The Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine, has been authorized by the UC system to nearly double its full-time MBA enrollment, a boost to UCI’s on-going effort to increase the national reputation of its business school.
The action also provides impetus to GSM’s ambitious plans for a campus and curriculum expansion, at least part of which will have to be undertaken before more students can be added. GSM dean David Blake said he anticipates it would take several years before the MBA program is ready to grow beyond its current student numbers.
Blake greeted the decision by UC President Richard Atkinson as “exciting news.”
“I suspect, though do not know, that the economic importance and vitality of Southern California and especially Orange and San Diego counties helped,” Blake said. “I also would imagine that the strength of GSM’s strategic focus on information, technology, and innovation,the driving forces behind the state’s economic expansion,were important, as well as the growing national stature of the school.”
The authorization is key because it determines the level of state funding. The UC subsidy is based on a formula that provides roughly $7,500 a year per authorized full-time student. UCI is authorized for 288 full-time MBAs (it has 310 enrolled). The new authorization increases the number to 570. By comparison, UCLA’s business school currently has about 650 full-time MBAs and Berkeley about 500.
But the increased authorization also points out the challenge faced not only by GSM but also by UCI generally as the university moves forward with campus expansion programs designed to accommodate a projected 5% annual growth in its student body. UCI is expected to add 11,900 students over the next 10 years, the largest growth among the nine campuses in the UC system. An estimated $1.5 billion in construction will be needed to accommodate that growth, requiring stepped-up levels of private contributions to UCI, university officials said.
Blake said, “GSM needs to build substantial new space to house the increased size of the student body and additional faculty and to provide a facility that is tailor-made for a school that is committed to educating students to innovate, lead and build business in a technology-driven society. We see a six- to seven-year horizon, but many things are already under way.”
Blake said the construction of a “mini-campus” for GSM would require about $40 million. The increased enrollment would be accompanied by an increase in the number of GSM faculty from the current 43 to 73, he said.
But Blake said that in order to achieve a “best-in-class” program, the school would need an additional $50 million to $60 million to endow chairs, scholarships and other programs.
Blake said the school itself could generate some of the needed funds through fees and other mechanisms as programs are added, but that large private and/or community commitments also would be needed.
UCI has been moving up in several publicized rankings of MBA schools. In the past year it has been ranked No. 22 on the Financial Times of London’s ranking of 106 business schools worldwide; among U.S. schools, UCI ranked 18th. GSM was No. 34 on U.S. News & World Report’s list, in Business Week’s top 50 and No. 5 among “techno-MBA” programs ranked by Computerworld.
