position to full-time and then nev