To maintain its prestige and excellence, the University of California must boost graduate student enrollment systemwide by at least 11,000 -- or almost 50% -- by 2010, according to a UC commission.

To achieve that, the Commission on the Growth and Support for Graduate Education -- which includes 22 UC regents, chancellors and campus administrators -- is recommending that UC increase graduate student support by about 50% to $215 million annually, most of it from traditional sources, such as teaching and research assistantships, which would still leave a $65-million shortfall.

California ranks last among the 15 largest states in graduate enrollment growth over the last decade, the commission reported to regents last month at UCLA. California was one of five states with declining graduate student enrollments, along with Arkansas, Connecticut, Kansas and Oklahoma. While undergraduate enrollment has doubled in the past 30 years at UC, graduate enrollment rose only 7%. Graduate students comprise 17% of the total enrollment at UC, compared to 51% at Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Yale and 27% at Illinois and Michigan.

"If we hope to maintain the state's supremacy in fields such as biotechnology and electronics, create new industries not yet imagined and solve California's pressing social and environmental problems, we need a highly educated workforce -- and that means expanded graduate enrollments," said UC President Richard C. Atkinson. California institutions also are depending on graduates from UC doctoral programs to help fill the need for 40,000 new faculty to cope with Tidal Wave II, said UC Provost and committee co-chair C. Judson King.

At UCLA, administrators hope to increase graduate enrollment by 1,100 students by 2010. Already, graduate enrollments have begun to rise by about 100-200 students per year, primarily in the engineering and education fields.

The main challenge is keeping a competitive edge, said Jim Turner, assistant vice chancellor of UCLA's Graduate Division. "We are not competitive currently in funding our graduate students, particularly Ph.D. students," Turner said. "All the campuses are going to have significant problems to find support not just to fill slots, but to attain the best graduate students."

The commission has made six recommendations. Among the proposals being discussed by the regents is the elimination of out-of-state graduate student fees.

King called the issue of non-resident tuition "vexing and difficult to deal with" because UC's mission differs regarding undergraduate and graduate students.

"The university has a clear commitment to provide access and to educate young people of California, and we therefore emphasize California residents as our undergraduate students," King said. But for its graduate program, UC's mission is to attract the best minds available to California. Those graduate students often end up at other institutions that grant automatic tuition waivers to out-of-state students.

This causes a hardship on campus departments that want to support international students, which make up 18% of UCLA's 7,000 graduate students, said Turner. "We are having to pay $11,000 more per year as part of their recruitment package." UCLA currently spends about $21 million-$22 million per year in fellowships. Roughly $7 million-$8 million of that goes to pay students' non-resident tuition costs.

Atkinson has asked the chancellors to report back by September on how their campuses are boosting graduate enrollments.

To see the report go to: www.ucop.edu/regents/regmeet/sept01/308.pdf