Cal State enrollment declines continue three years after the pandemic

Undergraduate enrollment declined across much of the Cal State system during and after the coronavirus pandemic — and for some campuses, it remains down. 

A new report by the Campaign for College Opportunity analyzed enrollment changes within the nation’s largest public university system and found a 6.5% enrollment decline from pre-pandemic numbers from fall 2020 to fall 2023. 

During the pandemic, enrollment declined by about 10,000 students from fall 2020 to fall 2021 and dropped an additional 17,000 students to 404,820 in fall 2022 — the lowest since 2014. By fall 2023, the number of students declined by  an additional 2,500.

Despite the declines, 11 of the 23 CSU campuses saw a growth in Latino enrollment and seven grew their Black enrollment totals. Only four campuses saw their enrollments grow: CSU Fullerton, CSU Long Beach, San Diego State and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. 

The largest decrease in enrollment was at Sonoma State, which has seen a 34% decline in students.  

Unlike the CSU system, national undergraduate enrollment grew by 1.2%  nationally for last fall, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. Public and private nonprofit universities increased by 0.6%, for the first time since the pandemic. In California, community college enrollment has rebounded from the pandemic, and numbers in the University of California have also increased. The campaign’s report highlighted that overall enrollment in the UC system increased 3.2% between 2019 and 2023.