UC Santa Barbara, a billion-dollar-plus driver for the South Coast economy, is stepping closer to approval of a plan to make it an even bigger force in the region.

As the Business Times went to press, the University of California Board of Regents was set to vote on whether to approve UCSB’s long-range development plan. The UC system requires each campus to draw up such a plan every 15 years, and campus officials describe it as a blueprint to guide growth and development on and around the campus. If the regents sign off on it, it still must go before the California Coastal Commission.

UCSB’s plans detail how it might add as many as 5,000 students, increase the graduate-to-undergraduate student ratio from 13 percent to 17 percent and add 336 faculty and 1,400 additional staff, all by 2025.

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