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On a recent Thursday afternoon, UC Riverside’s campus was bustling. Coffee shops and dining halls were packed, and students flocked to an art sale near the university’s 161-foot bell tower, the central landmark on the campus.
Enrollment was flat this year at most University of California campuses, some of which lack the physical capacity to add students. Others wanted to increase enrollment but missed their targets.
UC Riverside, however, was the exception.
Enrollment at the Inland Empire campus is booming this school year. In the fall, Riverside welcomed 8,297 freshmen and transfers, its largest-ever entering group of students, made up almost entirely of Californians and 24% larger than the previous year.
“There’s definitely a lot more activity now on the campus,” said Ro Zheng, a fourth-year student studying psychology.
The growth was intentional for Riverside, which is expanding its capacity with more dorms and new academic buildings, including a 120,000-square-foot facility expected to open this year. The campus admitted 70,557 students for fall 2025, about 19,000 more than the previous year.
But increased admissions don’t always translate into more enrollments. UC Merced, for example, significantly expanded its admitted student pool — from about 31,000 to 50,000 students — but its enrollment slightly decreased in fall 2025.
In UC Riverside’s case, officials say years of working to improve the campus’ reputation and its academic prestige have resulted in more demand from families and students.
The UC system is relying on Riverside, one of the few campuses with physical space to grow, to continue adding students, and particularly California residents, to help the system meet its long-term enrollment goals. To do that, the campus will likely need to add even more housing, classroom space and staff in the coming years.
“I think as other UC campuses kind of butt up against their own capacity, it does provide an opportunity,” said Emily Engelschall, UC Riverside’s associate vice chancellor of enrollment services. “We are a campus that has the space and ability to grow. We want to be an access point to the University of California.”
Reputation has ‘blossomed’
When Kim Wilcox came to Riverside in 2013 to become its chancellor, one of his first goals was to make the campus a more appealing destination for students.
“The thought was if you didn’t go to Berkeley or UCLA, or maybe San Diego, you weren’t much of a student,” he said.
Wilcox, who stayed on as chancellor until retiring last summer, said he began targeting national media outlets for coverage, hoping to “tell our story” and slowly change the campus’s image.
But it wasn’t just marketing that helped turn the tide. The campus hired more faculty and invested more in research. Its research expenditures grew from $130 million in 2013 to about $200 million in 2023, when the campus was invited to join the Association of American Universities, a prestigious membership organization for top-flight research universities.
Patricio Schurter, a first-year student in the materials science and engineering program, has been impressed by the research in the department, including a group of professors working on creating new types of batteries.
“I was trying to look into as many of them as possible to try and get into some undergrad research,” Schurter said.
In recent years, Riverside has also regularly been first or second in the U.S. News & World Report’s social mobility rankings, which are calculated based on the percentage of Pell Grant recipients at a given campus and the graduation rates of those students.
“In the last decade or so, UCR has simply blossomed in terms of national reputation,” Wilcox said. “For families who are looking to make sure their students have success, it’s a pretty appealing location.”
Riverside also has a geographical advantage. UC’s Irvine, Los Angeles and San Diego campuses all have capacity constraints, noted Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.
“And so there’s only one UC left in Southern California, and that’s UC Riverside,” he said. “So I think that plays a role in some of what we’re seeing here, too.”
Only the start?
If Riverside’s future enrollment growth goes as planned, this year’s increases will only be the beginning.
The campus, which in the fall enrolled 27,767 students, including graduate students, hopes to grow enrollment to 30,000 by 2030, Engelschall said. And by 2035, the campus projects enrollment will reach 35,000 students, according to its Long Range Development Plan.
The UC system as a whole is relying on Riverside to meet or come close to those targets. UC’s 2030 capacity plan says that the Merced and Riverside campuses will account for 30% to 35% of the system’s proposed undergraduate enrollment growth.
But that report also notes that for UCR to “provide the same quality of experience for students” that it did when enrollment was under 20,000, the campus needs more classroom space, housing capacity and faculty.
Riverside has taken some steps toward filling those needs.
By fall of 2026, the campus plans to open the Undergraduate Teaching and Learning Facility, a four-story building that will add more general education classrooms, as well as science and engineering labs.
Riverside has also added about 4,000 more beds since 2020, including a new student housing complex that opened in the fall with 1,568 beds. The complex has two apartment-style buildings housing both UC Riverside students and community college students from the nearby Riverside Community College District.
Engelschall acknowledged that more is needed. “We’re already looking to see what sort of opportunities there are to fast-track additional housing complexes on campus to be able to support that growth,” she said.
More faculty and staff will also likely be necessary, said Kevin Cook, another researcher at PPIC.
“Even if you do have physical space and the capacity to build, serving a whole new set of students requires ongoing investment in hiring new professors, teaching assistants, counselors and all of that,” Cook said.
Some students say they have already noticed staffing deficiencies. Zheng, the psychology major, said many sections of general education courses, required for graduation, have been filling up quickly this academic year.
Still, Zheng said they see the benefit of UC Riverside opening its doors to more students.
“It does make it a little bit more difficult for us, but I still think it’s important for there to be equitable chances for everyone to go to college,” Zheng said. “I think it’s nice that there are more people who can access a UC campus.”
Jihoon Kwon, a member of the EdSource California Student Journalism Corps, contributed to this report.
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