Some big declines in enrollment at SFSU and other Calstates. That must change their admission strategy drastically? Could this lead to recruiting more OOS applicants?
I don’t think recruiting more OOS students will work for them. If they can’t attract CA students, why would an OOS student pay exponentially more for the same experience?
CSUs are meant to serve the vast majority of CA high school graduates. Here’s why I think some of these schools are seeing a dip in enrollment:
- The schools mentioned have “commuter” reputations and may not focus on the on-campus living experience. If you are a student looking for a rich on-campus experience, you are not looking at CSU East Bay.
- CA community colleges are becoming a more popular (and economical) option and there’s increasing awareness of TAG and other admissions programs that allow them to transfer to more desirable UCs and CSUs from CA community colleges
- They have not networked enough with the high schools in their immediate vicinity to set up guaranteed admissions programs
- Perhaps they are also suffering from a proliferation of negative content online from students who have gone there (I don’t know if this is true, but if I were to look at what’s changed between 2015 and today, one of those things is the ease in which people share and find information about real experiences. If those schools aren’t delivering for their students, word will get out pretty fast.
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An interesting nugget from the article:
the UC system, where policies have shifted and changed over time that the UCs are actually admitting more students that had typically gone to Cal State University institutions
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The less popular CSUs have had declining enrollment trends for many years. A decade or so ago, most CSUs were impacted, meaning that they had competitively-determined admission thresholds (based on a GPA and SAT/ACT formula before COVID-19, now basically GPA plus whatever points for extra academic course work, etc.) were applied. Now, most CSUs are non-impacted, so they admit at the CSU baseline (a-g courses completed, 2.5 recalculated HS GPA for California residents, 3.0 for non-residents), although they may have a few majors like nursing that are impacted and therefore competitive admission.
It says some California universities are seeing decreases in enrollment. Those are schools that my kids would never apply to, as California residents. The issue is location, location, location and price. Aren’t those the basic tenets of Real Estate marketing?
Having experienced San Francisco Bay housing through our middle daughter who attended UCSF as a medical student, she shared a flat with seven residents.
Her earlier rental of a small studio apartment was $5000 per month. She shared this rental with a roommate. The only bedroom could only accommodate a bunkbed. You couldn’t put or fit two beds together in the same room and have space for clothing or an Ikea dresser. The building was new. It was clean. It t was in a great location but our paying $2500 per month for a half-room was insane.
Sonoma is out in the sticks and you need to have some kind of entertainment there. If athletics is gone then you better be a good Paul Bunyan to live out there.
I don’t know much about East Bay because these kids don’t talk about it. I do know that our local San Diego State and Cal State San Marcos are bulging at the seams. I also know that it’s really hard to get into UCSD.
Santa Cruz has the problem of too many students and not enough housing to support it because of the NIMBYs.
How would the state monitor accepting more OOS students and appease the taxpayers? The popular CSUs don’t have the space. And you know that out of state students won’t apply to the ones that aren’t as popular.
It really is location, location, location, as well as the price. Sounds like a Real Estate issue to me.
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I just read @ucbalumnus’s reply. If you add nursing schools or athletics to those under enrolled universities, you’ll get your students.
Note that many of the CSUs offer WUE discounts already.
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Adding nursing majors may be harder than it seems, because a shortage of nurses generally means difficulty in hiring nursing instructors. Nursing is also likely to be an expensive major to teach.
Agree, finding qualified nursing instructors and the expense and liability (+ insurance) of training and equipment would be insanely expensive.
But if they want to attract students to those schools, they have to have a carrot.
Wonder if that will change soon:
Cal State East Bay gets record $50 million from Mackenzie Scott - Pleasanton Weekly
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The Hayward-based university did not specify any plans for the money but said it would “strengthen the university’s endowment and long-term capacity.”
Doh. I hope that is just boilerplate bc it seems like that is the opposite of what they should do with the money!
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