Saddleback, Cal State System Would Share Proposed Campus

MISSION VIEJO —  In what would be the first project of is kind in the state, Saddleback Community College District officials have proposed building a campus to be shared by students from the community college and the California State University system.

Richard Sneed, chancellor of the community college district, has submitted a report to the state community college chancellor outlining a partnership in which a 400- to 700-acre joint campus would be constructed in fast-growing South County. Sneed said in an interview this week that he hopes that the campus will open by the turn of the century.

Officials say pairing the two college systems would save millions of dollars in construction costs and help community college students transferring to a Cal State university.

“It makes good economic sense,” Sneed said, “and good educational sense.”

Sneed said he has been discussing the campus with Cal State officials for more than a year.

“For this to be in place by 2000, we have to start in 1990,” Sneed said. “We can’t wait until 1998.”

By 2000, South County’s population will have almost doubled, from 500,000 to almost 900,000, Sneed said in his report.

Escalating real estate costs and “the continuing growth of South Orange County . . . make it imperative” that land for the campus be found in the near future, Sneed said.

Cal State University administrators have praised the concept of a joint campus, but are approaching the idea cautiously.

“I think it would be a tremendous thing,” said George Giacumakis, director of the Cal State Fullerton satellite campus that opened last fall at Saddleback College. “The cooperative system is very healthy. We’ve seen it work in our satellite campuses.”

Under Sneed’s proposal, the Cal State University system would only offer upper division and graduate-level courses on the campus. Lower division courses would be managed by the community college.

The savings from sharing a campus “would be immense,” Giacumakis said.

Construction costs at the Cal State San Marcos facility being built near Escondido will run about $600 million, said Rob Snyder, physical planning director for the university.

Sharing a campus would save about $150 million in construction costs for parking, a library, a cafeteria and maintenance facilities, Snyder estimated.

But the plan presents some difficulties for the Cal State system, Giacumakis said.

The first would be the loss of revenue from freshman and sophomore students, who provide the bulk of income for four-year universities, Giacumakis said.

Sneed said legislation would have to be enacted to provide special funding for a college offering only upper-division courses.

Giacumakis said some university officials may be intimidated by the joint-campus proposal because “this has never been done before in the state.”

“On the other hand, our satellite campus is here today because we pushed and pushed for it,” Giacumakis said. The dual campus “can be done. I think there is a lot of potential for the future.”

Sneed said he is talking with Santa Margarita Co. officials about using a portion of Rancho Mission Viejo for the proposed new campus. The 40,000-acre ranch is one of the largest pieces of undeveloped land left in Orange County.

“We get an amazing number of propositions for our land,” said company spokeswoman Diane Gaynor. “Whether or not anything will happen is purely speculation because no offer has been made.”

The idea of a joint campus has also intrigued some state education experts.

“The idea behind it makes a lot of sense,” said Kenneth O’Brien, executive director of the California Post-Secondary Education Commission, a state group that reports to the governor’s office on educational projects. “If plans for this were to reach our office, we’d probably look very kindly at it.”

Even if plans for the joint campus never leave the drawing board, Sneed intends to lobby for a third South County community college for the district that now includes Saddleback College and Irvine Valley College.

“The Saddleback Community College District needs a third college before the year 2005 and desperately needs to acquire a site while land is still available,” Sneed’s report said. “There is no community college for 37 miles between Mission Viejo and Oceanside. That clearly demonstrates the need for another community college in South County.”