A. Expectations for Growth

1. Projected Enrollment Demand

The University of California projects enrollment targets based in part on demographic predictions of high school graduates over the next decade. That prediction has recently been revised upward compared to the 1998 forecast: ¹

In addition, other factors are considered, including transfer rates, graduate student enrollment, and participation rate for high school graduates enrolling as freshmen. Based on these combined factors, UC expects enrollment to grow steadily over the next few years until it peaks between 2012 and 2014 at roughly 230,000-240,000 students, and then to decline slightly by 2015-16 (the current planning horizon). Based on these projections, the UCOP Budget Office has concluded that “the projections raise questions about the adequacy of campuses’ current plans to accommodate growing enrollments.”²

More specific projections by degree level are available from the California Postsecondary Education Commission and the California Department of Finance. CPEC estimates that the University of California will face an increased demand of 11,418 new students (first-time freshmen and transfers) over the next decade, an increase of 23.69 percent.³

For that same period (fall 2003-2013), the Department of Finance projects growth in graduate enrollments (excluding health sciences) in the UC system from 35,424 to 40,773, an increase of 5,349 (15 percent). The department further projects a cumulative increase of enrollment in UC of “30.9 percent, over the next 10 years, with undergraduate enrollment accounting for nine out of 10 additional students.”⁴

2. Projected Deficit in Capacity

This projected rate of growth is rapid but clearly sustainable by UCI since it is somewhat less than the rate of growth experienced by the campus over the past five years. However, at that rate, planning for the horizon year of 2010-11 produces a projected enrollment target for UCI of 28,540 state-funded students, which is significantly lower than enrollments at most of the best public research universities (see II.C. below, “Managing Growth: Setting an Enrollment Target”). Moreover, the California Postsecondary Education Commission warns of a serious deficit looming in the projected physical capacity of campuses in Southern California to meet projected demand for admission to UC and to provide access to the university at the level prescribed by the Master Plan and the Higher Education Compact of 2004.

In April 2003, in light of its findings regarding projected enrollment demands, CPEC projected “that substantial capacity pressures will likely mount in all regions of the state, except the North Central Valley, where UC Merced is scheduled to open in fall 2004”⁵ (UC Merced opened fall 2005).

Regional demand is important for planning because, while UCI’s mission is distinctly national and international in scope, like most UC campuses we draw our students primarily from surrounding regions; at UCI, most students come from Los Angeles County, with Orange County a close second. Regional capacity is thus an important measure of the extent to which a campus is able to respond to demand and need. By CPEC’s projection, which measures demand vs. physical capacity in the Orange County/UCI region, UCI will face one of the most serious shortfalls in statewide capacity, constituting 29 percent of the deficit for the whole state:⁶

This extraordinary capacity deficit for UCI and Orange County is a product of many factors, but it is driven in part by the exceptionally high level of UC eligibility and participation in the region. Orange County is second only to the Bay Area in terms of UC eligibility and public high school participation: 15.5 percent for Orange County seniors vs. a statewide rate of 11.1 percent. CPEC projects total undergraduate demand for UC in Orange County to increase by 24.6 percent by 2010, a rate that surpasses all other regions of the state except the Sacramento area and San Bernardino/Riverside.⁷ Thus, demand for enrollment at UCI probably will significantly exceed the general systemwide projections described above.

3. Enrollment Projections for UCI

Enrollment projections by UCOP for specific campuses in the UC system extend only to 2010-11 (as of January 2006). For UCI, in 2010-11 UCOP projects 28,540 state-funded graduate and undergraduate students on the general campus. That total includes summer enrollments (which the state began funding at UCI in 2005) but excludes graduate students in self-funded professional programs and in the health sciences. If we add those other two categories, projected total enrollment for 2010-11 is 30,530. With a total enrollment at UCI of 25,459 students in 2004-05, that target would require an annual increase of approximately 1,000 students per year from 2005-06 through 2010-11: 750 undergraduates and 250 graduate students.

Enrollment in the University of California and at UCI will, of course, continue to increase beyond the current UCOP planning horizon for specific campuses, as noted above. CPEC and the Department of Finance project significant increases in demand for the University of California beyond 2010-11 at the graduate and undergraduate levels. In addition, CPEC predicts a substantial shortfall in capacity for our region by 2010-11. UCI therefore expects to continue growing beyond 2010-11 to reach a total enrollment of approximately 32,000 students by 2015-16. Graduate enrollment will increase faster than undergraduate enrollment over that period to increase the percentage of graduate students from 19 percent in 2004-05 to 25 percent in 2015-16.

Actual enrollment growth on any campus varies from year to year according to demographic changes throughout the state, different levels of participation (i.e., UC applications, admission and enrollment) by different groups within that general population, development of new majors and graduate programs that increase the appeal of a particular campus to prospective applicants, and various other factors. Annual increases in enrollment at UCI over the next decade will fluctuate as different parts of the strategic plan are implemented. In particular, growth in undergraduate enrollments is expected to slow significantly after 2010-11, but most of our new graduate and professional programs will be well established by that time and growing rapidly (see the chart below, “Historical and Projected Enrollments”). As an average for the whole period 2005-06 through 2015-16, therefore, we project an annual enrollment increase of approximately 650 students, including 375 more undergraduates and 275 more graduate students each year.

4. New Faculty

Within the UC system, enrollment growth is accompanied by allocations of new, state-funded faculty positions (counted as Full-Time Equivalents, or FTE). The projected growth in enrollment through 2015-16 is therefore expected to produce a total of approximately 375 new faculty positions, including 340 new FTE for the general campus and 35 new FTE in Medicine. In addition to these new positions, existing faculty positions are vacated at UCI at the rate of roughly 40 per year on the general campus and seven per year in the School of Medicine. UCI may therefore expect to hire a total of approximately 840 new, full-time, state-funded faculty in the next 10 years.

These new positions are the most important single resource for accomplishing the ambitious academic goals described in this strategic plan. The goals and strategies described below include principles for distributing faculty FTE across the campus to meet our specific objectives. Those objectives include expanding and strengthening our educational programs; reinforcing present excellence and extraordinary potential in targeted programs and fields; and coordinating faculty recruitment with fundraising to attract the best faculty with endowed chairs, outstanding research facilities, and additional support for post-doctoral scholars and graduate students.

5. Room to Grow

Many factors determine the ability of a campus to expand to meet demand. Foremost among them are the academic objectives, the research agenda, and the standard of quality for its faculty and students, which should drive all other planning. The physical capacity of the campus is an obvious constraint on all plans, however, so UCI is exceptionally fortunate to have one of the physically largest campuses in the UC system. With roughly three times the acreage of UCLA, UCI could accommodate up to 40,000 students, with concomitant space for faculty and staff with only a modest change in the current standards of density and land use. (For contrast, building at the density of UCLA or Berkeley would accommodate up to 60,000 students but would obviously alter the appearance and character of UCI.)

While academic priorities and many other factors will combine to determine the actual maximum enrollment for UCI, in the face of the projected regional capacity deficit it would be unreasonable for the campus to plan deliberately to underutilize a significant portion of the physical resources entrusted to it. It would be even more irresponsible to develop the campus in such a way that might inadvertently render portions of that space unusable in the future.

B. Managing Growth

1. Approaching the End of an Era of Growth

UCI is currently entering what may be the last period of sustained growth for the campus. At the present rate of growth of approximately 800-900 new students per year, we would reach the physical capacity of the campus – about 40,000 students at the current density – within 20 years. Even the 32,000 students projected in the strategic plan for 2015-16 would make UCI comparable in size to the largest campuses in the UC system today.

We therefore need an enrollment plan to give us a measure by which to gauge the rate of growth according to our qualitative objectives as we approach the end of this period in UCI’s development. That rate of growth is always subject to the vagaries of budgets and politics, of course, and specific long-term enrollment projections are notoriously unreliable. Nevertheless, we may reasonably assume that the coming decade represents the last chance for large-scale planning within the context of significant projected growth that has characterized the history of our campus to this point, so it is imperative that we plan now for the future that will soon be upon us.⁸

2. National Comparisons

The Council on Planning and Budget of the Irvine Division of the Academic Senate has provided recommendations “central to any growth plan that the campus adopts” (May 6, 2004). The council recommended as the most important principle for any growth plan a graduate enrollment target of 7,000-8,000 and a minimum graduate enrollment percentage of 20 percent (of total campus enrollment). Moreover, the council recommended adoption of an absolute graduate enrollment target, together with the 20 percent minimum criterion, as the “best strategy for assuring adequate graduate student growth.”

In reviewing the graduate/professional enrollment data for the top quartile of public universities in the Association of American Universities as ranked by the 2003 Lombardi Report, Wendell Brase, vice chancellor of administrative and business services, found considerable support for the Council on Planning and Budget’s graduate enrollment recommendation.⁹ These data reveal an association between a pivotal level of graduate enrollment and high Lombardi rankings. This is not a surprising observation, since many of the nine measures ranked by Lombardi are inherently related to size of the institution’s faculty or enrollment. Nonetheless, in the absence of up-to-date rankings from the National Research Council, the Lombardi rankings provide the most useful assessment of general reputation for research universities.

The following scattergram displays the observed association between Lombardi rankings and graduate/professional enrollment in public universities in the Association of American Universities. A clear transition is evident above the enrollment level of 7,000, consistent with the Council on Planning Budget’s views and recommendations. Among the nine top-ranked institutions, only one falls below this threshold – the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, with a graduate/professional enrollment of 6,567.¹⁰

A separate analysis of the relationship between size and rankings was conducted by William Parker, vice chancellor for research and dean of graduate studies. He also observed that UCI probably needs to grow significantly if it is to enter the ranks of the best research universities. Using a subset of four Lombardi categories of particular pertinence to UCI, and selected to create a measure of faculty “productivity” normalized for size, Vice Chancellor Parker concluded that a “threshold enrollment of 25,000-30,000 is needed for inclusion among top-ranked public research universities.” Using these measures, “with a target percentage of graduate enrollment of 25 percent, UCI would therefore need about 7,500 graduate students when reaching that threshold for top ranking.”¹¹

3. A Strategic Focus for Enrollment Management

Such quantitative measures can never be simply transferred from one institution to another, of course, and none of the other states represented by the highly ranked comparative public institutions has a university system approaching the number of distinguished campuses encompassed by the University of California. In addition, individual campuses within the UC system must participate in enrollment planning for the system as a whole, so their freedom to establish enrollment targets is somewhat constrained, particularly short-term. Nevertheless, since it is the upper reaches of the national context in which we will ultimately measure the success of our academic plan, the enrollment patterns among top public universities should be carefully considered, as they may affect the number, kinds and scope of programs we develop.

Although the methods and observations of vice chancellors Brase and Parker differ, their conclusions converge on the same enrollment target of 7,500-8,000 graduate students. That number is fully consistent with the observations and recommendations of the Senate Council on Planning and Budget, and it corresponds with qualitative measures of success to which the campus aspires.

Thus, assuming that an enrollment of 8,000 full-time graduate and professional students is necessary to reach our academic quality goals, 25 percent graduate enrollment would require a total enrollment target of 32,000. If we aim for the lower limit of the proposed range, 7,500 graduate students at 21 percent graduate enrollment would require a total of 35,000; and 20 percent graduate enrollment would require a total of 37,500, a figure that corresponds more closely to the national trend for total enrollments in the top public research universities.¹² It is therefore clear that UCI needs to aim beyond the enrollment target of 28,540 set by UCOP for the planning horizon of 2010-11 in order to generate a graduate population that is comparable to the best public research universities at a ratio acceptable within the UC system, and that is realistic given UCI’s growth rate for graduate enrollments in the past. Fortunately, a total enrollment of 30,000-37,500 is compatible with the physical limits of our campus and consistent with the programmatic objectives of the strategic plan, especially if that target is attained over an extended period during which quality can be controlled by adjusting the rate of growth as necessary.

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Last Updated: January 22, 2007