UC System Seeks Funds to Expand Summer School

Bracing for an enormous growth in enrollment, University of California officials on Thursday announced that they would ask the Legislature to pay for year-round operations so more students will enroll during the summer.

UC officials want lawmakers in Sacramento to supply an extra $50 million a year to lower student fees and offer faculty incentive pay so the nine-campus system can more than triple the number of students who enroll in summer classes by 2001.

“Year-round operations is not unusual, we did it after World War II,” UC President Richard C. Atkinson said. “But if there is no state money, we cannot do this.”

As it stands, UC summer courses--unlike courses during the regular academic year--are not subsidized by tax dollars from the Legislature. So students make up the difference with higher fees, creating a disincentive to enroll in the summer.

The announcement to seek help from the Legislature came as the UC Board of Regents began to wrestle with questions of how to make room for an additional 63,000 students over the next decade--the biggest wave of growth to hit the campuses in 30 years.

Although most faculty and many students hate the idea of year-round operations, most of the UC campuses face great constraints on growth.

UC Berkeley has a no-growth agreement with its surrounding city, and UC Santa Barbara faces limitations set by the California Coastal Commission to avoid destroying environmentally sensitive wetlands.

UCLA has to make sure it doesn’t add to traffic congestion around Westwood, and UC Santa Cruz has a housing shortage so severe that students now make camp every fall in motel rooms.

Unlike the last “tidal wave” of students in the late 1950s and ‘60s, when UC built five campuses, this time the system has only one new campus coming on line.

What’s more, UC Merced will only be able to accommodate 5,000 students, and at an enormous cost. UC officials estimate that the state will have sunk $400 million into the new campus, or roughly $80,000 for each student enrolled in 2010.

So UC officials are re-exploring year-round operations, an alternative popular among penny-pinchers in the Legislature because it’s much less expensive to sponsor additional classes in the summer than to build more classrooms and expand offerings during the traditional academic year.

Theoretically, the shift could make room for growth of 33% by spreading students in classes over the entire year instead of clustering them in nine months.

But faculty regularly devote their summers to research and writing. Students spend summers traveling, doing internships or working full-time to help carry them financially through the academic year. A portion of both groups also cherish their summer break for just that--a restful break.

To change these academic traditions, Florida has simply made it a requirement for all students at the University of Florida to take classes during at least one summer.

“That’s an idea,” Atkinson said.

But he also said the California Legislature as well as university officials have been reluctant to make summer school mandatory.

Instead, Atkinson said, he wants to create “incentives” to entice more students to continue their studies in the summer, such as reducing fees and creating more financial aid.

At UCLA, for instance, an undergraduate now pays $1,828 to take a full load of four courses (16 units) during summer school. By comparison, that same student pays $1,226 for a full load of courses during any other term--fall, winter or spring. Fees vary slightly at different campuses.

Students are not the only ones who have economic reasons to avoid summer school. Faculty get less pay to teach summer courses than at other times of the year.

In the late 1960s, then-UC President Clark Kerr tried to nudge UC Berkeley and UCLA into year-round operations as a way to provide classes needed for the baby boom generation that was flocking to college.

The experiment soon ended, though, partly because of recalcitrant faculty but mostly because students didn’t show up in the numbers that were anticipated. Ronald Reagan, who was governor at the time, pulled the plug on the program, saying it was too costly.

But as UC Assistant Vice President Sandra Smith points out, Kerr launched the experiment just as the “tidal wave” of students from the baby boom was tapering off. This time, she said, UC officials want to revive year-round classes at the very beginning of a second tidal wave of students, who are the children of baby boomers.

Furthermore, UC officials have lowered their expectations, counting on summer school as only one part of the solution. They will be happy if they can persuade 40% of full-time students to go to summer school, up from the roughly 12% of full-time students who now take classes in the summer.

Responding to a request from the Legislature, UC officials will give lawmakers a report on how they would expand summer session, as well as other ideas on how to absorb extra students. They estimate that they will have to hire an extra 3,000 faculty to teach the burgeoning UC student body, projected to grow from 147,000 students this year to 210,000 by 2010.

The idea of year-round operations has been picking up steam in Sacramento. California State University Chancellor Charles B. Reed champions the idea, as does the legislative analyst’s office.

Furthermore, Gov. Gray Davis has asked his Finance Department to explore expanding summer school and make recommendations for next year’s budget.