DIEGO LOPEZ, A STUDENT in his final yr at Cal State San Marcos, provides the north San Diego County campus excessive marks. The Military veteran likes his courses, feels the campus is mostly well-managed and appreciates that on the college’s present dimension, “you can just chill, and relax, and not get too overwhelmed.”
However Lopez can inform the scholar physique is increasing, particularly initially of the semester, when he has to navigate crowded parking tons.
“The parking lots are so full, so you have to make sure you get here early. And then just right across the street, you see all the construction being done,” he mentioned. “You can definitely tell: This school is growing a lot, and it’s growing fast.”
The variety of college students on the suburban Cal State San Marcos campus has mushroomed over the previous decade. It’s now residence to 14,655 college students, an nearly 15% soar since 2015, among the many sharpest will increase of any Cal State campus in that interval.
However that’s not the case throughout the 23 campuses of the California State College system. Total system enrollment has settled at 2.7% decrease than a decade in the past after tumbling extra deeply throughout the pandemic. And behind that quantity is a extra difficult image, with some particular person campuses displaying double-digit p.c will increase at the same time as others have skilled massive decreases.
Whereas San Marcos college students have raced to seek out parking within the first weeks of current tutorial years, Sonoma State college students in distinction can normally discover dozens of empty areas within the Bay Space college’s foremost car parking zone. The campus has suffered the worst enrollment loss within the college system, contracting from 9,408 college students in 2015 to five,784 college students in 2024. Current statistics recommend it had the very best dorm emptiness charge within the Cal State system in spring 2023, prompting the college to open some housing to nonstudents.
Falling enrollment has prompted a interval of tight funds on the Sonoma State campus. Tess Wilkinson, a fourth-year switch pupil finding out communications, mentioned she noticed fewer programs being provided. She suspects funds cuts are one motive why.
“I even noticed some professors that had regularly taught courses in my major were no longer on the course schedule at all,” she mentioned. “Some courses were thrown together to accommodate abrupt faculty changes — and student engagement in my classes felt like it had decreased.”
The divergence between San Marcos and Sonoma exhibits how the enrollment problem dealing with the nation’s largest college system defies a one-size-fits-all resolution about the way to serve college students and the place to spend cash across the state.
The pattern continued this fall, with enrollment up from the yr earlier than at 15 campuses and down at eight. That uneven distribution of latest college students is partially as a result of regional variations in inhabitants, the price of residing and labor markets. It might additionally replicate whether or not they cater primarily to commuters or on-campus residents, supply higher- or lower-demand levels and serve extra or fewer college students delicate to final yr’s federal monetary assist delays.
Boyce Gate on the Entrance to the San Jose State College campus is pictured in an undated picture. The college bucked the Bay Space pattern of declining pupil enrollment at CSU faculties, including about 1% to its numbers since 2015. (Google picture)
Enrollment at neighborhood schools, a significant feeder into Cal State, additionally slipped throughout the pandemic, although pupil headcount has began to get well. Going ahead, Cal State should grapple with a long-predicted decline within the variety of current highschool graduates in California. The Public Coverage Institute of California, a assume tank, nonetheless tasks that CSU enrollment will proceed an upward trajectory via 2035, because of bigger shares of highschool college students finishing school preparatory programs and better college-going charges.
Even in a yr when enrollment throughout the Cal State system rose a modest 1.5%, some campus leaders loved a banner school acceptance season. Cal State Monterey Bay, whose 16% enrollment bump was the system’s largest 2023-24, bought out on-campus housing for the primary time in a decade this fall, based on Ben Corpus, its vp for enrollment administration and pupil affairs.
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On the different excessive, lower-enrolled CSU campuses should cope with the monetary fallout from much less income from tuition and charges. Sonoma State and Cal State Los Angeles, which notched the most important year-to-year enrollment drop within the system, have instituted hiring freezes and reduce course sections to bridge funding gaps.
Beginning this college yr, Cal State additionally has reallocated funding to universities that exceeded enrollment targets or confirmed they’ve larger demand and away from these with dropping enrollments. Anticipated cuts in state funding due to general state funds circumstances might have extra ripple results, even at campuses with flourishing pupil our bodies.
These stakes haven’t escaped the discover of campuses at each ends of the enrollment yo-yo. EdSource interviewed college students, school and directors at Sonoma State and Cal State San Marcos about how they assume course choices, pupil golf equipment, development and, sure, parking are altering as their faculties get larger or smaller.
Sonoma State College
An hour north of San Francisco, Sonoma State College celebrates its location on the sting of the Russian River Valley by naming its dorms for wine varietals and areas from Beaujolais to Zinfandel.
However wildfires have destroyed 1000’s of properties on this area of the state since 2017, a shock from which its inhabitants and already costly housing market are nonetheless recovering. That has made it more durable to recruit college students from different components of the state, who’re a major a part of the scholar physique, officers mentioned. Sonoma State’s enrollment has slid nearly 39% since 2015. Cal State’s 2022-23 monetary statements put the college’s common residence corridor occupancy at simply 65%. The college has opened a few of its pupil housing to school, workers, college students with younger kids and even individuals visiting campus for a convention.
College students stroll on the campus of Sonoma State College in Rohnert Park, the place enrollment has declined by 39 p.c in lower than a decade. (Ally Valiente/EdSource)
Collapsing enrollment over the last decade slowed to a 1% dip this yr. Nonetheless, the smaller pupil physique has prompted a severe money crunch. Sonoma State, which has a $130 million working funds this college yr, anticipates a $21 million funds deficit going into 2025-26.
“It’s pretty simplistic sort of math: We just don’t have enough students paying the tuition to fully cover all of the expenses we have,” Emily F. Cutrer, the college’s interim president, mentioned at an Oct. 28 city corridor to debate Sonoma State’s funds forecast.
Cutrer mentioned the college must add greater than 3,000 college students — a 52% improve over fall 2024 — to cowl its present deficit, a purpose she estimated is probably going three or 4 years away. The lack of tuition and charge income is compounded by rising worker advantages prices, state funding cuts and an estimated $3.6 million that Cal State is anticipated to reallocate to different campuses.
Sonoma State is beneath a hiring freeze and can be urgent pause on some journey. The campus in recent times has provided workers early retirements and buyouts. Half-time and full-time lecturer headcount has fallen nearly 25% within the final a number of years, a spokesperson mentioned. Sonoma State notified the school union in October that layoffs may very well be on the way in which.
“I would ask people to stop asking us to do more with less. It’s exhausting,” Lauren S. Morimoto, who chairs the college’s division of kinesiology, mentioned on the city corridor. “We’re demoralized and we’re burnt out.”
Wildfires have destroyed 1000’s of properties in Sonoma County since 2017, a shock from which its inhabitants and already costly housing market are nonetheless recovering.
Sonoma State’s struggles are a comedown from a marketing campaign beneath then-President Ruben Armiñana to invoice the college as a “public Ivy” — providing plush new services at a state college worth — within the Nineties via 2010s. Armiñana’s critics charged that the technique attracted a wealthier and whiter pupil physique in contrast with the state’s different public universities.
Judy Sakaki succeeded Armiñana in 2016 with the specific purpose of constructing Sonoma State extra accessible and fewer elitist. Sakaki’s 2022 resignation ushered in a interval of management turnover; Cutrer is the third individual to steer the college since then.
Tim Wandling, who chairs the English division and serves on the board of the California School Affiliation at Sonoma State, mentioned he’s involved about management instability on campus. He additionally worries that the college’s high brass “want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing blitzes and new programs, and what they really need to do is just downsize their administrative staff and focus on keeping the good faculty that they have, the good students they have.”
Sonoma State just isn’t alone amongst Bay Space universities hurting for college students. San Francisco State and Cal State East Bay are dealing with comparable declines.
Sonoma State’s relative distance from main inhabitants facilities has lengthy inspired admissions workers to look exterior their very own yard for potential college students.
Sonoma presently attracts 35% of its college students from its residence county, an extra 63% from elsewhere in California and 1.6% from out of state. College directors and attendees talking on the October city corridor appeared to favor an all-of-the-above recruitment technique.
Domestically, the campus has struck assured admissions offers with a number of of the area’s college districts and neighborhood schools. And searching exterior Sonoma State’s instant area, the college can be recruiting in Southern California, taking a look at methods of retaining college students it already has and bringing again college students who don’t instantly re-enroll every time period.
Cal State San Marcos
On a light December afternoon, Cal State San Marcos pupil Diana Ortega Caballero was studying a e book on a terrace overlooking development cranes. Constructing websites are among the many most seen cues of how the campus is increasing after some pandemic dips.
Ortega Caballero, a switch pupil from MiraCosta Neighborhood School in close by Oceanside, mentioned she had “a really easy transition” to San Marcos. Nearly a 3rd of San Marcos college students begin at a California neighborhood school.
College students work at a library on the campus of Cal State San Marcos on Dec. 3, 2024. (Amy DiPierro/EdSource)
San Marcos is in good firm amongst Southern California’s CSU campuses which have welcomed extra college students over the previous decade as a result of regional inhabitants progress. San Diego State College is main the system in enrollment positive aspects since 2015, adopted intently by Cal Poly Pomona and San Marcos.
Campus leaders have additionally taken concrete steps to steer extra college students to campus. Directors have signed a collection of assured admissions agreements with college districts and different native schooling entities. They’ve additionally coordinated coursework with Murrieta Valley Unified College District and Mt. San Jacinto School to help college students incomes software program engineering levels.
College students interviewed on the campus mentioned they’re largely happy with San Marcos. A number of famous that the campus feels extra accessible than bigger CSU campuses. However they conceded experiencing occasional snags because the campus expands, like hassle entering into sure courses or a protracted wait time to see a tutorial adviser.
Jackson Puddy, who’s finding out enterprise administration, was standing exterior the library ready for college students to reach for a pickup chess sport. He hoped the college’s rising enrollment would carry more cash, extra professors and even perhaps extra members for the small chess membership he runs. The one con? “The parking situation — it’s not going to get any better,” he mentioned, even when college students can now reliably discover a house in a dust lot downhill from the primary quad.
College students not too long ago authorized a $210 per-semester charge improve to fund a brand new wellness and recreation middle. Plans name for a turf subject on a rooftop deck, indoor courts, cardio and power coaching services and 550 beds for pupil housing. As well as, the campus opened a new dorm for 300 college students two years in the past and is presently constructing one other one for 500.
“The parking lots are so full, so you have to make sure you get here early. And then just right across the street, you see all the construction being done. You can definitely tell: This school is growing a lot, and it’s growing fast.”
Diego Lopez, San Marcos State pupil
Cal State system statistics recommend San Marcos has a few of the busiest classroom and laboratory house of any college within the CSU system. One of many college’s most pressing targets is to fulfill surging demand for its engineering program, which started in 2019 with 300 college students and has ballooned to 2,000. Campus leaders plan to construct a three-story, $110 million constructing to deal with its School of Science, Expertise, Engineering and Arithmetic. The mission is anticipated to interrupt floor in July 2025.
San Marcos’ progress doesn’t immunize it from the belt-tightening different CSU campuses have begun in anticipation of decrease state funding. At a board of trustees assembly in September, President Ellen Neufeldt mentioned a scarcity of extra school may result in bigger class sizes and famous that the college has deferred upkeep on growing old electrical techniques.
“The challenge we now face is that while we are growing, we are unable to hire the essential employees needed to support our mission of student success,” Neufeldt mentioned. “We urgently require more advisers, success coaches, tutors, financial aid specialists and counselors, and the list goes on and on, to assist our amazing students.”
Ally Valiente, a pupil at Sonoma State College and a member of the Pupil Journalism Corps, contributed to this story.
This story initially appeared in EdSource.
