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By Daniel Hernandez In 1869, the Berkeley campus had 40 students; in 1900, there were 2,229; and by 1940 that number had grown to 15,581. Returning GI’s swelled the campus to 23,145, but that wave soon receded, falling back its pre-war level by 1953. Then, over the next two decades, in what became known as the Tidal Wave, Berkeley’s enrollment doubled to 30,000 students, and UC systemwide enrollment also doubled, from 40,000 to 80,000. UC President Emeritus Clark Kerr remembers that big surge, propelled by the Baby Boom, and he also remembers the golden promise that many saw in it.
Now, a second wave is under way. Tidal Wave II, some call it, made up of the Baby Boomers’ children, is expected to lift UC system enrollment by over 30 percent—more than 60,000 students—over the next decade. The Berkeley campus will take the smallest increase, 1.1 percent annually, followed by UCLA at 1.2 percent, and UC Santa Barbara at 1.7 percent. At the top of the scale is UC Riverside, which is expected to grow 6.3 percent each year, reaching an overall regular enrollment of 19,000 in 2010, compared with 9,950 in 1998. But a growth rate of 1.1 percent annually means an increase of nearly 14 percent for Berkeley over the next decade—a total of 4,000 additional students. Some have questioned the need for the Berkeley campus, the oldest in the system, to grow by even that comparatively modest number. “Initially I was sympathetic to the view, ‘Why should we grow?,’” says city and regional planning professor David Dowall, who is chair of the campus Academic Senate and co-chair of the Strategic Planning Committee. “But the more I got involved in discussions, and the more I looked into the situation, the more I realized that Berkeley has to do its share. There are two things that brought me around to grudgingly supporting this,” he continues. “First, the younger campuses, like Riverside and Irvine, just couldn’t accommodate this level of growth if the older campuses, like Berkeley and UCLA, didn’t do their bit. Second, I think that we have an obligation, as the flagship campus, to do our share.” He adds that the political repercussions of refusing additional students would have been significant. Tidal Wave II is certainly smaller than the first wave, for the system as well as for Berkeley. But Dowall reminds us that the first wave occurred over a longer period of time. “And the University exists in a very different world today than it did in the post-World War II era,” he points out. “Back then, you had a lot more open space; it was easier to do projects. We have less physical and financial capacity now than we did then. Another problem is that we have about $600 million in deferred maintenance.” Not to mention the high cost of seismic improvements on campus, he adds. Having led the University through its first huge influx of students, Clark Kerr is uniquely qualified to observe the UC administration’s attempts to manage this second wave. Ironically, Kerr believes that the University’s success in managing Tidal Wave I might have provided a false sense of security. “There’s a tendency to be really unprepared for Tidal Wave II because we handled it the first time around,” he says. Planners are in fact preparing to handle the coming surge of students in that careful (if slow) process students and alumni have come to expect from the Berkeley administration. Professor of engineering Bill Webster is Cal’s new vice provost for academic planning and facilities, a position created solely to plan for Tidal Wave II, and Webster is co-chair with Dowall of the Strategic Planning Committee, which is charged with finding solutions to the coming crunch. Composed of faculty, students, and staff, the committee is exploring every possibility. All options will be given serious review; Webster also insists that no plan will be initiated if it is judged to seriously compromise “the Berkeley experience.” “There is no one here—faculty, staff, or student—who wants Tidal Wave II to dilute the Berkeley experience; so we’re looking for ways to accommodate this responsibility and, in the process, to enrich the education of our students,” Webster says. Dowall is even more optimistic: “We’d like to address all the serious problems, but at the same time to use the resources we get from Tidal Wave II to leverage the long-term problems the University faces.” Any increase of Cal students and corresponding growth in its facilities will have an impact on the city of Berkeley. “We need to recognize that we’re big, that what we do affects the community,” Dowall says. “The way in which the University and the city engage one another now is dysfunctional. There’s no long-term, continuous dialogue going on. I hope the University changes course and style and tries to become a better partner and a better neighbor.” The University and the city have just clashed over the Underhill Area Plan, a recently approved project that will bring a three-story parking garage and 900 beds to the Southside area by 2004. Construction in that dense neighborhood is expected to begin this winter. Current student leaders are determined to keep the question of adequate housing in the forefront of future planning discussions; but while the Underhill development begins to address the issue, no one yet has a clear answer to the question of how to house all of the additional 4,000 students. Dowall thinks the challenge can be met. “One of the major complaints of the community is traffic and congestion,” he says. “On the other side, one of the problems of the University is that it lacks affordable housing for students and faculty and staff. The two problems are connected; they’re a reflection of each other. If you don’t have affordable housing, people have to live outside the area and commute in, generating traffic and congestion. I think these two problems can be worked on together by the city and the campus.” One immediate solution to Tidal Wave II is “normalizing” summer sessions. The campus has already begun offering financial incentives to encourage students to take summer classes; a report from the legislative analyst’s office estimates that the UC system could accommodate about 31,000 students by changing to a year-round academic schedule. “But would this dilute the quality of education?” asks Dowall. “That’s an issue everyone is very much concerned about.” Normalizing the summer session also raises eyebrows among those who maintain that summer should be a time for work, internships, or vacations. In addition, faculty traditionally use summers to focus on their research and writing. Other proposals to help ease the crunch include online learning, already a reality at some institutions, which would allow students access to a UC education without having to set foot on campus. Satellite learning centers have also been proposed. Located in other districts of the Bay Area—San Francisco or Silicon Valley— these would operate as mini-Cal campuses for students studying specific disciplines such as architecture or business. Another idea is to make the Education Abroad Program a standard part of a UC education—the idea being that more students going away would mean more space for students here. Yet these proposals have failed to convince skeptics. “The short-term solutions are not adequate, and it’s obvious the University has been scrambling to find the most comfortable solutions at their disposal,” comments John Douglass, a senior research fellow at Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education and author of The California Idea and American Higher Education. Dowall admits that these measures do not adequately address the situation. “Initially, the idea was to use summer session, ‘Cal in the City,’ education abroad—Cal-anywhere-but-Berkeley—to help solve the problem,” he says. “The more we started looking at such measures, the more we realized they may not really work very well. “In the last two years,” Dowall adds, “the dialogue between the Academic Senate and the administration has been very productive and useful; it has changed the mindset of the administration, which is now paying much more attention to the importance of managing Tidal Wave II in ways that will really enhance the quality of Cal. I think we’re making some headway.” A draft of the physical aspect of Cal’s New Century Plan is scheduled for release in September; by next spring, the Strategic Planning Committee hopes to incorporate those recommendations into the campus’s academic mission and create a comprehensive plan.
Douglass also charges that the University has failed to consider an option that makes perfect sense. “Let’s start talking the language of additional campuses,” he says. “We’ve gone through a long period of not adding to the infrastructure.” He reminds us that five campuses were opened between 1944 and 1965, the year Irvine and Santa Cruz joined the system. UC Merced will be able to absorb thousands of students after it opens in 2004, but Douglass insists that we need to think beyond Merced and build even more campuses. This, however, is easier said than done. With economic uncertainty, volatile political issues, and communities’ ambivalence toward growth, the “obvious” solution of additional campuses seems out of reach. Which leaves UC—and Berkeley—looking for other solutions to the new Tidal Wave. Clark Kerr believes the new surge in enrollment presents a different challenge than it did a half century ago. “Now there’s a lot more apprehension, there isn’t the same spirit of enthusiasm for the future,” he says. But he also believes the obstacles can be overcome. “We went from 15,000 to 30,000 students at Berkeley,” he says. “That’s a lot more than 4,000.” |
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