Dozens of high-school students huddle at the edge of a parking lot, peering past grazing cattle and across rolling grasslands toward a crane that looms over a mass of partially completed buildings hundreds of yards away.
On this overcast March day, 88 students have come from schools within a couple of hours away to visit the new University of California campus here. In the distance, truck engines roar and construction equipment beeps, backing up in the muddy clay where the campus library, academic buildings, and student housing are being built for the semester that begins in September.
Scheduled to open this fall, with 1,000 students and 60 faculty members, the Merced campus will be the first new American research university in the 21st century. The 10th campus of California’s top public-university system, it also will be the first University of California campus to open in four decades and the first in the system to be located in the San Joaquin Valley, a 245-mile stretch spanning primarily agricultural counties where college-going rates have long lagged behind those of other regions in the state.
“So, what do you think of our campus?” asks Marsha Bond, the tour guide, as she gestures toward the construction site.
“I like the cows,” a student replies.
For now, livestock is one of the more tangible features of the Merced campus. Students cannot yet walk the grounds, so their tour begins with an off-site PowerPoint presentation that in-cludes architectural drawings of how university facilities are expected to look when they are complete.
Throughout the students’ visit, Ms. Bond focuses on engaging their imaginations and selling them on the sense of possibility that accompanies a new campus and being a pioneering student. How, she asks, would you like to shape the history of the Merced campus? How would you like to found a club, maybe a ski team that would practice in the nearby Sierra Nevada?
“This is going to be a really unique opportunity for you,” she says.
Lofty Goals
The sense of promise offered by a new public research university, 17 years in the making, has created high expectations for the roles that the campus will play in the region and in the state.
University officials, for example, have set a goal of filling half of each year’s class with students like those on the tour: residents of the San Joaquin Valley, where 3.4 percent of high-school graduates attend a University of California campus, compared with 7.7 percent of students statewide. The valley already has three California State University campuses, but local public-school and community-college administrators are looking to the University of California’s presence to help them further raise the educational aspirations of the region’s students, many of whom speak English as a second language and have parents who did not attend college.
California politicians want the campus to help accommodate the growing number of college students in the state, which was the original impetus for university officials to pursue another branch. State officials and regional business leaders are also looking to the university to help improve the economy of the valley, where unemployment rates are 12.6 percent, compared with 6.7 percent across California.
Officials of the Merced campus face those challenges having already traveled a long and complicated path just to get to opening day. At times advocates for the campus worried it might never become reality, as the state suffered two economic recessions, and plans for Merced developed under the watch of four different governors. Environmental concerns forced a change of site, and state fiscal problems delayed the scheduled 2004 opening by one year.
Along the way, and even now, skeptics have questioned the wisdom of spending scarce state dollars on opening a brand-new research university instead of increasing student access by expanding current four-year campuses or opening more community colleges. Others bemoan the choice of Merced, a rural city with a population of about 70,000, located far from the state’s most densely populated regions, such as fast-growing Southern California, and smaller than other valley cities such as Fresno, which has a population of about 456,000.
“It didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t make sense now,” says John L. Burton, a former Democratic state senator who served as president pro tem of the Senate until term limits required him to retire last year. “It is a boondoggle, but it’s done.”
Why Here?
It has been a decade since University of California officials chose Merced for the new campus. It beat out two other finalists, Fresno and Madera, in part because of the apparent ease of acquiring the land. Situated on a plateau at the edge of the Sierra Nevada foothills, the property had only one owner -- a nonprofit educational group, the Virginia Smith Trust -- and it was willing to donate the land.
Local business and community leaders, hopeful that a university would improve their fortunes, had begun an aggressive campaign to promote their city as soon as the University of California began investigating the possibility of a new campus, in 1988.
Bob Carpenter, president of a Merced insurance agency, served as chairman of the advocacy group. “I started out thinking, We don’t have a snowball’s chance to win this thing for little ol’ Merced,” he says.
But the group believed their town had a lot to offer and set out to prove it, Mr. Carpenter adds. They persuaded the city government and the local irrigation district to conduct a study to document the availability of water in the area -- always a concern in the valley, where sun scorches the land from April through October. And they raised money: A $75-per-plate community dinner and raffle brought in $50,000, which they used to hire a public-relations firm.
As the final vote to select a campus neared, Mr. Carpenter’s group supplied nearby schools with more than 6,000 postcards, on which students wrote personal notes to the university’s regents about why Merced would be a good home for the campus.
After Merced won the vote, “it was fun to see a community finally get enthused,” Mr. Carpenter says. That same year, a nearby Air Force base was closing, and residents were confronting the loss of 6,000 jobs.
Environmental Snafus
The joy among advocates of the campus in Merced was soon tempered as it became clear that the university would not be able to build on the property that had been selected. The land includes a system of seasonal wetlands, known as vernal pools, that serve as habitats for rare species like fairy shrimp -- small crustaceans that are considered an important link in the food chain. Environmental activists opposed building on the site, and federal regulators were hesitant to issue permits for construction there.
By the end of 2000, university officials were seeking an alternate site in Merced -- and the money to pay for new land.
Finding donors to support an emerging campus whose future sometimes seemed uncertain was a challenge, says Michael L. Campbell, associate vice chancellor for university advancement. “There are no alumni, no grateful corporations you’ve done research for or broad industries you’ve done research for,” he says.
The University of California name, though, did give the Merced campus some instant credibility, he says. And individuals, businesses, and foundations from throughout the San Joaquin Valley showed interest in supporting a campus they hoped would improve education for their children and for potential employees, and provide a better quality of life for their community.
“I’m very pleasantly surprised how proactive the region has been in supporting the campus,” Mr. Campbell says. “It’s people wanting to make this happen, wanting to do something for the San Joaquin Valley.”
It was with this vision that the California-based David and Lucile Packard Foundation stepped up, in March 2001, to offer more than $11-million for the university to acquire a less environmentally sensitive property. The gift also helped secure 5,780 acres of vernal-pool areas, at the site that was originally selected for the campus and elsewhere, so that the land could be set aside for protection from development. Richard T. Schlosberg III, who was president of the Packard Foundation at the time, issued a statement when the gift was announced. He said the foundation saw the donation as an opportunity to improve valley residents’ access to the university and to foster environmental stewardship.
Mr. Campbell credits the Packard Foundation with saving the Merced campus.
Since then, university officials have been able to secure gifts from other businesses and foundations active in the region, including the Ernest and Julio Gallo Winery, which gave $5-million to help start a school of management; the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which gave $2-million for conservation; and Foster Farms, a poultry company that gave $1.2-million for a program to provide students practical experience in engineering while working for area nonprofit groups.
University officials have also sought support from individuals. A donor club, started about three years ago, now has about 200 members who give $1,000 per year. The money goes into a discretionary fund for the chancellor, who has used it to pay for such things as architectural drawings for the campus recreation center.
Political Resistance
As university fund raisers were pursuing private gifts, the campus’s governmental-affairs officials were working the halls of the State Capitol, where support for public financing of the Merced campus has often been precarious.
During lean budget times, in the early 1990s and in the past several years, some lawmakers have placed Merced low on the priority list. When budget cuts were forcing existing colleges to turn students away, many lawmakers hesitated to approve start-up costs for a new campus of the research-oriented University of California, whose professors tend to spend a smaller proportion of their time teaching than do faculty members at California State University or community colleges.
Initially, the system’s other nine campuses also mounted “significant resistance” to a 10th campus, says Dennis A. Cardoza, a Democrat who represented Merced in the State Assembly and is now a U.S. congressman. The existing campuses didn’t want to further split the state aid allocated to the system. Mr. Cardoza says their opposition faded once system officials named a chancellor for Merced, in 1999, and she became a regular presence at system meetings.
One of the biggest blows came in 2003, when California faced a $38-billion deficit. To help close the gap, lawmakers delayed the campus’s scheduled 2004 opening by one year, once again raising fears about its future.
“It was a defining moment when folks thought that maybe the campus is just not going to happen,” says Larry Salinas, director of governmental relations for the Merced campus.
More uncertainty came that fall, when voters recalled Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat who had been a strong ally of the campus. No one knew what Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican and a political newcomer, thought about Merced. And he took office facing a $15-billion budget deficit.
But university officials didn’t have to wait long to find out. In his first State of the State address, the governor plugged the Merced campus as a way to “expand the dream of college.” The budget the governor signed last year included $20-million for the institution. This year he proposed $24-million, an amount that is included in legislation now moving through the State Senate.
Wrong Solution?
Some still argue that there were better ways to expand the college dream in California than by building a research university in a remote pocket of the state. The campus is unlikely to make a major contribution to absorbing California’s growing number of students any time soon, given that it is starting small, enrolling 1,000 students this year and raising that number by about 800 each year.
“If there were no such thing as opportunity costs, if we had money to do everything, how could anyone be against this?” says Patrick M. Callan, president of the California-based National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and former executive director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, a state agency that provides advice to policy makers on higher-education issues.
But, he says, “we have been squeezing people at the bottom and turning people away at community colleges at the same time we’re investing in this. The tragedy of Merced is that we never did have that debate about what we need to do to provide opportunities for Californians.”
Charles B. Reed, chancellor of the California State University System, argues that California does need more space at its 33 public four-year institutions because they are “bulging at the seams.”
And he believes the opening of the Merced campus will help the state and the valley. However, he says, he probably would have looked to ease access pressures in other ways before spending money to erect a university from scratch. “Campuses are very, very expensive places,” he says. “Expanding your current capacity is probably a much better way to go instead of building new campuses.”
Carol Tomlinson-Keasey, the chancellor of the new campus, defends the state’s choice to build a new research university in the San Joaquin Valley.
She says it will serve as an economic engine for the region and the state at the same time that it fosters new research on regional problems and helps to provide students in the valley easier access to the University of California.
The campus, she says, has already won $15-million in federal research grants, which otherwise might not have ended up in California, and has raised $40-million in private money that has helped the community by financing such benefits as college scholarships for area students. Merced professors are taking advantage of the valley’s natural resources to conduct research on better uses of water and solar energy, she says.
“We are sitting on 300 days of sunshine a year and are just letting it fall to the ground,” Ms. Tomlinson-Keasey says. The university, she adds, is “adding to the engineering and technical expertise in the state.”
She acknowledges that her goal of having at least half of each class come from the San Joaquin Valley is “perhaps a little idealistic.” Only 12 percent of the 9,000 applications the Merced campus received for this fall came from valley residents.
Ms. Tomlinson-Keasey says she is not happy with that ratio. But the good news, she says, is that a total of 3,500 students from the valley applied to at least one University of California campus this year, a 17-percent increase over the year before. “You see the drawing power of UC Merced,” she says. “We never would have seen that increase before.”
Wooing Students
The valley’s high-school and community-college students have mixed levels of interest in Merced’s new university.
Many who say they don’t want to attend have not seen the academic programs they want to pursue, such as broadcast journalism, nursing, or political science, among the limited initial majors. Others have their hearts set on another college, one where they have attended football and basketball games growing up or where friends and siblings have gone. Many do not have the academic records they need to be eligible to attend a University of California campus, and some simply want to get out of the valley for college.
Brooke Jahner, a senior at Golden Valley High School, in Merced, says she wants to go to Cal State’s San Diego campus or to Berkeley, if she can get in, to study law. “I’m tired of Merced,” she says. “I want a bigger city. There is nothing for students to do here.”
The new university does appeal to local students who have strong ties to their families, as many recent immigrants who live in the valley do, or who want to save money by living closer to home. Some are attracted to the pioneering possibilities at a new campus, where they feel they can stand out.
Many of those factors appeal to Soledad Reyes, who is in her third year at Merced College, a community college, and plans to transfer to the university this fall. That path, she says, will allow her to continue to work in her family’s catering business while giving her more time to prepare to move away from home.
“I want to be financially stable and mentally ready to go to a bigger place, and this will help me,” says Ms. Reyes, who is studying chemistry and is considering a move to San Francisco after getting a bachelor’s degree. “I am also looking forward to being in the first graduating class,” she says. “I like to make history.”
As for the students on the college tour with Ms. Bond, many report being impressed by what they have seen. Some say they will seriously consider applying. But many are focused on other colleges, including several in the Cal State system.
Stephanie Poole, a senior at Riverdale High School, about 90 minutes from here, says she received a letter from the Merced campus telling her that she had a guaranteed spot in the freshman class because she ranked in the top 4 percent of her high-school class. (Merced officials sent letters to all such students in the San Joaquin Valley.) But she is planning to go to a Cal State campus, probably Stanislaus. She says the university has a good program in teacher education, which she wants to pursue, and she has heard good things about it from a friend.
Merced officials hope word of mouth will help them recruit more valley students as people they know begin to attend the new university. Campus officials are working to make the first students’ experience enjoyable by developing a social calendar. They are considering such events as poetry slams, outdoor movies, and backpacking trips to nearby Yosemite National Park. University officials say they want students to develop their own campus traditions “organically,” but administrators may try out some ideas, such as a fairy-shrimp festival in the spring.
Prospective students are already active in student government, representing Merced’s campus in the University of California Students Association. The participants include community-college students who had planned to transfer to the university in 2004 and had to wait a year when the campus’s opening was delayed. The institution also will offer intramural sports, and down the road may consider adding some intercollegiate programs. Fraternities and sororities may come in time, but none are planned for now.
Standing at the edge of the campus, Hugo Licea, a junior at Coalinga High School, about two hours away, is still having a hard time grasping just how UC at Merced will look, how student life there will be, and whether the institution might be a good fit for him. He says he has been thinking about the system’s Davis campus because of its veterinary-medicine program. But he also likes biology, and Merced might work for that.
At the end of the campus tour, he remains at a loss. Pressed for his thoughts about the university now, he shrugs and smiles. “I don’t know,” he says, then glances back over his shoulder for another look at the construction. “It was all right. But it’s hard to envision how it’s going to be when it’s done.”
