Confronting UC Challenges

Robert C. Dynes becomes president-designate of the University of California at a critical time, when, as he puts it, the 10-campus system faces a “confluence of pressures” -- unprecedented growth in student enrollment and a state budget crisis.

How to maintain students’ access to the UC system and the quality of its education? This will be a huge challenge for Dynes, whose system must take in the top 12.5% of the state’s high school graduates who apply. UC estimates that its enrollment will grow more than 40% by the next decade. But now, even as UC’s student body expands, the state is cutting its funding. And with Sacramento paralyzed by partisan battles over the budget and a gubernatorial recall campaign, UC’s financial prospects look even bleaker.

This will compound Dynes’ difficulties in tackling everything from attracting top scholars (faculty and students) to expanding capacity at the 197,000-student UC campuses. Even with the scheduled opening of UC Merced next year, educators must get creative in packing in more kids, including taking up a plan to rely more on summer school. At the same time, the quality of education can’t be compromised by growth.

Dynes’ record suggests he can surmount tough circumstances. Since becoming chancellor at UC San Diego in 1996, the jogging enthusiast, now 60, has presided over giant leaps in that campus’ prestige. That Dynes -- who juggled administrative duties and research on superconductivity -- proved to be a prodigious fund-raiser in San Diego bodes well for the UC system. It’s significant too that this doctor of physics worked for two decades in the AT&T; Bell Labs and serves on UC committees on the national laboratories, experience that will be a boon in cleaning up administrative and security scandals at the university-managed Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national labs.

As outgoing UC President Richard C. Atkinson showed with reforms in admissions and in his work for transformation of the national SAT exam, the post of UC president holds great clout. Dynes should wield his to ensure that UC’s student body best reflects California’s diverse population. UC campuses must be a haven for students and faculties, especially in protecting scholars from fear of government intrusion in the name of national security.

Dynes’ predecessors, such as Clark Kerr in the 1960s, boosted this state mightily by making UC the envy of public universities nationwide. For California’s sake, Dynes must conquer the daunting challenge of keeping UC at this educational pinnacle.