In May, Alliant International University purchased 60 acres adjacent to its current campus in Scripps Ranch, doubling the size of the campus to 124 acres.

The independent, not-for-profit institution has campuses in Fresno, Irvine, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco, Mexico City and Tokyo and focuses on providing degrees in applied social sciences.

The $17 million purchase will make way for the Marshall Goldsmith School of Management and the California School of Professional Psychology, as well as additional dormitories, a new student center and a student quad, according to Geoffrey Cox, president of Alliant University.

University officials called the two educational buildings the anchor projects for the campus, which enrolled nearly 1,500 students for the current school year.

“The campus was built in the late ’60s,” said Tina Reagan, a project architect for San Diego-based Sillman Wright Architects who also has been working on the Alliant University project for the past year. “There have been no improvements … It’s really the time to bridge to the future. We can build state-of-the-art facilities and attract incoming students.”

Current improvements for the buildings on the original 60 acres are estimated at $3 million and are scheduled for completion at the end of this year, according to Reagan.

“It’s consistent with wider trends around the state,” said Abdi Soltani, executive director for the Oakland-based The Campaign for College Opportunity, a nonprofit coalition that works with business and labor organizations to ensure that students in California have the opportunity to go to college.

Soltani added that the last big surge of rapid growth for higher education was in the 1950s and ’60s, but he expects this surge to end by 2012.

SDSU Growth Plan

Leading, or rather paving, the way locally is San Diego State University’s Campus Master Plan. SDSU is planning for an increase in enrollment — from the 25,000 currently enrolled full-time students to 35,000 during the next 20 years — because of state-mandated growth and as a regional benefit, according to a statement from university officials.

“Our basic goal is to increase enrollment,” said Anthony Fulton, university architect for the past 28 years. “We’ve reached the ceiling.”

He added that while a “good majority” of the buildings on campus were built in the ’50s and ’60s, the university was taking a “balanced approach” to renovations and master plan concerns.

As for San Diego and Imperial counties, enrollment is expected to increase across the board during a 10-year span that began in fall 2003, according to The Campaign for College Opportunity. (Estimates for independent colleges were not available.)

•  Enrollment at the community college level is expected to grow by 37 percent, from 178,787 to 245,238;

•   The California State University (CSU) system will be the most affected with a 48 percent increase to 52,334 by 2013; and

•  The impact of increased enrollment at the University of California (UC) level shows the least projected growth from 19,872 to 23,121.

Niche Schools

According to Soltani, niche schools such as law schools or private universities may be seeing an increase in demand, leading to expansion or renovation needs.

Thomas Jefferson School of Law, one of three local law schools, announced in late October plans for a move from its current space in Old Town to downtown’s East Village.

In the next three years, the law school predicts enrollment to increase by 200 from the 800 students it serves now. The Island Avenue property it purchased has a gross square footage of 177,000 — an additional 100,000 square feet more than the space the school currently occupies.

Costs for the new eight-story building project are estimated at $40 million, according to Dean Rudy Hasl at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Tentatively, classes downtown are scheduled for fall 2010.

Reasons for pursuing a new location included updating classrooms. Hasl said the original buildings in Old Town — where the law school has been located for more than 20 years — were not designed to be used as classrooms. Proximity to the courts, law offices and the proposed public library in the same neighborhood were factors as well.

At the University of San Diego, a number of million-dollar construction projects have recently been completed or are under way.

Both the 80,000-square-foot, $36 million School of Leadership and Education Sciences building and the 90,000-square-foot, $26 million San Buenaventura Residence Hall have been completed.

The $28 million renovation of the Hahn University Center and construction of a 55,000-square-foot Student Life Pavilion are scheduled to break ground next spring.

While USD is a private Roman Catholic university established in 1949, undergraduate enrollment is expected to maintain its stance at 5,000 “very deliberately,” said Thomas Kosgrove, associate vice president of student affairs at USD.