UCI as Well Known as UCLA, Poll Finds : Academic Programs, Research Rated High in County Survey

People in Orange County know a lot about UC Irvine and think highly of its academic programs, a university-financed public opinion survey has determined.

The poll, done for UC Irvine by Foothill Associates Inc. of Manhattan Beach at a cost of $14,000, found that people in the county believe UC Irvine is as well known as UCLA and better known than USC. Orange County’s only other four-year university, Cal State Fullerton, is somewhat less known and less thought of in Orange County, according to the poll.

“About 80% of the people are knowledgeable about the (UC Irvine) campus, and that’s the equivalent of people’s knowing of a prominent shopping center such as South Coast Plaza,” said Dave Ross, vice president of Foothill Associates, in an interview Wednesday.

“The level of awareness (in Orange County) speaks well for the university,” Ross said. “There is a surprisingly high level of awareness, and I attribute the interest in the community to the kind of things the university is doing.”

Sources of Funds

Curiously, according to the report, many respondents said they think UC Irvine gets its operating money mainly from private sources rather than from state and federal government grants. Actually, the report noted, UCI gets less than 10% of its money from non-government sources.

This misconception could be beneficial, however. The report said the misconception suggests “that a fund-raising campaign (by UCI) targeted to members of the community would engender a strong showing of support on the basis that ‘my contribution counts.’ ”

The poll, made by telephone last November, was of a random sample of more than 500 Orange County residents. The polling firm said the margin of error in such a survey is plus or minus 4%.

Kathy Jones, assistant vice chancellor for communications, said Wednesday that the survey was done for three reasons: “to evaluate our communications program, to get data for our planning process and to see if our programs are accessible to the community.”

The survey found that “nearly six in 10 people surveyed said they have visited the UCI campus.” This finding shows, Ross said, that UC Irvine is not a sleepy, isolated campus but rather a well-known, well-traversed piece of land.

Research Respected

Orange County residents are familiar with the research in science and medicine going on at UCI and respect the university for it, the poll found.

UC Irvine “is noted chiefly for its academic programs,” the report said. By contrast, one-fourth or more of the respondents said they associated sports with USC and UCLA.

During the poll, interviewers mentioned eight Southern California universities, varying the order of the eight from person to person. The eight were UC Irvine, UCLA, USC (the only private school in the group), Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Long Beach, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and UC Riverside.

“Of the eight schools measured, UCLA and UC Irvine emerged as the schools with which people were most familiar,” the report says. The two campuses tied with a public recognition factor of 75.4%.

“Quite surprisingly, both USC and Cal State Fullerton received a lower recognition score among survey respondents,” the report added. USC finished third in the recognition poll, with 70.1%. Cal State Fullerton had 64.6%; Cal State Long Beach, 60%; UC San Diego, 40%; UC Santa Barbara, 39% and UC Riverside, 23.6%.

UC System Rates Higher

“Clearly in the minds of the Orange County public, schools in the University of California system are superior in academic quality to those in the California State University system,” the report says. “UC Irvine compares favorably (in the poll) with UCLA and the University of Southern California in academic quality and surpasses Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach by a wide margin, (as) those particular schools (are) perceived to offer an ‘average’ education.”

The California Master Plan of Education, which is implemented by the Legislature, is geared to making the University of California system (which has nine campuses) academically more selective than the California State University system (which has 19 campuses). By law, only the top 12% of California high school graduates are eligible for admission to the UC system. The Cal State system is open to the top 33% of the state’s high school graduates.