UC Irvine expects to grow about 5% a year in the new decade, adding more students than any other in the nine-campus University of California system.
“The growth at Irvine will be the most spectacular growth” in the UC system, said Executive Vice Chancellor Bill Parker. UCI will add 11,900 students over the next 10 years, he said, increasing total enrollment by well over 50%.
All of the state’s higher education institutions are seeing enrollment growth, Parker said, attributed mainly to the increasing college-age population. The UC system is expected to add 63,000 new students over the next decade, boosting its enrollment to 210,000.
At UCI, the projected enrollment growth means the school will have to grow physically as well.
“The most serious constraints challenging our ability to grow is physical buildings,” Parker said. He estimates UCI’s construction needs will total $1.5 billion over the next decade. Despite record-high private support,$49.5 million in 1998-99,current funding levels will not enable the university to keep pace with projected growth, Parker said.
UCI, unlike many colleges and universities, has the room to expand. In fact, its 500 undeveloped acres is a larger area than the whole UCLA campus, Parker said.
To meet anticipated demand, the school is planning to add 1.3 million square feet of classrooms, offices and labs and new housing for 6,000 students, he said, adding that the priorities are science and technology buildings to keep up with demand and the direction of the economy. Additional funding will be needed for major projects such as the estimated $400 million seismic upgrade of the UCI Medical Center.
UCI building projects that are under way or fully funded include:
n Sprague Hall, a $26 million, 65,000-square-foot laboratory for cancer and genetics research.
n an $11.9 million, 36,000 square-foot environmental health and safety facility.
n a $6.4 million, 23,000 square-foot music and media building.
n a $9.8 million, 63,500 square-foot science and technology building.
n a $19.6 million, 54,000 square-foot Earth system science building.
n a $55 million,123,000 square-foot natural science building.
In addition to building costs, it will cost more to recruit new staff, Parker said. Recruiting to Orange County is especially difficult because the county’s housing costs turn many candidates off to the area, he said. “Their first comment is, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.'”
So money from private sources,such as the recent $20 million donation by Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry Samueli,will go toward recruiting faculty as well as capital costs and scholarships.
Parker said the university also will need to become more creative in its fundraising efforts. One new source of income is lease revenue from the University Research Park being developed by The Irvine Co. on UCI land.
Meanwhile, UCI will compete against other growing OC universities for public or private funding. California State University, Fullerton, and Chapman University, a private university in Orange, are also experiencing record growth. Last fall, 27,167 students were enrolled at Cal State Fullerton, 1,500 more than the year before. The spurt there is being compared with a similar increase in the late ’60s to early ’70s, when enrollment doubled in six years, from 7,386 to 15,694. Chapman University also saw an increase in enrollment this fall, to 4,108 students,up 26% since 1995. Chapman plans to build a new chapel and residence hall within two to three years and is in the midst of a $160 million multi-year fundraising campaign.
UCI received a record 29,435 applications for its 2000 fall semester. That’s a 12% increase over 1999 and a 29% jump from two years ago.
That explosion in applications has outstripped the school’s ability to absorb new students. UCI will have to turn away an estimated 7,000 eligible students for this year’s fall semester, compared with 5,561 last year and none in 1995. n
