Having personally had to deal with a late drop because of a persistent Telebears glitch, I can imagine nothing more painful than losing a much-needed subsidy because one's number of units drops below the expected level due to a silent, unannounced, and completely opaque computer error.

The incentive structure for graduate students seems more reasonable. A financial penalty is applied for those who fail to remain enrolled in a certain number of courses throughout the entire semester. This keeps the enrollment system flexible for those who need it, yet ensures students have incentives not to abuse the system.

Just on a side note, another contributing factor to high drop rates here might be the cap on the number of courses students are allowed to take before the system boots them out.

Cheers,

we wish to *help* Saddam become more proactive in destroying his WMD and *faciltitate* his satisfactory moral progress. In order to *support*
Saddam in making the transiton from mass-murdering tyrant to something much more benign and positive, the Bush Administration will adhere strictly to the UN resolution. . .

Perhaps the author is angling for a job in the Administration.

Mwuhahahahaha!!!!!

Now that we have improved your undergraduate education, you need to check the buggy telebears system every day! If you don't, and if week 8 passes, you are doomed! Doomed!! DOOMED!!!

Mwuhahahahahaha!!!!

There is a double meaning (or doubly significant meaning) in the phrase in the last line: drop deadline. Berkeley is probably too humor impaired to see it.

I like our system(at least, what I understand to be our system); Drop with nothing appearing on the transcript before certain date, drop with a 'drop' appearing thereafter, and drop with nothing apeering at any time with the consent of the professor.

I was an undergraduate at Stanford in the eighties, when there was a very liberal policy on incompletes and dropping courses. You could drop an incomplete course with no record any time before graduation. I really did take my liberal arts education very seriously. For me, these policies allowed me regularly to sign up for six or seven courses (five unit classes for three units just to fit them in). Nearly working myself to death and always on the edge of disaster, some quarters I would manage to get the whole thing in for a landing, while other quarters a single project would fixate me and my entire schedule would crash and burn. I learned that Stanford was not anxious to grind the boot down, and this allowed me to grow intellectually without becoming suicidal. The week before graduation, I dropped forty quarter units of coursework (some of it my best work!), and still managed over two hundred quarter hours on my transcript. For one quarter, there is only WINTER on my transcript, and this was probably my richest quarter.

Well what do you expect?
This sort of Orwellian language is used by business all the time ("In order to better serve you, all our options have been changed..."), and by politicians ("We are not talking about PRIVATIZING Social Security, no way").

Of course this is where people like Sowell should jump in. If the ultimate cause of wealth for a society is based on its culture, what does it say when the culture is willing to tolerate this sort of lying continually? As Adam Smith said, there is a lot of ruin in a nation---but just how many years or generations does that mean?

"If the ultimate cause of wealth for a society is based on its culture,..."

It's quite clear that the cause of wealth for a society is NOT based on its "culture." This is clearly demonstrated by the former East Germany versus the former West Germany. North Korea versus South Korea. Mainland China versus Taiwan.

The main cause of wealth for a society is based on its respect for individual liberty (including, perhaps most importantly, economic freedom).

Mark; interesting. How would you account for the economic differences between white Americans and black Americans?

The main cause of wealth for a society is its ability to extract resources from other societies by force and prevent others from doing the same thing to it.

"Mark; interesting. How would you account for the economic differences between white Americans and black Americans?"

Many reasons. Slavery and segregation, of course. Certainly, the fact that black fathers have been even more absent than white fathers in the last few decades (or possibly longer) has had an effect. Probably other reasons.

"The main cause of wealth for a society is its ability to extract resources from other societies by force and prevent others from doing the same thing to it."

Complete BS. Wealth is, in general, created...not stolen.

How could you explain Taiwan versus Mainland China? Who did Taiwan "extract resources" from?

How do you explain Japan's growth, after WWII? Who did Japan "extract resources" from?

The most valuable resource, by far, is human ingenuity. That's why Russia is a poor country, and Japan and Taiwan are rich countries.