University of California Berkeley and San Francisco State University are two high ranked colleges. For a first time freshman or transfer student which college offers a better quality education?

According to an USNews.com article published in August on, “America’s Best Colleges 2007,” UC Berkeley ranks 21 of 124 national universities and UC Berkeley is the highest rated public university in the West.

Yet, SF State has its own accomplishments as well. According to an SF State bulletin, the school is ranked 11th in the nation as a producer of ethnic minority university graduates, second nationally in awarding master's degrees in English to minority students, number one nationally in undergraduate business degrees awarded to Asians, and among the top 10 in a guide to "Top Colleges and Universities for Hispanics."

UC Berkeley has a renowned reputation as a school taught by professionals and occasionally by graduate students. But with overpopulated classes the quality of education becomes an issue.

Nancy Duong a senior majoring in Biology at UC Berkeley, stresses the importance of teacher-to-student contact and believes that the Graduate Student Instructors (GSI's) are a huge help in the classroom.

"The teachers are not as responsive to emails and phone calls because there are so many students in one class," she said. "It is way easier to get in contact with the GSI's than it is the actual professor. They are usually the ones who have discussions."

Spartacus Rodriguez a junior majoring in political science at SF State, doesn't see much difference between UC Berkeley and SF State and views UC Berkeley as a school built on reputation and prestige and not through the education that the school provides.

"Don't get me wrong, those people that go there are smart…really smart, but what are they learning that we're not?" Rodriguez said. "School is school and both colleges offer a lot of the same courses. I mean how many different ways are there to teach a class about political science?"

Daniel Shim, a UC Berkeley alumnus who graduated in December 2002 with a degree in Business Administration, agrees that UC Berkeley was well worth the money he paid for the education that he received.

"Berkeley has quite a bit of great professors and a great curriculum," he said. "But [Berkeley] is definitely a public university in terms of facilities and availability of resources...student resources are just so widely sparse with such a high number of students."

Rodriguez's younger brother, Marco Valentino Rodriguez, who is a sophomore at SF State, chose SF State as a junior in high school after sitting in a couple of his brother's classes.

"The school itself is beautiful," Marco Rodriguez said. "It was my first time on campus and I was comfortable. From then on I knew that this was where I wanted to go."

Marco Rodriguez still hasn't decided what area he'd like to specialize in, but is fascinated by the intensity of the ethnic studies courses he's been taking.

"The ethnic studies classes are really a challenge," he said. "It's not so much that the classes are hard, but they're really deep. It's not like some math class because math stops at numbers. The stuff we learn in ethnic studies we'll take with us even beyond graduation. I mean that's what this campus is known for. We were the first to have an ethnic studies department, so we stand out. We got a lot of people that go here, but we're all so different that it doesn't feel crowded or overwhelming."

Louiza Ben Mohamed, a double major at UC Berkeley, describes the education she is receiving as far beyond comparable to the cost that she's paying and doesn't mind that her classes run out of seats.

"Our professors are Noble Prize winners and are very notable professors in their fields and you can't get that anywhere else," she said. "They're very open to our opinions and questions, but it's just most of the students will go to their GSI's because their questions get answered quicker and they are the ones we usually have the discussions with."

Marco Rodriguez sees nothing wrong with graduate students directing the classes.

"It doesn't matter what college you go to or how much you paid,"
Spartacus Rodriguez said. "It's about what you learned, what you made of it and what you've become. It's not about the name of the college or what city it's in. It's the fact that you set aside those four years and walked the line when you graduated. My diploma is just as good as anyone's."