Executive Summary
UC Merced Was Created to Accomplish Several Key Objectives. In the late 1980s, the University of California (UC) projected that enrollment demand would exceed systemwide enrollment capacity by the late 1990s. In response, the UC Board of Regents began exploring sites for a new campus. After considering several locations in the San Joaquin Valley, the board selected Merced as the location for the tenth UC campus. After years of constructing the campus and hiring personnel, UC Merced opened in fall 2004 for graduate students and fall 2005 for undergraduate students. In addition to expanding enrollment capacity for the UC system, UC Merced was intended to help raise educational and economic outcomes in the San Joaquin Valley. Prior to the opening of UC Merced, regional college-going rates were low while regional poverty and unemployment rates were high.
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Campus Has Grown Over Time. Total enrollment (undergraduates and graduate students combined) at UC Merced crossed the 5,000 student-marker in fall 2011. By fall 2023, the campus had grown to approximately 9,100 students. Academic offerings have increased in tandem—growing from 9 undergraduate majors and 3 doctoral programs in 2005 to 27 undergraduate majors and 17 doctoral programs in fall 2023. The number of faculty and staff also has grown, with the campus having a total of approximately 2,500 employees in fall 2023. The campus has completed two major physical build-outs. The initial build-out resulted in about 1.5 million gross square feet (gsf) of academic and auxiliary space, whereas the second build-out (occurring from 2016 through 2020) added about 1.3 million gsf of space (intended to support a campus of 10,000 students).
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UC Merced Student Body Is Different From Other UC Campuses. UC Merced enrolls a higher share of undergraduates and lower share of graduate students than other UC campuses. Among its undergraduates, UC Merced enrolls the highest share of resident students and lowest share of students from other states and countries. The campus has the highest percentage of first-generation students (students with at least one parent who does not have a bachelor’s degree) as well as the highest percentage of Pell Grant recipients. UC Merced is the only UC campus with a student body that is majority Hispanic/Latino. The campus also draws more heavily from the San Joaquin Valley than any other UC campus.
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UC Merced Staff Differ From UC System. Compared to other UC campuses, UC Merced relies more on nontenure-track lecturers for academic instruction. Among its tenured/tenure-track faculty, it relies more on assistant professors (and less on associate and full professors). Relative to other UC general campuses, UC Merced hires substantially fewer academic support staff, whereas it hires substantially more student employees. UC Merced administrators indicate making these hiring decisions because they yield lower associated staffing costs and are thus more fiscally viable for a young campus. As a relatively small campus without the same economies of scale of the larger UC campuses, UC Merced continues to spend a larger share of its budget on institutional support and a smaller share on instruction and research.
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UC Merced Receives More State Funding Per Student Than Other UC Campuses. UC uses a formula known as the “rebenching formula” to allocate General Fund (excluding General Fund set-asides for specific programs and one-time allocations) to its campuses. The formula is meant to equalize state per-student funding across campuses. UC Merced is excluded from this formula, as the campus has not yet reached the point where state support under the rebenching formula, its tuition revenue, and local resources are enough to cover its annual operating expenses. Compared to the other UC general campuses, UC provides UC Merced with approximately $10,000 more in state funding per student. In 2022-23, UC Merced received $85 million more in state funding than it would have received under the rebenching formula.
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Some UC Capacity Has Been Added Due to UC Merced but Growth Has Been Slow and Higher Cost. Since 2005, the UC system has added approximately 44,000 resident undergraduate slots. The 7,500 undergraduate slots created at UC Merced accounts for 17 percent of that growth. While contributing to the increase in UC enrollment capacity, UC Merced has repeatedly failed to meet its campus enrollment targets. Moreover, enrolling additional students at UC Merced comes with a higher state cost than enrolling additional students at the more established UC campuses. The $85 million in UC Merced funding above the rebenching formula equates to roughly an additional 10,000 students that could have been supported at the other UC general campuses, many of which had available capacity.
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Certain Educational Outcomes in the San Joaquin Valley Continue to Lag Behind Statewide Averages. While more San Joaquin Valley high school students are now enrolling at a UC campus, with UC Merced accounting for the majority of that growth, certain regional educational outcomes continue to be relatively low. For instance, though college going rates have increased in the San Joaquin Valley, they have not increased as much as the statewide average. Similarly, the percentage of individuals with at least a bachelor’s degree in Merced County has increased, but also by less than the statewide average.
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Regional Economic Indicators Show Mixed Results. It is unclear how much the campus has contributed to overall macroeconomic outcomes in the region. Both unemployment and poverty remain higher in the San Joaquin Valley when compared to statewide averages. Average wages for state-government workers in Merced County, however, have seen a substantial increase since the opening of the campus (growing by nearly 70 percent, notably exceeding statewide wage growth). Employment growth in nonfarm occupations has also increased in Merced County, exceeding the statewide average, but falling behind other regions in the state.
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Key State-Level Takeaways May Be Learned From the UC Merced Experience. In many ways, UC Merced is like new campuses more generally. For at least their first several decades, new public university campuses are likely to experience slower enrollment growth than planned, rely more heavily on state funding, and devote more of their budgets to institutional support and facilities (and less to instruction and research). New campuses, in turn, are unlikely to be able to offer the same overall quality of academic program for decades. Moreover, new campuses are unlikely to generate significant economic impacts in the short term, beyond what might have been accomplished by other major state initiatives. Furthermore, studies have not determined whether the results produced by new campuses could be accomplished in more cost-effective ways.
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These takeaways could help inform and guide the Legislature as it undertakes higher education planning moving forward.
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Full report at https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2024/4937/UC-Merced-at-20-Campus-Developments-Key-State-Level-Takeaways-110724.pdf.
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The LAO report is the kind of analysis that will get some attention in the legislature and perhaps at the Regents. Note that at least one media interpretation will raise some red flags:
...In polite language, [the report] fundamentally says the campus has fallen well short of its enrollment targets, requires much more state aid than other UC branches to operate, has not had the big economic impact that its advocates promised, and really wasn’t needed to relieve student applications...
At the time, UC system executives were almost universally opposed to placing a new campus in Merced because it would siphon away construction and operational funds that, they thought, would be better spent elsewhere. However, they never voiced that opposition publicly because the Board of Regents, composed of governors’ appointees, and [Governor] Davis were insisting that it be done... In short, the motives of Merced campus advocates, both public and private, had only tangential connections to educational needs, and two decades later that’s still true. UC Merced is the system’s poor stepchild.
Full story at https://calmatters.org/commentary/2024/12/uc-merced-campus-awkward-stepchild/.
The recollection of yours truly is a bit different. UC executives at the time seemed quite happy to continue to discuss creating a new campus in the region. As long as the precise location was uncertain, there was a whole collection of hopeful Central Valley legislators who would support the idea (and UC) in the hope that - if they played nice - eventually their preferred site would be chosen. However, there was only so long that UC could play the game of considering and discussing, but not chosing, a site. And once a specific site was chosen, UC inevitably disappointed several legislators from the region and pleased only one assembly member and only one state senator.*
That said, there is no point now in revisiting what might have been. The only choice is to make UC-Merced a success where it is and what it is.
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*This is not a new opinion on this blog. From 2011:
https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2011/11/merced-developers-learn-to-be-careful.html.
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