UCLA plans for increase in upper division enrollment

In the face of growing enrollment and limited capacity, UCLA officials will use extra funds next year to create more upper division courses for the largest class in its history.

For the 2011-12 school year, UCLA enrolled its biggest freshman class ever – around 5,800 new students, about 1,200 more than the year before.

That year, UCLA administrators allocated $16 million in extra funding so departments could hire more faculty members to teach lower division courses for the large class, said Patricia Turner, dean and vice provost for undergraduate education. Still, class sizes in some departments had to be pushed beyond their previous limits despite the additional funding.

Officials are now preparing for the 2013-14 school year, when the same students will become third-years and will need to take upper division courses. UCLA may need to provide about 9,000 more seats in upper division classes this upcoming year, assuming students will take nine to ten courses on average during the year, said Bob Cox, manager of UCLA’s Office of Analysis and Information Management.

The executive vice chancellor’s office asked academic departments to submit requests for additional funding by last week, Turner said.

Several administrators and professors, however, said larger enrollment is becoming the norm and that departments have already had to find ways to accommodate growing numbers of students.

“Over-enrollments … (are) going to be a recurring thing,” said Troy Carter, chair of the UCLA Academic Senate Undergraduate Council. “We’ve got to think about how to do this in a way that’s not just a one-time fix.”

Two years ago, the UCLA administration gave extra funding to support certain general education and entry-level courses to accommodate the large freshman class, including entry-level math, chemistry, life science and writing classes, Cox said.

Upper division classes, on the other hand, are more specialized and vary according to demand in each department, Carter said. Thus, the UCLA administration will depend on departments for accurate estimates of projected growth in their classes.

To ease next year’s population pressure at UCLA, university officials plan to reduce the number of accepted transfer students next year by about 300 students, said Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, associate vice chancellor for enrollment management, in an email. The reduction would bring UCLA’s number of transfer students closer to its historical average, she added.

The executive vice chancellor’s office will use funds from UCLA’s general fund pool – which includes tuition and state revenue – to hire more temporary faculty and teaching assistants next year, Turner said. Officials will not know the exact amount of funds to allocate until they analyze the departments’ requests.

Turner said UCLA will have to use at least as much as the $16 million it spent in 2011-12 – or possibly more – next year to hire more temporary faculty and teaching assistants.

The executive vice chancellor’s office will distribute funds based on course demand, Turner added. Not every department may get all the funding it needs.

“At this point it’s hard to say how much is left and how much departments will be asked to do without additional resources,” Cox said. “The campus is really counting on the departments this year to be good managers of their programs.”

Some departments, like electrical engineering and ecology and evolutionary biology, have had past success in getting all the funding they requested for more faculty and teaching assistants. But others, like global studies, have not had the same success.

“That’s the name of the game. Everyone asks for more and hopes not to get less,” said Oscar Stafsudd, electrical engineering professor and vice chair for undergraduate affairs.

Departments in both cases, however, have recently resorted to cutting classes, increasing course loads for professors or increasing class sizes to accommodate more demand for their major programs. Many departments, including political science, mathematics and statistics said they will ask UCLA administration for more funds to hire temporary faculty and teaching assistants next year.

“It’s (the UCLA administration’s) intention to fund to the greatest extent possible, but this is a tough fiscal climate,” Turner said. “We’re hoping not to have a selection process whereby departments would lose (funds).”

Sherwin Tavakol, a second-year biochemistry student, said he hopes departments will increase the number of courses rather than increase class sizes. He said he does not like waiting in long lines for office hours in his classes, and some of his teaching assistants do not finish covering class material because many students need help.

Some students, on the other hand, said larger class sizes do not matter to them as much.

“I’d rather have a larger class than not (be) able to take it,” said Steven St. Germain, a second-year environmental science student.

Cox said UCLA’s ability to provide more spots for students is not strictly concerned with funds or faculty, but also with physical space.

The classes UCLA can offer are limited by the number and size of lecture halls on campus, the largest of which has around 400 seats, said Barney Schlinger, physiological sciences professor.

“Part of what the departments need to look at is whether they are reaching limits that no amount of additional resources could really help them to get by,” Cox said. “We’re testing limits here.”

To teach more students with UCLA’s limited amount of space, UCLA officials are looking at making the summer sessions more like a regular quarter, Carter said.

This could mean anything from adding more summer courses to incorporating summer as another regular quarter in the school year, he said.

“If we’re forcing students to take summer (courses) in order to complete their degree in a timely fashion, (that) seems to be a problem,” Carter said.

Many departments have already been increasing their summer offerings, not just to give students more chances to complete their requirements, but also to earn more revenue.

For instance, the global studies department depends on UCLA’s summer travel study programs for additional revenue, though its Beijing program has yet to break even, said Sandy Valdivieso, academic counselor for global studies and international development studies.

Several students said summer classes were helpful to them in completing their requirements. But some, like second-year English student Chloe Lew, said it is not fair to expect students to pay thousands of dollars more for summer school when academic year tuition is already high.

“I don’t think we can blame anyone at this point though,” Lew said. “It’s just something we have to deal with.”

UCLA may continue to see larger enrollment sizes, as it looks to accept more nonresident students than before to help offset the impact of budget cuts in recent years, Cox said.

“It’s not an accident that UCLA is growing now,” he said. “We’re (expanding) because we need to and we think we can handle it.”