Dude, Where's My Prof? Minimum Course Section Enrollments across CSU Colleges

In recent semesters Turner College students and faculty have seen a number of class cancellations at the proverbial eleventh hour. Four of these cancellations occurred just before the start of fall semester 2026 in the MSOL program, leading to fewer sections being offered and to all retained sections reaching enrollments above 30 students. At the time of these cancellations, two of the courses that were cut enrolled 10 students. These events and others like them have led to questions about CSU's policies on course section cancellations and the number of students required to solidify courses on the semester ledger. It turns out that each College at CSU retains an individual policy through the Office of the Provost and Academic Affairs, each of which is linked to that Office's webpage. The table below provides the minimum class roster size by course type for the most comparable of the three CSU colleges.

 

As indicated in the table above, the Turner College's minimum enrollment for lower division courses is 20 students, five more than the minimum for either the College of Education & Health Professions or the College of Letters and Sciences. Interestingly, the Turner College requires 10 students for all graduate courses while both the College of Education & Health Professions and College of Letters and Sciences require only five for required graduate courses. For graduate electives, the minimum enrollment in the College of Letters and Sciences remains at five while for those in the College of Education & Health Professions the minimum enrollment is 10 students. Only in the case of courses required for an undergraduate major is the Turner College's minimum of 10 students not the largest, and in that case it is surpassed by only the College of Education and Health Professions, which requires 15 students.