Now What?

Friday, October 07, 2022

As blog readers will know, UCLA is under pressure from the legislature and governor to increase enrollment. But it is the smallest campus geographically and is hemmed in by Westwood and Bel Air so expansion is difficult. Thus, the idea of a satellite campus somewhere else arose. And late last month, UCLA announced that it had bought the campus of the defunct Marymount California University in Rancho Palos Verdes for $80 million. So, now the question is what UCLA will do with that new real estate.

Anyone who has ever been to Palos Verdes knows it is not easily accessible from Westwood. For fun, I asked Google maps what it would take to go from the new campus to Westwood by public transit. Not surprisingly, the time involved for such a trip came close to three hours and with a lot of walking. Various bus lines and rail connections were involved. The drive time was close to one hour. And, of course, it involves the 405 freeway, which is often heavily congested. So, integrating education at the satellite and the Westwood campuses would be difficult.

In theory, you could have a separate, stand-alone program at the new campus. As it happens, the Los Angeles Business Journal had a listing recently of the various higher education institutions in LA County in 2021. Marymount California University had 517 students (443 undergraduate) and 41 faculty (25 full-time) and a total of 150 employees. UCLA had 47,518 student of which 32,121 were undergrads. The legislature seems to care only about undergrads. So, if all of the 517 student slots of the former Marymount California University were converted to undergraduate and added to UCLA's total undergrad enrollment, UCLA's undergrad enrollment would expand by 1.6%. Let's be generous and assume that Marymount California U actually had, say, double its student capacity. So, now we are talking about something like a 3%-ish undergrad enrollment increase. But, of course, all of this calculation assumes we have faculty somehow commuting to the new satellite or living there.

Let's just end with the note that doing something useful with the new campus that would also increase enrollment will be a challenge.

To hear the text above, click on the link below:

https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/satellite%20challenge.mp3