Future Enrollment Threatened by Cuts, UCI Chancellor Says

UC Irvine Chancellor Jack W. Peltason said Friday that the campus faces “a crisis” because of state budget cuts and may have to severely slash enrollment of new students in September, 1989, unless the Legislature gives the UC system more money this summer.

Peltason declined to specify how many eligible new students might have to be turned away from UCI 14 months from now. But the chancellor noted that UC President David P. Gardner told the Board of Regents at its meeting in Los Angeles on Friday that a $64-million UC system budget cut for this fiscal year may require the UC system to roll back 1989 enrollment to 1987 levels.

At UCI, such a rollback presumably would mean a 600-student cut from 1988 levels. Peltason said UCI this September has accepted about 600 new students over September, 1987, when enrollment was 15,139.

Ironically, the enrollment-cut threat comes as UCI has already been enforcing a slow-growth policy as it waits for buildings now under construction to be completed in 1989. Peltason said that the campus limited enrollment for this September because it did not have enough buildings to accommodate more students.

“It now looks as if next year we’ll have the buildings but no money to hire the teachers to put in those buildings,” Peltason said.

Spending Request Cut

Peltason emphasized that UCI will not turn away this fall any students who have already been told they are admitted for 1988-89. “We will honor all of our previous commitments,” he said. “But a year from now, we will have to cut enrollment of new students unless the Legislature, when it meets this August, restores more money to the University of California budget.”

Because state income fell unexpectedly below projections this year, the Legislature and the governor called for reductions in all spending requests. To comply, the UC system asked for a 7% increase in state funds for this fiscal year over last year. Gardner said that percentage would barely allow the university to maintain its present service level. The final budget that the governor signed last week contains a 3.4% increase for the UC system--still about $64 million less than the amount in Gardner’s final request.

In signing the budget, Deukmejian said he would ask the Legislature to restore $37.8 million to the UC system when the legislators reconvene in August.

Gardner told the regents at their meeting at UCLA Thursday that the budget situation the system now faces is “a formula for disaster.”

To illustrate how a shortage of $64 million would affect the UC system, Gardner twice used UCI as a comparison in his talk to the regents: “I wish now to give you some idea of what a $64-million cut means to the University of California: It equals roughly one-half of the state-funded budget for the Irvine campus; it approximates the cost of adding about 12,000 students to the university (system)--roughly equal to the total undergraduate student body at the Irvine campus.”

‘One-Time’ Funds

Gardner said the system has some “one-time-only” funds it will use this year to eke by. Those funds include higher-than-expected receipts from the state lottery. But Gardner said that unless the Legislature restores money slashed from the UC budget, there will be enrollment cuts in 1989.

“We will have no choice but to hold our 1989-90 enrollments to the 1987-88 levels--in effect causing the university to depart from its historic commitment to enroll all qualified undergraduates seeking admission to the University of California,” Gardner said.

In an interview Friday, Peltason said that if enrollment cuts are made next year, it will be “the first time either UCI or the University of California has had to turn away eligible students.”

“Now we have not always been able to admit them in the same semester or same department that the students initially asked for,” he said, “but we have never had to turn them away completely.”

The budget crunch, Peltason added, may keep some eligible students from ever being admitted to UCI or to another campus in the UC system.

Some Schools Could Benefit

A systemwide enrollment reduction would, of course, force thousands of high school graduates to seek admission elsewhere. The California State University system would probably receive many more applications, but that system has budget problems of its own this year that would limit the number of students it could accommodate in 1989.

It is likely, however, that the community colleges, which have suffered decreasing enrollments since the early 1980s, would benefit from a UC cutback. Unlike the UC and Cal State systems, state funds for the community colleges are determined primarily by enrollment through a formula based on average daily attendance. Therefore, more students at the community colleges would bring those schools more money.

But Peltason noted that even before the current UC budget cuts, UCI had been urging more high school graduates to attend a community college for a year or two before coming to the Irvine campus.

UCI intensified its interest in community college transfers because the campus could not accommodate all the freshmen eligible for admission, university officials said. Last year, for the first time, UCI deliberately reduced the number of freshmen it admitted over the previous year. Only 2,449 new freshmen were admitted to UCI in September, 1987, compared to 2,975 in September, 1986. Peltason said most of the 600-student enrollment growth this year represents sophomores, juniors and seniors.

The UCI “Zero In on Transferring!” or ZOT! program began last fall. Under the program, high school students who go to community college for a year or more and maintain acceptable grades in transferable courses are guaranteed admission to UCI. Students at any of the eight community colleges in Orange County may participate in the transfer program.

In the past two years, UCI has received funds for almost $300-million worth of new buildings in virtually every part of the sprawling campus.

But, Peltason said Friday, as those buildings are completed, the university must have the money to equip them and to hire new professors. The current state budget does not allow this, he said.