In the land of sunshine, Pradeep Khosla is making it rain.

As he finishes his fifth year as chancellor of UC San Diego, the campus is being showered with a record level of private donations, fueling the school’s breakneck expansion.

The university has now raised roughly half of the $2 billion it seeks through a capital campaign that Khosla initiated almost from the moment he was recruited from Carnegie Mellon University in 2012.

The surge represents a major turnaround for the campus, which was lagging in fundraising, especially among its alumni. The latest gifts include $75 million from alumnus Taner Halicioglu, who helped turn Facebook into a global company.


Khosla will soon have new alumni to court; the campus will confer more than 9,000 degrees during commencement on June 17. The keynote speaker will be the Dalai Lama.

The chancellor spent time this week with The San Diego Union-Tribune to discuss fundraising and the recent start of a $1.6 billion infrastructure build-out that will make the school as big as UC Berkeley. He also talked about the university’s struggles to gain entry to the Big West Conference, which is crucial to the school’s move to Division I athletics.

In an interview filled with humor, Khosla, who has three children, reflected on his personal life, which involves the long journey from his childhood home in Mumbai, India to San Diego.

The conversation took place at University House, the school-owned chancellor’s home on La Jolla Farms Road. The interview has been edited for clarity and flow.


Question: Students gave you a white surfboard when you came five years ago. You live in a house that overlooks Black’s Beach, which is one of the great surfing beaches in Southern California. But you don’t surf.

Answer: I not only don’t surf, I don’t swim.

The reason I don’t swim is that at age 13, I was learning to swim and I cracked a rib. I never went back to the swimming pool. I have a pool here, but I have not put my foot in it. It’s weird.

Students presented Pradeep Khosla with a surfboard when he became chancellor in 2012. He’s yet to use it. (Erik Jepsen / UC San Diego)


Question: I was going to tease you by saying you’ve never become part of the beach culture in San Diego and ask: Is the university just a steppingstone to some place else for you?

Answer: No, no. I have completely involved myself in San Diego — in the micro-breweries, in the eating culture.

Question: The eating culture?

Answer: There are great restaurants here. If you want the best Iraqi food, it’s in El Cajon. Some of the best Indian halal food is in El Cajon. Some of the best Mexican food is in National City. The best Asian food is in Kearny Mesa. I go all over. I go to Tijuana just to eat.


Question: But the best San Diego food can be found where your daughter (Nina) works …

Answer: I love In-and-Out! I also love Five Guys. I love them for their peanuts.

Question: This is an important moment in your life. You just turned 60, and you’ve just been through a review of your first five years as chancellor. Are you going to stay?

Answer: I’m here. Look at the house. Look at the beach. The ocean. The sun’s coming out.


Question: Do you think, “I just turned 60!” We live longer, but it’s a landmark in people’s lives.

Answer: You know, it is. It’s kind of depressing. When I think about turning 60, I think of the end being nearer than it was before. (Laughs.) I don’t think of having a big, long future out there. (Laughs again.) I don’t mean to be depressing.

Question: Why are you laughing about it?

Answer: Because it’s weird. Even though I think that the next 10 to 15 years — if my health stays with me — will be the best of my life.


I’m doing well in my career. I’ve enjoyed being in San Diego. I’ve enjoyed being the leader of what I consider to be a spectacular university. It’s a moment in life I never imagined that I would have.

Question: You grew up in India, where there are some wealthy people. But there is a lot of poverty. All these years later, you’re chancellor of a university that pays you more money than the American president makes.

Answer: Yeah, but I don’t have Air Force One.

Question: Yeah, but he doesn’t live above Black’s Beach. Going back to Mumbai … Your mom taught school, your dad was a businessman. What did you expect your life would be when you were really young?


Answer: I always thought that I wanted to teach and do research. I always knew that.

Question: At what age?

Answer: I don’t know. Maybe high school. When I finished high school, I was admitted to the (Indian Institute of Technology). There’s five of them there. It was a cut-throat business to get in. Ninety percent of the graduating class went to the U.S. within two years, in those days. That was 1980 when I graduated.

The India you see today was not the India you saw then. If it was, I most likely would not have come to the U.S.


Question: What do you mean by that?

Answer: India was very poor. There was no opportunity. For an educated person, the only choice was to be an engineer or a doctor, or to be a bureaucrat in some company.

I did not like blood, so I picked engineering. Ironically, here I am leading one of the best medical schools in the country.

Question: What did you really know about America?


Answer: Nothing, except every one of my friends was here. Like I said, 90 percent of the graduating class would move to the U.S. within two years.

Question: What did you think America was? What were your impressions?

Answer: I could come here, do whatever I wanted, not be discriminated against. Life would be good, opportunity would be abundant. Which, for me, has been true.

Question: Before you came here for college, had you ever been to the United States?


Answer: Never. Not only that, in 1980, the only thing we knew about the U.S. was what we saw in movies that were released a year or two after they were released in the U.S. There were no American TV shows in India — not that I remember. In fact, TV was just coming of age in India at that time. So were telephones. When I came to this country, I had to make arrangements with an operator to call home to India once a month. It was a big “to do,” and very expensive.

Question: Were you a pretty industrious person at that point?

Answer: I was a goofball. (Laughs). In my undergrad years, I did enough work to merely get an A, and every so often it was hit-or-miss, so I would have As and Bs. I never quite got involved in studying until I came to the U.S.

In India, I knew that if I studied the night before the exam, there was a 90 percent probability that I would get an A. Every so often, I’d be wrong and I’d get a B.


Question: Do you ever just kick back? I saw a photo on Facebook of Al Pisano, the school’s engineering dean, working on a classic car. I thought, “There’s a man who knows how to stop and enjoy life.” Are you that kind of person?

Answer: In my mind, life is one continuum. There is no notion of, “This is my family,” and “Those are my friends,” and “This is my work,” and “That is my hobby.” My work is my hobby, my hobby is my work.

Question: Most people I know use the same word to describe you. Do you know what that word is?

Answer: I’d say I’m funny. If you asked my daughter, she doesn’t think I’m funny. But that’s OK.


Question: That’s the incorrect answer. People call you a workaholic. Are you?

Answer: That’s about right.

Question: You have the pressures of running a very large institution. You’re in the middle of a capital campaign that is crucial to the future of the university. You’re having fun in the middle of all this?

Answer: It is pressure. But it forces me to be creative, it forces me to be strategic, it forces me to think in ways that people normally don’t think.


There’s a difference between pressure that is eating at you and you hate every moment of your life versus pressure that is driving you to new ways of thinking.

Question: One of the university’s early chancellors, John Galbraith, was obsessed about getting the money to build a great library, which led to Geisel Library. Do you have your own short list of things to do?

Answer: My goal is to build at least one, maybe two, new colleges. I think our colleges are bigger than they should be. I think they should only have about 4,000 students (each).

Question: You already have six colleges. And I hear students say, “I get a good education here, but I’m bored out of my mind. There’s no social life here.” What about that?


Answer: That is a problem. But light rail is coming (from downtown San Diego in 2021) and we’re going to use that to transform the whole campus.

We have to ask ourselves: “How do we bring the outside inside, and how does the inside go outside?”

Maybe we also should put retail on campus. From here all the way down to La Jolla Shores, there are no (notably sized) grocery stores. If you want to go to Whole Foods, there is nothing in the neighborhood.

Question: This is not a college town. This is a neighborhood with a university in it. You don’t see signs in store windows, saying, “Welcome back, students,” and “Student discounts.”


Answer: Nah, it doesn’t. For our students to have that experience, there has to be some aspect of the town that is welcoming. This cannot be just a small enclave of elitism that is not integrated into the broader San Diego region.

Question: Sports are important to a lot of your students. They voted to have the university move up to Division I. UC San Diego sought to join the Big West Conference as part of that, but was turned down. I’m told that you’re going to have to get personally involved in solving the matter. Are you doing so?

Answer: I’m working hard at it.

First of all, there would have been no student vote if I had not signed off on it. There was resistance in the past — and even now — from some segments of the faculty. Just like any other community, there are people who believe we should be Division I and people who believe we should remain Division II.


My view is, an 18 year-old is old enough to die for this country, and by that logic an 18-year-old is old enough to make a decision about what he or she wants, right? If they want D-I sports, they get D-I sports. I don’t want to be second-guessing them. And in this case, they’re paying for (it) themselves. So we worked with faculty, and the Academic Senate was very supportive, and we got it approved.

If you look at the (Big West vote), I’m told, the UC chancellors voted yes and the Cal State chancellors voted no. And what I’m given to understand is that the Cal State leaders believe that Cal State Bakersfield should be admitted if UC San Diego is voted in. I’m also told that, in the past, Bakersfield’s request to be admitted into the Big West was not approved.

I’m a pretty egalitarian, inclusive guy. My view is let both institutions be admitted. We are not doing this for the edification of the chancellor or the institution. We are doing this for these young men and women who are students. It’s not like we are going to make millions and millions of dollars. All of these campuses are not in big TV viewing areas.

Question: Gonzaga is not in a big TV viewing area, but it is one of the best-known schools in the country because of its basketball program.


Answer: I understand. When we go to Division I, I would hope that we focus on basketball, too. I think we would have a great capability.

What I’m saying is that I hope the conference will be more open-minded and inclusive. I’ve been working with the nine votes out there and want to convince them that including both schools is fine with me. For my own students’ sake, I want us to be in the Big West.

Question: California has about 39 million people. That figure is expected to grow by about 5 million, to 44 million people, within five years. UC San Diego is on track to have 40,000 students. Does the population growth of California mean the school may have to go beyond that?

Answer: If we have to go beyond 40,000, I’m ready. I just want to make sure of two things: What I have seen up to now is people forcing growth and not worrying about the infrastructure to support it. I think that forcing growth and not having dorms, not having classrooms, not having enough instructors is not a good idea. You’re just causing more unhappiness and creating a bad student outcome. And I just think the state has to become rational about this.


I think the UC system would want to grow because there are campuses that basically could grow a lot. They have the space. I think UC San Diego has the space to grow. I just want to make sure that our local community understands that without UC San Diego, San Diego doesn’t look like the way it is.

To limit UC San Diego’s growth — to be an impediment to our growth — is not a good thing, both for the state of California and for San Diego in general. I see some segments of resistance and reticence with an underlying layer of political plays.

I think we need to take a step back and do what this community did in 1960 to bring UC San Diego here — to change the covenants, to make it a more inclusive place and have this vision of how this little institution was going to make this a big town.

A CAMPUS ON THE RISE

Pradeep Khosla was appointed chancellor in May 2012. Since then, UC San Diego has:


* Seen enrollment increase by more than 6,000, reaching a record 35,816 students. The figure is expected to rise to 40,000 students by 2020, which would make the school the size of UC Berkeley.

* Started a 10-year capital campaign to raise $2 billion. So far, the university has received close to $1 billion. Khosla said the campus has raised at least $254 million during the current fiscal year, which will end on June 30. That figure is $41 million higher than the previous record, set one year ago.

* Begun a $1.6 billion expansion program that includes housing, classrooms, research space and a student center that also will be a station for the Blue Line Trolley, which is slated to start serving the campus in 2021.

* Opened the Jacobs Medical Center, a 245-bed facility that cost about $943 million, almost $300 million higher than its original budget.


Sources: UC San Diego, University of California Office of the President

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