"The middle of nowhere.” That’s the phrase I heard from several Californians when I told them that I was writing an article about UC Merced, the newest and most geographically remote of the state’s 10-campus chain of academically elite, research-focused public universities. Opening in 2005 at a construction cost of $500 million, embroiled in environmental controversies despite its desire to showcase itself as a “green” campus, and enrolling to date only 5,200 students out of the 25,000 projected to materialize by 2030, the University of California, Merced, located about 100 miles inland in the state’s searing and economically depressed rural interior, is the most financially and politically precarious member of the UC system.
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