Although the UC campuses have not been asked to grow, they have been asked to plan for growth to make sure that UC can honor its commitment to the Master Plan for Higher Education to enroll the top 12.5% of graduating high school students.

UCLA and UC Berkeley, the system’s flagship campuses, are being asked to consider the possibility of adding 4,000 FTE students each over the next 10 years.

Executive Vice Chancellor Wyatt R. Hume, who chairs the Chancellor’s Enrollment Advisory Committee (CEAC) of students, faculty and administrators, talked with UCLA Today Senior Writer Marina Dundjerski and Editor Cynthia Lee about the planning process and strategies that may soften the impact of increased student numbers on the campus and surrounding neighborhood.

Q: How has the campus approached the challenge of planning for this projected growth?

A: We decided early on that planning would be an academically guided process and that we would identify which academic programs could grow to make UCLA stronger. We told the academic units that we were being asked to plan for growth — and asked whether they wanted to be part of this growth and have this opportunity. In the spring, we received their responses. The CEAC is now studying those proposals, and we’ve summarized them and our discussion of them.

Q: Where are we now in that process?

A: Those summaries have been distributed so that individual campus units have now seen a summary of their own proposal and everybody else’s proposal. The Academic Senate’s Undergraduate and Graduate councils have been reviewing these proposals over the last three months, and I’m expecting their response sometime this month. The CEAC will be making recommendations to Chancellor Carnesale about the shape of possible enrollment growth this January.

Q: Which campus units are likely to grow?

A: Gov. Gray Davis has very directly asked us to increase some of our activities in teacher education. So there will be some growth in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. And we have already committed to some growth in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. But we don’t know yet how much other parts of the campus may grow over the next decade.

Q: What are some of the challenges involved in this planning?

A: We’re very concerned about providing appropriate facilities for our students and the faculty and staff we will recruit. We know that recruiting faculty will be an enormous challenge because many institutions are growing nationwide and the pool of excellent faculty is limited.

Q: Isn’t this happening at the same time that many faculty will be retiring?

A: Yes. We are expecting that we will have to recruit about 50% of the present number of faculty over the next decade because of a combination of retirements and this possible growth. We estimate we will need 200 to 220 additional faculty to accommodate growth alone.

Q: What resources is the state offering?

A: In its initial offer, the state has proposed sufficient resources for faculty and staff salaries. We are emphasizing very strongly the need for additional resources to fund capital growth and start-up packages needed to recruit faculty. We want to stay competitive.

Q: The goal is to preserve the quality of UCLA’s academic programs. Will growth be concentrated in our best-ranked departments?

A: There are always two arguments: Do we build on our existing strengths, or do we invest resources to build up areas that are not as strong? Those are value judgments that we’ll have to make. I’m not going to predict the outcome, but we are taking into account the relative cost of growth, the quality of existing programs and our estimate of the impact of growth on that quality. In the end, Chancellor Carnesale will be making these decisions based on all the advice he receives.

Q: What measures are under consideration to soften the impact on the campus of this projected growth?

A: We’re considering, for example, expanding teaching activity during the summer. UC officials are trying to encourage the campuses systemwide to increase summer programs by 30% to 40%. We would like to do that if we can without compromising our research or conference activities and still have high-quality teaching throughout the summer.

Q: What are some of the incentives for faculty to teach and students to take classes in the summer?

A: The Office of the President has negotiated with the state to provide funds so that we can decrease summer school fees to the equivalent of what students pay in fall, winter and spring. That’s being introduced this summer at Berkeley, UCLA and Santa Barbara. We believe that resources also will be available, depending on this year’s state budget, for increased workload funding for faculty and staff. Our primary concern will be to ensure that summer growth does not negatively impact the scholarly work of our faculty and graduate students involved in research.

Q: Are measures being considered to improve the ability of students to finish in four years?

A: At the moment, students move through the UCLA curriculum fairly slowly compared with students at other UC campuses. UCLA students average 13.8 units per quarter, but they need to take a workload of 15 units per quarter to be considered full time. This means that we’re only 92% efficient — and we don’t get full funding for each student. We’re looking at ways that are consistent with academic quality to help them increase their workload so that we make more efficient use of our facilities.

Q: How do we achieve that?

A: One strategy is to give students more flexibility in the unit structure of their courses. At the moment, we tend to lock them into four-unit courses. We’re trying to increase flexibility by having more two-, three- and five-unit courses, so students can get closer to the 15 units. With a four-unit structure, some students tend to take just three courses per quarter. They end up with a 12-unit workload because they think carrying 16 units is too heavy. So we’re asking departments to look carefully at their unit structure to see whether we can help students take closer to 15 units and therefore graduate in four years.

Q: There has also been discussion about reevaluating the number of units that are appropriate for each class. Can you explain why?

A: In some cases, we found that we have been undervaluing courses. We found cases where the student workload was actually much greater than the assigned credits. In the Department of English, for example, some of the four-unit courses should have been five-unit because the workload was huge. A unit actually is meant to correspond to three hours of work by the student. A four-unit course assumes that students work 12 hours each week, both in class and out; if students are doing 15 hours of work, then the course should properly be five units.

Q: So taking into account potential gains resulting from workload growth, do you have a sense yet of how many actual new students would be enrolled during the fall, winter and spring?

A: It will depend both on how efficient we are in utilizing the summer and improving our conversion factor. If we can raise average unit loads, that will absorb a good portion of the 4,000 FTE. And we might be able to hold down head-count growth to 2,500. With summer expansion it could drop to 2,000 or below. Obviously, if we succeed, there will be less impact on student services and housing. But we won’t have lightened the workload for faculty.

Q: What do the academic units view as a priority in this planning process?

A: It’s been encouraging to hear an absolute commitment to maintaining the quality of education. We do not want, nor do the departments want, to compromise quality in any way. Nobody wants to take the easy path. Everyone is determined that UCLA’s excellent qualities remain.