Dreaming Big for San Diego State (North)

San Diego State University President Thomas Day painted colorful word pictures Tuesday of a future satellite university in San Marcos that would rival the San Diego campus in size and scope by the end of the century and eventually become independent of its mother school.

An optimistic Day and Richard Rush, dean of the present SDSU North County Center, sat down with reporters to review the university’s progress in gaining a permanent North County campus.

Day predicted that state officials would purchase a 300-acre San Marcos chicken ranch for about $13 million “before the end of this year” and will allocate initial construction funds in next year’s state budget.

Still undecided is whether the new campus will be a two-year upper division school, as the present SDSU North County Center is, or the full four-year university which North County leaders have been seeking for more than 20 years.

That decision--which must be made within two years after the land is acquired--is in the hands of the California State University Board of Trustees and skeptical state legislators, who reserved the right to rule on the San Marcos school’s future after two other state universities, in areas not experiencing San Diego County’s dramatic growth rate, failed to reach projected enrollment goals.

Convinced of Need

But Day and Rush are convinced that they can fill the classrooms of a North County campus faster than the state Legislature will release funds or the builders can build.

“The Legislature will be constrained on how quickly they can allow us to build,” Day explained. But he professed confidence that money to begin work on the university’s permanent North County campus will be included in the state’s 1988-89 budget, which begins July 1.

He also stressed that the North County satellite will have the same wide curriculum choices, the same amenities and extra-curricular activities as the SDSU campus in San Diego, including dormitories and, eventually, a football team.

Day was more concerned with the problem of recruiting faculty for the new facility at a time when SDSU professors hired in the 1950s and 1960s are retiring in droves, new doctoral candidates are scarce because federal financial support has dried up and enrollments are growing, requiring every school to hire more faculty members.

The North County campus will start out as a modest 2,000-student, three-building facility--an estimated $40-million dollar expenditure, including the improvements to access roads and landscaping, Day said. But by the year 2010, he predicted, the San Marcos campus will be “as big as the main campus.”