There are petitions on change.org that are closed for UC San Jose and UC Redding.
I think you’ll see 2 more CSUs before another UC is built. I have heard specific plans for new CSUs in Roseville and perhaps Redding. it will be a LONG time before anyone attends a class at UC #10 - maybe 20 years … so, why guess.
Or maybe some brand new community colleges!
There are currently no plans to create another UC campus. The state is relying on demographic estimates, which indicate (in theory) that demand for public higher education in CA will peak in 2023-24 and then start dropping. Until then, there will be some expansion of some of the existing campuses (especially Merced). The state has also noted that the UCs could handle significantly more students if they increased enrollments during the summers.
The last time that the UC system decided to go forward with a new campus was in 1988. It then took 17 years to pick a site and build a campus; UC Merced did not open for classes until 2005. So even if UC approved an additional campus tomorrow (which isn’t going to happen), it could easily take 15-20 years for the new campus to actually open its doors.
Historically, the UC system had a shortcut, which was to swipe an existing campus from the CSU system. Both UCLA and UCSB were acquired in this way. However, this approach is now banned by the state legislature; otherwise there might be some temptation to redevelop Cal Poly as UCSLO.
The CSU system has a number of “satellite campuses”, connected to existing CSUs. The existing satellite campuses are the most likely candidates to become new CSUs, if they grow large enough. For example, CSU San Marcos was originally the north San Diego County satellite of San Diego State, and CSU Channel Islands was originally the Ventura County satellite of Northridge State.
CSU Bakersfield has a satellite campus in Lancaster (north LA County), and there have been unsuccessful attempts in the legislature to spin that off as CSU Antelope Valley.
To expand on what Corbett said above–I’ve heard that UC is planning to expand their summer quarter offerings, with the idea that summer enrollment would approach that for the other three quarters. The campuses are comparatively under-utilized in the summer, so this is the cheapest/easiest way to handle increased enrollment. There were also suggestions that all UCs could move to the quarter system to accommodate this (currently UC Berkeley and Merced are on semesters, as are many professional schools). I made no attempt to verify this info–was told this during a presentation at a UC campus.
One idea (which is only a proposal) is to do something like the Dartmouth D-Plan, which has been described as “a way to fit 4,000 students into 3,000 beds.”
Suppose that there are four quarters per academic year. Every student is on campus for three quarters, and is off for one quarter. The key is that the off quarters are staggered – some students get the summer quarter off as usual, but just as many others are off during the fall, winter, or spring.
In other words, ~25% of the students are off during any quarter. So let’s say you have enough room on campus to handle a class of 3,000 students. You can actually enroll 4,000, because during any given quarter, 1,000 will be off, and only 3,000 will be on campus.
After four quarters, all 4,000 students will have been on campus for three quarters and off for one quarter. So you’ve successfully educated 4,000 students over the course of the academic year, even though only 3,000 were actually on campus at any given time.
Another claimed advantage of this system is that it facilitates internships. If you are out of school during the fall, winter, or spring, there is supposedly much less competition for internships than in the summer.
My guess is the next UC will be online. Other colleges are doing it. It’s a great way to increase student numbers without the expense of brick & mortar.