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Prop 13 (Property tax revolt) wreaked havoc on the UC, Cal State, and Community College systems. Tuition started to creep up at Berkeley shortly after I starte

Prop 13 (Property tax revolt) wreaked havoc on the UC, Cal State, and Community College systems. Tuition started to creep up at Berkeley shortly after I started a couple of years after the vote but it was absolutely nothing like it is today. Also, the competition to get in to UC schools is crazy. No way in hell I could get in were I to apply today with my high school grades, test scores, and extracurriculars.

alephnerd 2y ago
Prop 13 wasn't the issue for us younger applicants (graduated HS in the last 20 years) - it's the austerity measures that were in place across California from 2009-2013. That prevented UCs and CSUs from being able to dynamically expand STEM and Business faculty headcount. That said, even Ivy League programs have fallen into the same trap - CS@Harvard is bursting at the seams and imo, the course quality is middling compared to UCs, UT, UIUC, UW, MIT, CMU, GT, etc, and recruiting isn't that different between a top public CS program and Ivies (the only difference is VC Analyst recruiting, but that's a horrible career that expires in 2-3 years. Only MBAs or experienced EMs/PMs/Founders or a handful of IB Analysts break into partner track [associate and above] roles).
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
  I think that was another of many blows to the head and gonads that the California public Universities have suffered. Prop 13 forced the state schools to adopt a private school model. Way back when, there was a tacit agreement that the public schools wouldn't tap private sources and in return, the private schools would be generally supportive of the state schools with respect to Sacramento. That all went by the boards and everyone is now selling off chunks of schools to private entities. In the early 1990s, the UC schools had to offer buyouts/retirements and a lot of very senior faculty left. Many were still in their prime and went to other Universities. Nasty brain drain. I'll defer to your assessment of CS programs. I studied a science but not computer science. In my experience, an Ivy league name is worth a huge amount in prestige. Edit: Also, the contacts one makes at an Ivy or a Stanford are leagues ahead of what's available at a public school.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > I'll defer to your assessment of CS programs. I studied a science but not computer science. In my experience, an Ivy league name is worth a huge amount in prestige. Fair enough! I can't speak for the sciences - only Engineering/CS. CS/Eng is much more driven by defense and private sector funding, which is biased towards National Labs, which are overwhelmingly managed by public universities. At the federal level, the DoD and DoE has held this bias for decades due to a mix of pork barrel politicking as well as the fact that public university graduates tend to be overrepresented in career civil service roles. I personally know a couple SES types who purposely redirected CHIPS and IRA funding to flagship universites due to a bit of a grudge against the Private School IVorY tower (though lack of STEM research capacity also played a role) > Also, the contacts one makes at an Ivy or a Stanford are leagues ahead of what's available at a public school. As someone who attended an Ivy/Ivy Adjacent, I highly disagree, at least in Eng (and Eng adjacent roles like PM/EM/Sales/Entrepreneaurship and even VC to a certain extent) Middle management turned upper management in most tech companies tended to attend flagship publics in the West Coast/TX/Midwest plus some elite privates like Stanford/Claremont Colleges/USC/CMU, which impacts recruiting as well. Ime, other than Penn and Cornell, Harvard and other Ivies are not as well represented compared to a program like EECS@Cal, CS@UT, CS@UW, etc. Most upper level Ivy grads I end up meeting tend to have done grad school at an Ivy (MBA@Wharton/HBS/CBS/Johnson) but undergrad at a public university either domestically (state flagships) or abroad (IIT D/K/B/M to Wharton pipeline) Stanford and MIT are a different story, but they also have much more rigorious admissions and student body. In addition, a lot of my professional (not age - precocious little scamp ain't I [0]) peers in Eng/Sales/VC leadership are at the "sending kids to college" stage, and most of them are sending their kids to flagship public and private engineering programs - not Ivies. This has a downstream impact on the network, as parents will help their kids and their kids friends get jobs and referrals. I personally know a Tech Billionare who sent their kids to a top public CS program despite having the option to send them to MIT or Harvard due to the larger network of mid-level managers turned founders/VCs from that school. And as you can probably tell from this conversation, I'm probably not in favor of giving a leg up to hiring or funding Ivy/Ivy Adjacent graduates, and I am in a position to make that choice. There are plenty of others like me. Tl;Dr - the tech industry has made upward mobility easier by overemphasizing work experience over Ivy/Private pedigree to a certain extent. [0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uofjc65LEJM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uofjc65LEJM
jmyeet 2y ago
Prop 13 is such a sad story of the narrow self-interest people vote and act with. Like it's the reason Disney's tax rate for their park in Anaheim was set in the 1960s and basically hasn't moved. Does that sound like a good idea? But no, all people see is "my property taxes won't go up (as much)" It just keeps getting worse too because you can inherit a property on a stepped-up basis (meaning the cost gets reset to market value for capital gains tax purposes should you then sell it) but you can inherit your parents' advantageous property tax rate. This problem is so bad that a minimal claw back of Prop 13 benefits (Prop 19), which would limit you to only inheriting ONE beneficial tax rate, barely passed. Are half of CA voters really inheriting multiple properties with tax rates set in the 70s? Of course not. But people vote agains this kind of thing anyway. The other argument for Prop 13 is kicking seniors out of their houses when they're on a fixed income. I mean, do you really still need that 5 bedroom house in Los Altos whhen you're a retired couple? Of course not, but you'll happily pass it onto your children with no taxes and the low property tax rate if you can. If you're really concerned about seniors, you can carve out an exception just for them without giving an exception to everyone (including Disney). This is actually something that Texas handles better. You can stay in your house and defer your property taxes until you die. So there's an incentive to downsize and you're not priced out of your house if you really want to stay. And for the longest time (only up until the last 5-10 years), Texas managed to have relatively good control on house prices. It's why it was so popular to move to Texas. But national trends finally caught up with Texas too. Imagine what could've been funded if Prop 13 never passed. Infrastructure, education, health care, whatever.
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
  I'm now sensitized to the senior citizen housing issue now that I'm approaching that age. I can't downsize - no place to go to. Lots of people are nominally leaving California to be just outside of it in Nevada (Reno, Tahoe, LV) but I don't want to do that. I don't know what it would have been like had Prop 13 not passed of course.

alephnerd 2y ago

Prop 13 wasn't the issue for us younger applicants (graduated HS in the last 20 years) - it's the austerity measures that were in place across California from 2009-2013. That prevented UCs and CSUs from being able to dynamically expand STEM and Business faculty headcount. That said, even Ivy League programs have fallen into the same trap - CS@Harvard is bursting at the seams and imo, the course quality is middling compared to UCs, UT, UIUC, UW, MIT, CMU, GT, etc, and recruiting isn't that different between a top public CS program and Ivies (the only difference is VC Analyst recruiting, but that's a horrible career that expires in 2-3 years. Only MBAs or experienced EMs/PMs/Founders or a handful of IB Analysts break into partner track [associate and above] roles).

OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
I think that was another of many blows to the head and gonads that the California public Universities have suffered. Prop 13 forced the state schools to adopt a private school model. Way back when, there was a tacit agreement that the public schools wouldn't tap private sources and in return, the private schools would be generally supportive of the state schools with respect to Sacramento. That all went by the boards and everyone is now selling off chunks of schools to private entities. In the early 1990s, the UC schools had to offer buyouts/retirements and a lot of very senior faculty left. Many were still in their prime and went to other Universities. Nasty brain drain. I'll defer to your assessment of CS programs. I studied a science but not computer science. In my experience, an Ivy league name is worth a huge amount in prestige. Edit: Also, the contacts one makes at an Ivy or a Stanford are leagues ahead of what's available at a public school.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > I'll defer to your assessment of CS programs. I studied a science but not computer science. In my experience, an Ivy league name is worth a huge amount in prestige. Fair enough! I can't speak for the sciences - only Engineering/CS. CS/Eng is much more driven by defense and private sector funding, which is biased towards National Labs, which are overwhelmingly managed by public universities. At the federal level, the DoD and DoE has held this bias for decades due to a mix of pork barrel politicking as well as the fact that public university graduates tend to be overrepresented in career civil service roles. I personally know a couple SES types who purposely redirected CHIPS and IRA funding to flagship universites due to a bit of a grudge against the Private School IVorY tower (though lack of STEM research capacity also played a role) > Also, the contacts one makes at an Ivy or a Stanford are leagues ahead of what's available at a public school. As someone who attended an Ivy/Ivy Adjacent, I highly disagree, at least in Eng (and Eng adjacent roles like PM/EM/Sales/Entrepreneaurship and even VC to a certain extent) Middle management turned upper management in most tech companies tended to attend flagship publics in the West Coast/TX/Midwest plus some elite privates like Stanford/Claremont Colleges/USC/CMU, which impacts recruiting as well. Ime, other than Penn and Cornell, Harvard and other Ivies are not as well represented compared to a program like EECS@Cal, CS@UT, CS@UW, etc. Most upper level Ivy grads I end up meeting tend to have done grad school at an Ivy (MBA@Wharton/HBS/CBS/Johnson) but undergrad at a public university either domestically (state flagships) or abroad (IIT D/K/B/M to Wharton pipeline) Stanford and MIT are a different story, but they also have much more rigorious admissions and student body. In addition, a lot of my professional (not age - precocious little scamp ain't I [0]) peers in Eng/Sales/VC leadership are at the "sending kids to college" stage, and most of them are sending their kids to flagship public and private engineering programs - not Ivies. This has a downstream impact on the network, as parents will help their kids and their kids friends get jobs and referrals. I personally know a Tech Billionare who sent their kids to a top public CS program despite having the option to send them to MIT or Harvard due to the larger network of mid-level managers turned founders/VCs from that school. And as you can probably tell from this conversation, I'm probably not in favor of giving a leg up to hiring or funding Ivy/Ivy Adjacent graduates, and I am in a position to make that choice. There are plenty of others like me. Tl;Dr - the tech industry has made upward mobility easier by overemphasizing work experience over Ivy/Private pedigree to a certain extent. [0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uofjc65LEJM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uofjc65LEJM

jmyeet 2y ago

Prop 13 is such a sad story of the narrow self-interest people vote and act with. Like it's the reason Disney's tax rate for their park in Anaheim was set in the 1960s and basically hasn't moved. Does that sound like a good idea? But no, all people see is "my property taxes won't go up (as much)" It just keeps getting worse too because you can inherit a property on a stepped-up basis (meaning the cost gets reset to market value for capital gains tax purposes should you then sell it) but you can inherit your parents' advantageous property tax rate. This problem is so bad that a minimal claw back of Prop 13 benefits (Prop 19), which would limit you to only inheriting ONE beneficial tax rate, barely passed. Are half of CA voters really inheriting multiple properties with tax rates set in the 70s? Of course not. But people vote agains this kind of thing anyway. The other argument for Prop 13 is kicking seniors out of their houses when they're on a fixed income. I mean, do you really still need that 5 bedroom house in Los Altos whhen you're a retired couple? Of course not, but you'll happily pass it onto your children with no taxes and the low property tax rate if you can. If you're really concerned about seniors, you can carve out an exception just for them without giving an exception to everyone (including Disney). This is actually something that Texas handles better. You can stay in your house and defer your property taxes until you die. So there's an incentive to downsize and you're not priced out of your house if you really want to stay. And for the longest time (only up until the last 5-10 years), Texas managed to have relatively good control on house prices. It's why it was so popular to move to Texas. But national trends finally caught up with Texas too. Imagine what could've been funded if Prop 13 never passed. Infrastructure, education, health care, whatever.

OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
I'm now sensitized to the senior citizen housing issue now that I'm approaching that age. I can't downsize - no place to go to. Lots of people are nominally leaving California to be just outside of it in Nevada (Reno, Tahoe, LV) but I don't want to do that. I don't know what it would have been like had Prop 13 not passed of course.