The Campuses and the Future

Until it is time to point to a map and say that’s where the new University of California campus will go, the debate over how to handle sharp increases in enrollment will likely continue to be polite and well-modulated. This, then, is a good time to spell out the issues that involve more than just building buildings.

They include concerns that more women and minorities be hired for teaching jobs and that minorities be better represented in the student bodies. Community colleges must be improved so that they become more attractive to academically oriented students. The student-aid program must be expanded so that private colleges can continue to educate a substantial share of California students. And there should be thorough discussion of plans to increase the proportion of graduate students at UC campuses.

Californians are knocking on college doors in record numbers. Even if nothing is done to cut high-school dropout rates, California will have 325,000 high-school graduates by the turn of the century--40% more than this year. The UC system projects that by 2005 the number of students eligible for admission will grow by 63,000. California State University predicts that its full-time enrollment will increase by 60,000--more than enough to fill three campuses the size of San Francisco State. Community-college enrollment should grow by 31% over about the same time.

Independent colleges and universities now admit nearly 30,000 California residents a year who are eligible for UC. If the independents were to start turning them away because, for example, student costs outstripped scholarship aid, many would turn to the UC system.

The UC and Cal State trustees have approved long-range planning for expansion. Community colleges are preparing to put into effect changes passed by the Legislature last year that should improve the rate of students transferring to four-year institutions. The California Postsecondary Education Commission is taking a broad look at the issues involved in growth. And Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), who chairs the subcommittee on higher education, has held the first in a series of hearings on expansion questions.

One question that has been raised is how best to make the UC and CSU faculties more diverse.UC projects that it must nearly double its rate of recruitment from 380 to 700 faculty members a year for the next 16 years to handle increasing enrollments and replace retiring professors. Cal State may need as many as 11,000 new faculty members in that same period. Many of these new faculty members can come from California universities--thus the importance of having more women and minorities in the pool of graduate students as well.

Graduate schools obviously must grow. But, as they do, planners also must think about whether the state can afford to allow each campus to offer a broad range of programs or whether it should require more specialization.

Talking about expansion is one thing; financing it is another. For example, the student-aid program must keep growing to handle increased demand. The governor’s budget provides money to sustain the growth approved last year, but no more. The pressures to expand add to the urgency of relaxing the so-called Gann limit on state spending. To pay for construction of new campuses, the state also must add substantially to its bonded indebtedness.

Planners must start ranking all of these concerns in order to provide a starting place for debating and deciding about how money will be allocated as it becomes available. The decisions will leave their mark on life in California for decades to come.