What has caused this drastic revision? Will UC escape the tidal wave of enrollment demand that higher education experts have been predicting for the end of this century and the beginning of the next?
"It's coming, but it's coming a little later -- between 2005 and 2010," Hershman said.
Hershman and other UC officials contend that changes in the demographic makeup of the state and in the college-going behavior of students have led to the revised predictions. But critics say the forecast has been tailored to fit new political conditions-the prospect of continuing tight state budgets, a desire to get along with Governor Pete Wilson, and a hope that UC, by claiming that demand is lower than expected, can avoid the increasingly bitter argument about access to public higher education in California.
Hershman insisted that the university's sharply reduced enrollment projections are not the result of political factors but have been caused by a decline in the estimated number of future public high school graduates, and by an anticipated drop in the "participation rate"-the percentage of high school graduates who actually show up on a UC campus.
"The pool is smaller and the participation rate is down," he said. "The result is lower numbers. The only question is how much lower, and that depends on which set of assumptions are most plausible."
Former UC President Clark Kerr, who refers to the coming flood of students as "tidal wave 2" ("tidal wave 1" being those who poured into colleges and universities after World War II), thinks Hershman is underestimating demand. Kerr believes UC enrollment will reach at least 210,000 by the year 2010 unless artificial barriers are erected.
Kerr thinks that the widening income gap between those with college degrees and those without will spur even more demand for higher education.
"I have been astonished by the general tone of the university's comments and memos on this subject," Kerr said. "They seem to be saying there is no problem and we don't have to do anything."
The controversy involves only undergraduates, since graduate enrollment can be more easily controlled by the academic departments and professional schools on the nine UC campuses.
Hershman said the staff will prepare a "range" of enrollment projections-low, middle and high-for discussion by the UC Board of Regents at a May 18-20 meeting in San Francisco. UC officials will not disclose these estimates before that meeting, but well-informed sources say that even the staff's "high" number will be lower than recent UC enrollment forecasts by the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC), the state Department of Finance and the Rand Corporation, a Santa Monica think tank.
Of the three public higher education segments, only the University of California has complained that the projections by these groups are too high.
Commenting on the CPEC forecast, which is the most recent, Chancellor Barry Munitz of the California State University system, said, "Our model is showing the CPEC numbers to be reasonable and supportable."
Joe Newmyer, vice chancellor for fiscal policy for the California Community Colleges, said that although the CPEC projections are somewhat lower than the two-year college system's own forecasts, they are "in the ballpark."
But the University of California insists that the postsecondary commission report, which estimates that UC undergraduate enrollment will grow from 123,873 last fall to 152,930 in the year 2005, is incorrect, as is the Department of Finance forecast of 147,200 undergraduates by the year 2003.
"We think those numbers are too high," said Sandra Smith, UC assistant vice president for planning. She gave three main reasons:
1) The number of expected public high school graduates has declined. The latest projections by the demographic unit of the Department of Finance, published last fall, predict that 310,184 young people will graduate from the state's public high schools in the year 2005-25,584 fewer than the department was forecasting a year ago. However, that is still an increase of 52,386 graduates over the current year, so it is hard to see how that would lessen undergraduate enrollment demand at UC.
In addition, Carol Corcoran, who produces the higher education forecast for the finance department, pointed out that California elementary school enrollment increased in every grade except kindergarten last fall, suggesting that the decline in projected high school graduates may have been temporary.
2) UC's Smith also said the CPEC report is unduly optimistic in predicting that UC's participation rate will increase from below seven percent to 8.5 percent by the year 2005. (The University of California selects most of its freshmen from among the top 12.5 percent of the state's high school graduates, as determined by their college entrance test scores and grades in a specific set of academic courses. The "participation rate" is the percentage of high school graduates who actually enroll at a UC campus.)
From 1960 to 1980, UC's participation rate ranged from 5.5 to six percent, Smith said. But in the 1980s "that number took off, to about nine percent," because UC was much less expensive than private colleges and universities, the university aggressively recruited minority students, and many first-year students chose UC over a community college.
But in the 1990s, Smith added, minority "outreach" efforts have been reduced, successive tuition increases have made UC less of a bargain, and more students are electing to take a year or two in community college before transferring to UC, also for cost reasons. As a result, UC officials expect the participation rate to rise slightly in the next decade but not to reach the 8.5 percent envisioned in the CPEC projections.
In reply, William L. Storey, a CPEC senior policy analyst, said the 8.5 percent figure was "conservative" and that UC's participation rate probably will be even higher than that after the year 2000, "unless they change the rules"-that is, unless eligibility requirements are tightened. (One problem that weakens all of these predictions is that the state has not funded an "eligibility study" since 1990. Such a study would determine whether UC is living up to its commitment under the Master Plan for Higher Education to accept students from among the top 12.5 percent of high school graduates, and whether the California State University is accepting students from the top one-third.)
Michael A. Shires, who studied state enrollment demand for a Rand Graduate School Ph.D. dissertation, has estimated UC undergraduate enrollment to be about 141,000 in the year 2005-slightly lower than the CPEC projection, but considerably higher than the numbers UC is expected to produce at the next regents meeting.
Even if the participation rate is held at the 1989-90 level, Shires said, "enrollment demand will still be higher than UC is saying. The population is growing, those kids (potential UC students) are already in school, so it's hard to argue that the participation rate is going to decline."
3) Sandra Smith's final objection to the CPEC enrollment projections is that they predicted an increase in every racial group, "which seems to assume we would go beyond the top 12.5 percent (the percentage of high school graduates eligible for the university) and we simply won't do that," she said.
Storey said that UC is so far below the 12.5 percent standard for all racial groups except Asian Americans that the participation increases projected in the CPEC report can easily be achieved within existing admissions policies. For example, the report assumes the participation rate for African Americans will increase from a miniscule 2.8 percent to 3.8 percent in a decade's time, and that Latino participation will grow from 2.9 percent to 3.9 percent.
Storey defended these estimates as "conservative," and said UC was likely to exceed them, especially among the fast-growing Latino population, unless the university halted all of its minority student recruiting efforts, abandoned affirmative action admissions policies and also made admission requirements much tougher.
Storey and Shires both pointed out that enrollment "demand" is greatly affected by policies the three public higher education systems adopt. All manage enrollments in one way or another.
The community colleges admit all students but many then drop out because they can't get the classes they need. Enrollment in the two-year colleges also dropped sharply two years ago, after the Legislature raised fees to $50 per credit unit for students who already held bachelors degrees.
Deliberate downsizing policies reduced enrollment on the 20 California State University campuses by about 50,000 students over a two-year period. The system's Board of Trustees declared that they would protect "quality" in the system, but that it was the state's responsibility to pay for access.
University of California officials say they are keeping faith with the Master Plan for Higher Education by accepting all qualified students, but, as the CPEC report notes, "it is possible for the university, through what it refers to as 'consumption,' to manipulate demand." UC Berkeley and UCLA receive two to three times as many applications from qualified prospective freshmen as they can accommodate. The university then redirects students to other campuses, knowing full well that many of them will not go.
Higher tuition fees, lack of space in certain classes (or, in some cases, whole programs), and reduced minority student recruiting all affect enrollment. If UC terminates its affirmative action policies, a step the Board of Regents presently is considering, that will have a significant impact on African American and Latino enrollment.
All of these are policy choices-by UC administrators, the Board of Regents, the Legislature or the governor. They are not the result of the fickle winds of fate, as UC officials sometimes like to suggest.
It is in this light that the university's objections to the enrollment forecasts of the CPEC, the Department of Finance and the Rand Corporation may best be seen.
A review of "California's looming budget crisis" by three Rand Corporation researchers last fall found that full implementation of the state's new "three strikes" law, added to the expected costs of K-12 schools, health and welfare, could leave no state money at all for public higher education by the year 2002.
UC planners do not expect that apocalyptic prophecy to come true, but neither do they anticipate sharp increases in state support in the near future. Even if Governor Wilson keeps his promise to increase UC funding by four percent in each of the next three years, that will do little more than keep pace with rising costs.
Some members of the Board of Regents are beginning to talk about maintaining UC as a relatively small, "quality" university system (though "quality" is not defined), no matter how much California's population grows nor what percentage of its citizens seek education beyond high school.
"It's getting to the point where there won't be a place for 12.5 percent (of high school graduates) in the system," Regent David Flinn said in a recent interview. "We're going to take around 160,000 students and, if we're lucky enough to find the funds for the tenth campus, maybe 200,000, all told. The state has to find other answers for the other people. The University of California has to be for the top 200,000, even if we have a population of 100 million."
That would mean abandoning UC's commitment under the Master Plan for Higher Education, and neither the Board of Regents nor the Administration is ready to do that-certainly not in Jack W. Peltason's last few months as president.
However, UC officials are prepared to stall for time, trying to persuade Californians that demand for admission to the university has slackened and that those who say otherwise are wrong.
"I think they're responding to tight budgets," CPEC's Storey said. "They don't see state support to increase enrollment, so they are managing the numbers down."
Will the university be successful with this strategy?
"When haven't they been?" asked Cal State Chancellor Munitz. "If you were a regent or the UC president, wouldn't you believe you would be?"