CSU President Stuart Rayfield's November 2026 update to faculty staff revisits the recent town hall meeting to discuss declining enrollment. Rayfield noted that she was impressed by the depth of work and analysis that went into that review, and she added a thank-you to everyone who dropped their current priorities to help with this project. She also announced for the first time that the current drop in enrollment of about 2% has led to her decision to trim $1.1 million from CSU's current FY27 budget and to plan conservatively for FY28. Rayfield's update goes on the list some of the enrollment statistics facing CSU. For example, the enrollment after-action review showed that over the past decade, CSU has faced a persistent decline in bachelor’s degree-seeking students. First-time, full-time bachelor’s-seeking freshmen have declined by 31.7% since 2015 (from 988 to 675 students), while total bachelor’s program enrollment has fallen by over 26.3% (from 6,212 to 4,575 students). Because the overall student body baseline has contracted, even an improving first-year retention rate yields fewer returning students in absolute terms. For instance, while the first-year retention rate recovered to 75.6% for the Fall 2024 cohort (matching pre-pandemic levels), the absolute number of returning second-year students dropped from 719 in 2020 to approximately 518 in 2025. Lastly, while graduate student growth has been propping up CSU over the last few years, it also fell off this fall. Thus, overall enrollment contraction continues, putting CSU in a minority of institutions in the USG that are not growing. Rayfield further explained that the town hall identified that the enrollment issues stem from structural friction, administrative disconnects, and a long-term mismatch between academic delivery schedules and student demographics. The remedies CSU is already implementing include (1) giving academic success coaches access to students’ financials, (2) streamlining academic program pathways to make it easier for students to find the classes they need and stay on path toward graduation, (3) drastically shortening the time students wait to hear about an undergraduate acceptance decision, (4) centralizing graduate admissions processes, and (5) implementing Element451, the new CRM (Customer Relationship Management)/student enrollment and engagement platform built specifically for higher education. Based on a recent post here at Turner Business, the onboarding of the new customer relationship software, Element451, meant to address CSU's growing enrollment concerns will cost the institution another $1 million. This would imply that a total of about $2.1 million will ultimately be cut from CSU's current FY27 budget.
Stay connected to Turner Business for more on this situation.
Comments
Post a Comment