Already facing a massive housing shortage that is forcing hundreds of incoming students to live out of cars and motels, UC Santa Barbara is now grappling with a crisis-level shortfall in available class space for the fall quarter. Dean of Undergraduate Education Jeffrey Stopple sounded the alarm in an email sent Friday afternoon to Chancellor Henry Yang and other top university officials. The message was then shared with the Independent by one of the recipients, who wished to remain anonymous.
In it, Stopple said academic advisors are “desperately” trying to secure for first-year and transfer students the 12 units they need to achieve full-time status, but are finding there simply aren’t enough courses in the catalog to meet demand. With instruction set to begin September 23, many undergraduates are “entirely out of luck,” he wrote.
“We are again in our annual fall enrollment crisis, as we have been every fall since 2015,” Stopple continued. “The campus is perfectly capable of projecting how many units we can generate in the fall, even as early as the previous winter quarter.” Why it consistently fails to do so is clearly a source of intense confusion and frustration for Stopple. “I am discouraged enough that if I were not already stepping down,” he said in reference to a scheduled departure from his position later this year, “I would now.”