Re: private schools

Seth David Schoen (schoen@uclink4.Berkeley.EDU)
15 Dec 1997 09:43:00 GMT 

n sisa writes:

>If Libertarians believe the private sector can do a much better job
>than government, why are you guys enrolled in a public school?

I don't think the private sector can do a better job than government with
everything!  I just don't think that government is moral.  (This is
the whole deontology vs. practical thing which I've mentioned other times;
the private sector can do more, in my opinion, than centrists or economic
liberals give it credit for, but less, in my opinion, than most libertarians
give it credit for.)

Sometimes government can do a much better job than the private sector
with things.  Education is not typically one of those things, but in
this case Berkeley has turned out to be, in my opinion, the best
University in the whole country, in many significant areas.

> I enrolled because I felt it was the best school for Engineering and
>Applied Sciences. The school is venerable, and established in the
>sciences, and manages to attract top faculty and research due to the
>libraries and research facilities such as LBNL that are in the area.

I agree (s/Engineering and Applied/Computer/).

My second choice was Harvard (a private school if ever there was one).
While it was a difficult decision, I decided eventually that, especially
for Computer Science, Berkeley was a better school.  (This is further
proof that merely being government-controlled does not magically make
something awful!)  In particular, I felt there were more and broader
opportunities here, even though there was much less individual attention.

While I've been here, I've gotten to hear or meet many people I had heard of
before:

Cliff Stoll, Brian Harvey, Peter Neumann, Nathaniel Borenstein, various CPSR
board members, Benoit Mandelbrot, Douglas Hofstadter, Jesse Jackson, Steven
Rudich, Matt Welsh, Ian Goldberg (and then Robin Hanson in this newsgroup).
In most cases I've gotten to ask these people questions, and in some cases
I've even had discussions or arguments with them.

I think an assessment of Berkeley as a place where things continue to happen
would be very accurate.  (And that's just a list of people I'd heard of
before -- of course, people I met here have taught me as much or more.)

>Another important factor was cost, I really don't know how I could
>afford Stanford or USC, even with grants and scholarships.

Thanks to good scholarship offers, cost was not a major issue for me.

>Of course convenience is also important, there are not too many other good
>schools close to LA.

I came all the way out to California from Massachusetts to come here. :-)

I want the University of California to be privatized (an additional thing
I doubt would have pleased 3WC too much), but I don't think this will
necessarily make it a better or more effective school; I just don't want
it to be funded by taxes.

-- 
   Seth David Schoen L&S '01 (undeclared) / schoen@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Magna dis immortalibus habenda est atque huic ipsi Iovi Statori, antiquissimo
custodi huius urbis, gratia, quod hanc tam taetram, tam horribilem tamque
infestam rei publicae pestem totiens iam effugimus.  -- Cicero, in Catilinam I