Does anyone really think UCSC provides a better undergrad education than the average CSU? They literally have the exact same state mandated curriculum. But FAANG will hire someone with a UC degree over a CSU, thus the system is overflowing.
Just to give two examples, both Soquel Avenue and Lower Ocean have some of the ugliest buildings and lots in the history of architecture and urbanism. Why multi-story building can take their place?
Aside from NIMBYsm and the incompetence of local administrators, the main problems for bigger and better urbanism in SC are water (apparently, then who knows) and transit. Regarding the latter, there are virtually no public transportation options between Santa Cruz-Aptos and Santa Cruz-San Jose. That is, there is only one bus.
As someone who lived in SC for many years and for some inexplicable reason still lives there, what I can say is that the town could be 10 times more beautiful. I can't understand why the areas closest to the water have been "sold" to rich people instead of being used by the public, Mission Street (the main vehicular artery) is as ugly and dangerous as it can be for pedestrians and cyclists, West Cliff has been planted with ugly grass that you can't even tell if it's natural or turf-like, and the shoreline between the San Lorenzo River and the end of Seabright, man, it's so ugly, full of concrete, no trees, with rusting infrastructure that it's hard to believe nobody in ten+ years has done anything to make it decent-looking.
Then, "A pretty white town that only looks somewhat Latino in the daytime because the service workers who keep this town running commute in from Watsonville and Salinas.", is a deeply misguided observation. The town itself is not pretty at all. Only looks somewhat Latino? I live in a neighborhood in Santa Cruz proper that is around, according to my visual estimate, 80% latino, and the 20% estimate for the whole town is fair (more than 30% at the county level).
The only real solution IMO is just to build more housing in California. For that to happen though, we need increased density which requires relaxed zoning, but NIMBY's want to preserve their city in its exact state forever, so we end up with this craziness.
I mean, in a sense it is. NIMBY-dominated suburbia might be a disaster for the environment, economic growth, and the well-being of newer and poorer residents, but it does an excellent job of keeping homeowners' property values sky-high.
There's no good reason that Santa Cruz should specifically stay the way it was 50 years ago or whatever. Personally, I would have liked for Santa Cruz to remain the way it was before people came and tore up all the nature to build a bunch of suburbs, but I can't get what I want either. Culture is inherently ever-changing; Santa Cruz may be _different_ in 50 years if densification and growth was allowed but I don't see how it would be somehow not be Santa Cruz.
There are real, severe economic effects from trying to freeze a city in an arbitrary point in time. At some point the well-being of real actual people needs to be prioritized over the aesthetic preferences and property values of a few NIMBYs. Especially when those aesthetic preferences essentially boil down to hating multi-story apartments and public transit.
Even many of the people who are rabidly pro-transit will be at least mildly against "transit right through my bedroom"; most people don't like being eminently domained.
This usually results in the solution being "motion" of some sort; a city that is run down or out of the limelight begins to modernize and upgrade, and it becomes the new center, and the towns that don't chance ossify and eventually die off.
It may be that the "California problem" is solved because everyone eventually moves away.
There's nothing wrong with this - no one is obligated to sell their land to developers. But considering that NIMBYs have to fight hard and continuously to block new development that would have otherwise proceeded, clearly that's not the case.
Which is probably why so many people want to live there in the first place. Just like Vancouver or other such vibrant cities with great nature, pretty views and many amenities.
Not being able to do something because of size for a human behaviour problem is almost always the smooth brain argument.
https://www.ucsc.edu/about/facts-figures.html
Which suggests UCSC should either cut enrollment or build housing. They have suitable land for the latter. If they can't build housing due to legal restrictions, they could cut enrollment. Those are the realistic options.