Arman Sharif: Enrollment increases are irresponsible, hinder quality of education

This year’s incoming class will bring almost 1,000 more bodies to campus than last year’s 8,786 newly admitted freshmen and transfer students.

If you think this is just another drop in the big bucket of the most populated college in California, it might be a little more unnerving to know that the University of California intends to enroll another 5,000 students systemwide over the next two years.

These enrollment increases come as part of deals struck between the UC Regents and the state government. By enrolling 10,000 more California resident students between 2016 and 2019, the UC is eligible for different funding allocations. But this is a far cry from an equal tradeoff in a system that has long seen disinvestment from the state compounded with soaring enrollment. Student tuition and fees have surpassed state general funds as the primary source of the UC’s expenditures on a given student.

Even in a slightly more ideal funding situation, the regents must acknowledge that enrolling 1,000 more students at each of their flagship campuses, namely UCLA or UC Berkeley, can no longer be dealt with in the same way as enrolling 1,000 more students at the other seven undergraduate UC campuses is handled.

While the UC has projected ambitious and realistic expansion projects for campuses such as Irvine and Merced, expansion opportunities have been all but exhausted at UCLA and Cal to the extent where further enrollment increases have become irresponsible. Instead, it should focus on allocating more resources to developing the other campuses toward sustainable enrollment while still maintaining quality education for their programs.

Regardless of financial allocations, the Westwood and Berkeley campuses – seeing the highest enrollment and residing in both dense and expensive zip codes – have met a critical point in physical capacity. Although it has the highest enrollment from any university in California at more than 43,000 students total, UCLA is physically the smallest UC campus. And after more than a decade of extensive construction projects and renovations on the Hill, room conversions over the years have brought nearly three quarters of UCLA’s dorms to triple occupancy. The university additionally spent more than $3 million this summer renovating 11 classrooms, including its largest lecture hall, Moore 100, to accommodate even more seats.

A finite number of residential halls and university-owned apartments can be bulldozed and built larger before we draw the line on what is sustainable given campus space, which is increasingly little. The Hill, which doesn’t have much more room to spare for triples, has essentially completed its renovation projects and now houses almost 12,800 students in the western half of campus, according to UCLA spokesperson Ricardo Vazquez. For the fourth time in recent years, the university is beginning the planning process for constructing a new university-owned apartment with more beds. There is only so much longer until we reach 100 percent triple occupancy, start adding quads or rebuild every apartment.

There are ways to demand a curb on enrollment before irreversible overcrowding has already set in. Students can address the issue in public comment right at the negotiation table, at the bimonthly regents meetings in San Francisco, as well as in student lobbying trips to Sacramento. You can also let local Los Angeles assemblymen or legislators from your hometown know how your personal experiences are affected by these enrollment increases this year – your living situation, repeated difficulty in getting necessary classes, cuts in resources to your clubs, consistently getting denied a parking pass – in order to put pressure on the governor and regents to shunt additional resources to other campuses for enrollment.

Before we carry forward with these next two years, students and faculty need to provide clear feedback during this current year. UCLA and other campuses are directly affected in these negotiations with the state, and the regents can’t represent us if they’re not in touch with either overburdened administrators or students on our campuses.

While the move to enroll more California residents is in line with the UC’s mission to educate Californians, and has been aggressively pursued in order to combat the University’s recent reputation of forsaking California residents, it’s worth noting that these resident students are no longer being backed by their state’s dollars as they used to be. To make up for this financial burden, a battery of questionable tactics has been imposed onto out-of-state and international students – tuition triple that of residents, cuts to all need-based financial aid and annual tuition hikes up to 8 percent.

There are fundamentally good intentions behind these enrollment increases. More people are receiving a UC education, what many of us have come to love as a life-changing opportunity. This flood of bachelor’s degrees moves us closer to a more employable and educated California, and exemplifies an accessible public university system. The UC has retained its prestige, toughing it out through an intense recession, state budget cuts and prior enrollment hikes.

This year is no longer the time to postpone recognizing our university’s inevitable threshold. An arms race of scrambling to dig up resources in the face of adding students is not sustainable. Plummeting funding and skyrocketing enrollment only hinder these broader goals and stellar quality of education that the state allegedly seeks to achieve. Scrunching seats or beds together, constantly hiring TAs, or revamping every housing building on UCLA property all contribute to a series of what have been Band-Aid solutions.