UC Lowers Forecast of Enrollment ‘Tidal Wave’ : Education: University says surge in students expected by 2005 will be smaller and later than earlier predicted. Some outside analysts question the new figures.

The surge in undergraduate enrollment dubbed “Tidal Wave II” is coming, University of California statisticians predict, but it’s going to be a little late and will pack less of a wallop than previously expected for UC.

In a presentation to the UC Board of Regents last week, university officials said the huge increase in the number of California high school graduates once expected by the year 2005 will not occur until 2010. Moreover, analysts said, the fraction of those young people who choose to attend UC will be smaller than previously thought, in part because many will be the first in their families to attend college, and may go to community colleges or California State University campuses instead.

These new projections appear to give some welcome breathing room to the nine-campus UC system, which, like other sectors of public education, is smarting from years of funding cuts.

But some independent analysts are challenging UC’s latest numbers and the assumptions upon which they are based. UC statisticians are underestimating, these analysts say. Some even think they’re doing it on purpose.

“How does the university that five years ago was saying, ‘We need three more campuses,’ now say this?” asked Patrick M. Callan, executive director of the California Higher Education Policy Center.

“How do you explain that when it looks like the state has money for expansion and growth, the [enrollment] projections are high and when the state has not much money, the projections are low? Is that a coincidence? That’s the kind of question skeptics are going to ask.”

Skepticism has been fueled by the fact that UC’s new enrollment projections are significantly lower than the university had predicted seven years before. They also are out of sync with higher predictions by three other forecasters.

In 1988, UC analysts predicted a 37% increase in undergraduate enrollment by 2005, which would have brought the total number of undergraduates to 158,600. UC analysts now predict that number will reach only 134,000 by 2005--up just 14,000 from today’s enrollment numbers.

Other analysts’ projections are higher. The California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) predicts that undergraduate enrollment will reach 153,000 in 2005. The state Department of Finance puts the number at 148,500. And Michael A. Shires, who studied state enrollment demand for a Rand Graduate School doctorate, estimates a total of 147,000 undergraduates.

Those predictions are based on a variety of factors, including population, the patterns of migration into and out of the state and the percentage of high school graduates who have enrolled at UC in the past.

Everyone acknowledges that statistical projection is not a perfect science and that some discrepancies are to be expected. But some suggest that UC officials may have adjusted their predictions downward because they fear that massive enrollment growth will force them to divert resources to preserve access when they would rather focus on maintaining academic quality.

“You want to guess in whatever direction supports your argument,” said Barry Munitz, the chancellor of California State University, who believes that the CPEC numbers are more realistic than UC’s. At UC, he added, “They have no incentive to grow. The state isn’t funding per enrollment anymore.”

In a presentation before the Board of Regents last week, UC Assistant Vice President Sandra Smith portrayed the new projections as merely a working estimate. And she defended the way the university has come to its conclusions.

The major difference between UC’s methodology and that of other analysts is that UC assumes that the proportion of high school graduates who choose to attend its campuses--now about 8.3%--will remain constant over the next several years. The CPEC and the state Department of Finance, by contrast, believe that today’s so-called “participation rate” is artificially depressed because of the recession.

“Because the state of California has been short of money over the past four or five years, enrollment has been artificially held down,” said William L. Storey, chief policy analyst at CPEC, who recalled that nearly 10% of the state’s high school graduates decided to attend UC schools during the 1980s. “We think they’re going to return to where they were.”

UC’s enrollment estimates also factor in changing demographics, noting that during the last decade California has gained a higher proportion of poor families and high school graduates whose parents did not attend college.

“In the past, it has been more typical for ‘first-generation’ college students to choose vocationally oriented college programs that are closer to home,” said a report on enrollment growth prepared this month for the regents. “If this pattern were to hold true for the next decade, we could expect to see a softening of demand for UC.”

Callan of the Higher Education Policy Center says he is troubled by that assumption.

“It’s true that most go to community colleges and Cal State,” he said. “But there is no evidence that academically high-quality first-generation students don’t try as hard as anyone else to get into UC.”

Moreover, Callan worries that low enrollment projections can become self-fulfilling prophesies. After all, he points out, there are many things that the university can do that affect enrollment.

“If they raise tuition and make it more expensive to go, if they reduce outreach efforts, there surely will be fewer [students],” he said. “Student demand is something of a function of supply.”

During the regents’ discussion of enrollment last week, UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Karl S. Pister made the same observation. “There’s a very important resource variable: the cost of education and what happens to federal and state financial aid,” he said. “None of these projections can be made honestly without looking at cost.”

UC President Jack W. Peltason, meanwhile, flatly rejected the suggestion that the enrollment numbers have been cooked to reduce pressure on the university.

“I was as surprised as anybody when they brought me the projections for the first time and said the ‘Tidal Wave’ is not going to be quite as big and quite as soon. [I said], ‘What happened?’ ” he recalled in an interview.

“The Board of Regents doesn’t call me into session and say, ‘Go give us lower numbers.’ I don’t call up the analysts and say, ‘Give us lower numbers.’ . . . You make the best prediction you can, and the one thing you know is: You’re going to have to revise it.”