UC Campus Urged for San Joaquin Valley : Local Leaders Seek University for Economic Boost, Access to Education

UC Los Banos? UC Visalia? UC Fresno?

Those campuses exist only in the minds of local boosters now. But a University of California campus should be built during the next decade in one of those San Joaquin Valley communities to ensure better access to higher education and help the local economy, civic and business leaders told a legislative hearing panel Friday.

Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) agreed that central California has a strong case for being first in line if and when a new campus is constructed. The University of California, which has nine campuses, is looking at as many as three more by the year 2005 to cope with an expected 40% enrollment increase.

Lower Enrollment

“I’m not here to say a UC campus is a panacea for all the problems of a region,” said Hayden, chairman of the Assembly subcommittee on higher education. “But certainly the absence of a UC campus is a symptom that a region’s brain power and talent have been neglected and under-utilized.”

Hayden’s panel came to Fresno Friday to listen to officials from five areas in the valley plead for a new university and the intellectual and economic benefits that come with it. Many witnesses stressed that the long distances to existing UC campuses discourage young people from the state’s agricultural heartland from attending. For example, 4.8% of high school graduates in the city of Fresno enroll at a UC campus, compared to 7.5% statewide. The UC attendance rate in the more rural areas of the valley is as low as 2%.

“We believe the people of this region and this county deserve the same educational opportunities as Californians do in other parts of the state,” Jed Christensen, Fresno County assistant administrative officer, told the panel. Similar statements--and explanations of how a campus could bring jobs and new technologies to an area--were made by representatives of Los Banos, the Stanislaus-Tuolumne region, Visalia and the Madera area.

Any UC expansion, however, will be extremely expensive and is sure to face close scrutiny in the Legislature. The proposed expansion will be tied to plans of the California State University system, which has begun work on a 20th campus in San Marcos in northern San Diego County and wants to build as many as five others around the state. The total cost of the entire UC and Cal State wish list could run as high as $7 billion, Hayden said.

The chances for at least one new UC campus, Hayden said, are good. But he and other assemblymen at the hearing were careful not to tip their hat toward any specific site in or out of the San Joaquin Valley. Additional hearings will be held elsewhere in California. Bruce Hamlett, a top analyst for the California Postsecondary Education Commission, which is preparing a report for the Legislature on all the expansion plans, said it costs four times as much to build a UC campus as it does a community college. Before any expansions are approved, he said, more effort should be made to educate students at community colleges for two years and then have them transfer to a UC or a Cal State.

Search for Sites

“The bottom line is this,” Hamlett said. “While the (education) segments’ plans individually appear reasonable, when taken together and placed in a statewide context they all seem to be planning for more than they will need--perhaps to ensure that they will get what they actually do need in the political process.”

Jack Scott, superintendent-president of Pasadena City College, said he does not oppose another UC campus, but he urged the assemblymen to “think first about strengthening and expanding” the two-year colleges.

“I think there are a lot of other ways to build up a small town’s economy that are not as costly to the taxpayers” as building a university, he said after the hearing.

UC Vice President William Baker said that as many as 60 possible sites for a new campus will be identified by October. After further studies, the list will be cut to 15 by January and eight by next July. A final choice on one to three sites will take at least another year, Baker said.

Assemblymen Rusty Areias (D-Los Banos) and Jim Costa (D-Fresno) expressed interest in converting the Cal State campuses in Fresno, Bakersfield or Stanislaus into UC campuses, as was done with the state college in Santa Barbara in the 1960s. Such a change would give the schools capacity for more scholarly research and the ability to award Ph.Ds and professional degrees. Officials from the UC and Cal State systems said that they would consider such conversions but that there could be bureaucratic and faculty problems.

The last major UC expansion was in the mid-1960s with the openings of the San Diego, Santa Cruz and Irvine campuses. UC expects its enrollment to jump from 154,000 now to 217,000 over the next 16 years.

Over the same time period, Cal State projects that its enrollment will grow from 360,00 to 540,00. Ventura is among the locations the Cal State system is looking at for a new campus.