Enrollment at UCI Hits New High

Enrollment at UC Irvine has grown almost 6% this year to a record 19,285 students, the biggest jump since 1986.

UCI’s student body is expected to grow by about 1,000 each year until 2010, when enrollment is projected to hit 30,000. William H. Parker, associate executive vice chancellor, attributes the increase to more applicants to the school and more naming UCI as their first choice of university.

“We’ve often described ourselves as a teenager or precocious youth,” he said. “Now we’re planning for adulthood.”

The entire UC system is expected to grow by 63,000 to 210,000 students by 2010, as the age group known as the “baby boom echo” or “tidal wave II” reaches college age. Much of the expansion will occur at UCI, UC Riverside and UC San Diego, along with a new campus in Merced, Parker said. UCLA and UC Berkeley may increase summer school offerings to pick up some of the increase.

This year’s UCI student body includes 3,700 freshmen, 17% more than last year and the highest number of first-year students in the school’s history. Parker noted that besides its record size, this year’s freshmen are also the best academically in UCI’s history.

Despite its larger student population, the opening of school this fall went smoothly, Parker said. Parking, he said, was a problem for only a few days, and nearly all students who want to live on campus were able to find room in the dorms.

The growing enrollment is part of a plan to transform UCI into a major research university. But that encompasses much more than increasing numbers.

“We have to plan for this repeat performance 10 more times,” Parker said. “We have to worry about capital construction, recruiting faculty and the types of academic programs we want as a mature university. We have to worry about keeping up morale as every year people confront expanded challenges.”

Construction is already underway, including a student recreation center, a science and technology building, a multimedia learning and research center, and an addition to the Beckman Laser Institute. New buildings in earth systems, cancer, genetics and natural sciences are in the planning stages.

“The demand for a quality UCI education has never been higher, and the campus is fortunate to have the room to grow over the next decade to enable us to meet this demand,” UCI Chancellor Ralph J. Cicerone said in a news release.

Some of the university’s biggest growth has been in engineering and computer science, where the number of undergraduate majors has increased 23% in a year. The number of graduate students in computer science increased 36%.

Since 1995, the Graduate School of Management has increased its enrollment 77%, and the Department of Education, which trains more teachers than anywhere else in the UC system, increased its student body by 54%.