At What Point Does Gateway Become Just the “New Engineering Building” for CDSS Students?
Gateway and CDSS were presented as a shared ecosystem for Computing, Data Science, Statistics, and AI.
But right now, many AI related courses taught inside Gateway still heavily prioritize Engineering and L&S CS students, while many Data Science students within CDSS still have little or even no enrollment access.
This is especially frustrating because Data Science is now one of Berkeley’s largest majors, representing roughly 6–7% of the undergraduate population, and is one of the fields most closely connected to AI, machine learning, and modern computing.
At the same time, students from many other engineering majors are still able to enroll in these courses and come into “our building” to take “our courses,” while many CDSS students themselves continue facing major enrollment restrictions.
If even CDSS students themselves cannot meaningfully access many of the core AI and computing courses taught within Gateway, then it becomes difficult to understand what CDSS is truly supposed to represent.
From a student perspective, if the current enrollment structure continues like this, then perhaps Gateway should simply be renamed the “New Engineering Building,” because many students within CDSS still do not feel meaningfully included in the ecosystem the university promoted.
I completely understand historical EECS enrollment limitations and capacity constraints, and this is not about attacking EECS or CS students. However, I genuinely believe the current policies no longer fully match the vision and purpose behind CDSS and Gateway.
I have already emailed several professors, advisors, and administrators regarding this issue. If other DS/CDSS students feel similarly, I sincerely hope more students will also respectfully share feedback with the university so this issue can be seriously discussed in the future.