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Diving Overview:
- San Francisco city officials are urging the University of California system to open a downtown campus, citing the “remarkable array of opportunities” it could provide students.
- Mayor London Breed and City Attorney David Chiu he wrote to the chairman of the UC Board of Regents Tuesday, indicating the city is a hub for fast-growing industries such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology.
- “A number of properties” in the area could serve as a multi-use UC campus and accommodate student housing, officials wrote.
Diving statistics:
Economic pressures could stand in the way of such a significant expansion of UC.
At the same time, the system could be attracted by the prospect of new student housing. They compete with the housing crisisas options remain limited and inflation drives prices up.
California policymakers have tried to intervene, including last year send $4 billion in loans and grants to three state systems of public higher education to pay for affordable housing. However, with the growing state budget deficit, the governor sought to delay some of this funding.
In their letter, Breed and Chiu cited a lack of student housing, saying the potential campus could alleviate some of those pressures. They wrote that they would like to find a formal way to explore opening the campus.
“We believe that bringing students to a city that is bursting with culture and serves as an economic powerhouse for the region provides them with the opportunity to learn and live in a vibrant, world-class metropolitan center,” they wrote.
UC enrolled more than 230,400 undergraduates in fall 2022, about the same as the previous year.
