Enrollment Surge Has Universities Scrambling

TEMPE, Ariz. - There are 25,341 parking spaces at Arizona State University, but don't count on getting one for an 11 a.m. class, as Daniel Heard, a senior, learned the hard way.

'I think I got a spot once,' said Heard, who tried driving his car from his off-campus apartment the first week of classes this semester. 'All the other times I had to go back home and get my bike.'

With 64,000 students, and plans to grow to more than 90,000 by 2020, Arizona State is trying to become the nation's largest university, as it scrambles to keep up with the region's surging population. Like other public universities in fast-growing Sun Belt states, it also faces more than just logistical challenges.

Soaring numbers of students, many of them immigrants or the first generation to attend college, are seeking higher education in a landscape with far fewer private alternatives than in the East. In some states, financing lags.

'We're expanding enrollments, we're trying to reach the first-to-go-to-college, we're trying to reach students whose families speak Spanish at home,' said Mark Yudof, the chancellor of the University of Texas system. 'It's extremely difficult to do all these things simultaneously, and I think it remains to be seen if we're up to the challenge.'

At Arizona State, the president, Michael M. Crow, lured five years ago from Columbia, says that his university is up to the challenge and that he is creating a new paradigm for an American university, one that can expand exponentially, welcome a diversity of students, become a major research center and simultaneously improve.

'There's a natural tendency to think that smaller is better,' Crow said. 'But it's not size that's the issue. It's can you deliver quality and size at the same time.'

Many students and professors are dubious. 'I understand the need - students need a place to go,' Heard said. 'But I think that growing to 100,000 students is just ridiculous. It doesn't seem like resources are keeping up.'

The rate of growth is dizzying. Arizona State already has expanded by 14,000 students in seven years. California and Florida also have had enrollment explosion. In just the past two years, the 23 universities in the California state university system grew to 450,000 students, from 410,000.

The Florida state government faces a shortfall of more than $1 billion; in anticipation, some state universities have capped enrollment.