Growing pains

Growth.

In the next ten years, the University of California will either
accommodate it or be crippled by it.

The university is expecting an influx of 50,000 additional
students by 2010, pulling the systemwide enrollment from 165,000
this year to 217,000.

The increase poses endless questions: Where will students live,
who will teach them, and who are they?

“(Growth) has profound implications on higher education
for this state,” said UC President Richard Atkinson at the UC
Regents meeting in September.

“Profound implications” means housing thousands of
additional students on each campus in the next eight years, hiring
and retaining enough faculty to teach them, guaranteeing enough
classrooms and parking to serve them, and securing enough money
from the state to fund these efforts.

Dubbed Tidal Wave II by former UC president Clark Kerr, the
sudden increase is made up of the children of the the baby boom
generation. Installing an enrollment cap to remedy the overcrowding
is difficult because by law, the university must accept the top
12.5 percent of high school graduates ““ regardless of how
large that number is.

Charged with setting policy and managing the university’s
operations, the UC Regents began planning in the late 1990s for a
massive enrollment surge.

“I don’t want to get bogged down in a short-term
solution,” said Regent Judith Hopkinson.

Partially in response to the regents’ push for long-term
planning, UC officials recently briefed the board on the
university’s outlook for the next twenty years, and their
findings revealed that growth will hit the UC hard.

Some schools, like UC Irvine and UC San Diego, will add more
than 9,000 students to their campuses by 2010. UCLA only estimates
a 13 percent enrollment increase, representing an additional 3,700
full-time equivalent students.

And, as the university is facing its biggest need for faculty,
the average faculty salaries are falling below the market average.
Last year, resigning faculty cited low pay as the top reason for
their departure.

However, said UC press aide Hanan Eisenman, the UC sees these
findings as challenges ““ not as threats.

To alleviate its growing pains, the UC has already planned to
enroll more students at off-campus locations (such as abroad
programs), decrease the time to graduation for undergraduates by
implementing minimum progress requirements, and expand summer
sessions.

If completed by 2004 as planned, the university’s tenth
campus at Merced will help relieve the strain by accommodating
5,000 students by 2010.

Still, the implications are huge.

In a recruiting blitz, the university is expecting to hire more
than 6,500 faculty by 2010-11. Because of the length of time
tenured faculty remain at the university, this hiring will
determine the face of teaching for the next several decades.

The face of the student body will also change. As
California’s demographics show the state is moving toward a
future without a racial majority, the impact of growth on
admissions policy and outreach planning will be dramatic.

And, revealing the university’s reputation as a world-wide
leader in research could be in danger. University officials have
expressed concern the name of the UC will suffer if it cannot
successfully handle the surge.

Administrators agree there is no way out.

“We shouldn’t fool ourselves thinking that something
is going to drop enrollment. We shouldn’t
underestimate,” said UC Budget Vice President Larry
Hershman.

In the next decade, growth will test the university’s
viability and foresight ““ a test it must pass if it intends
to remain academically competitive.