[speaker001:] have you any wisdom to offer someone picking a college
[speaker002:] oh well I think I think the biggest thing that's important is to is to learn enough about the student to match the student well to the to the school and one thing I learned I went undergraduate to Harvard and then came out to Berkeley and it's pretty clear that there are some people who thrive at Berkeley uh and there are some people who who just die here because of the the amount of support that's given and the amount of uh bureaucracy you have to deal with and other things like that
[speaker001:] are are you saying that that there's more bureaucracy et cetera at out in California at that particular school
[speaker002:] uh in a large public school I think in general
[speaker001:] ah
[speaker002:] and uh this is a school with some thirty thousand students and it is set up in such a fashion that students register for classes months in advance and if they don't get them they may not get a chance to take them that year um average graduation has crept up closer and closer to five years largely because of the number of students who can't get all of the courses to fulfill their major on time uh on the hand this is
[speaker001:] that seems so wasteful
[speaker002:] it is and and it's happening in in a lot of public schools uh because of of budget cuts but on the other hand what it does provide is is for the um for students who who need a chance to be forced to fend for themselves uh who have perhaps been too isolated this is a a case where they're they're forced to do that and and my wife went here as an undergraduate she had been sort of protected right through high school and and had to learn to to make it on her own and she graduated from the place in four years by learning to be smart and picking courses that uh at the right times and right priorities and I can see that as advantageous but there are a lot of people for whom this is just a waste of time
[speaker001:] hum that it's interesting you're approaching it from the sort of administrating your education just you know trying to get the class and be there I was thinking in terms of um how would you advise a kid uh on how to pick his future career I I have a son whose a freshman in high school
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and he hasn't got a clue you know what he wants to do you know he's good in math and science and he'll you know
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] uh his stepdad's an engineer his father's an accountant you know he he'll probably lean toward some kind of math or science kind of thing but he's not sure what I myself graduated with an undergraduate and a Master's in art
[speaker002:] um-hum um-hum
[speaker001:] and I did it because it's just something I love to do and I felt that I'm not I'm not a Picasso so I guess I'll teach and I kind of backed myself into a career that I never ended up really using I mean now that I'm raising my kids I'm substitute teaching because the hours are so good et cetera
[speaker002:] um-hum um-hum
[speaker001:] but I had never given that much thought to whether I actually liked to teach you know it just seemed that well that's a practical thing you can do with art so you might as well do it
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] and I guess my advice to uh kids approaching college would first of all do something practical because the art for me um didn't work out very practically I got out of school when the Vietnam draft evasion was going on and everybody wanted to be a teacher there were no jobs and I ended up taking a secretarial school summer class for graduate college graduates which it struck me as so sad
[speaker002:] just just to be able to find a job that you would qualify for
[speaker001:] so sad you know there's a whole bunch of college graduates who are learning how to type just to be able to to make some money
[speaker002:] yeah well
[speaker001:] and um
[speaker002:] I I think one of the reasons that I don't see that as as much of a problem see I would encourage people to go into college not knowing what they want to do because so many of the high schools have done such a bad job at introducing different areas
[speaker001:] hum
[speaker002:] that it may be that what you want to do and it may be a very practical thing to go into doesn't seem attractive because what you've learned of it so far is is not interesting a lot of people are turned off from math because of high school math and going to a school that offers a lot of choice and taking your first year or two to explore what the choices are still gives you plenty of time and
[speaker001:] to pick so you you're suggesting some liberal arts program where you take a smattering of everything
[speaker002:] and then eventually focus on a single major I certainly wouldn't say to go to a liberal arts school that doesn't have a strong science program
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] uh and I'd even encourage a liberal arts school with an engineering program but I tend to look I don't like what I see from the students who are graduating here with engineering degrees where seventy five or eighty percent of their time is spent in a prearranged technical curriculum
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] and they are moving here towards a program where they have a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Science combined where you get a general education with guaranteed admission into an engineering degree for a Master's degree
[speaker001:] oh that
[speaker002:] and that seems like a good compromise it's