California spent $400M improving enrollment at its universities. Could Sonoma State be next?

Sonoma State is a typical suburban university — almost too suburban. Suburban in all the wrong ways.

Branded as boring but roiled in drama, it has struggled to provide a vision that draws students. It is a college in crisis, where enrollment declines are among the steepest in the California State University system and budgets are at risk of being slashed.

“I think that the university has a bigger problem,” Lauren Morimoto, professor at Sonoma State and Chair of their Academic Senate said. “Sonoma State hasn’t really done a very good job at asserting its identity.”

Over the past five years, enrollment fell at Sonoma State by 22.1%, with a 16.9% decline from just 2019 to 2021. The campus in Rohnert Park, the suburban city about 50 miles north of San Francisco and dozen miles from Santa Rosa, now has an enrollment about 7,200 students, down from it’s peak of about 9,400 in 2014.

By contrast, the CSU system recorded an overall enrollment decline of about 1% over that time frame, likely exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This isn’t the first time a CSU has been concerned about declining numbers at a campus. Both the former California State University, Hayward, and the former Humbolt State University received makeovers in recent years improve enrollment. And now Sonoma State is searching for its solution.

Elias Lopez is the senior associate vice president for strategic enrollment at Sonoma State. Over the past year, he has met with 11 community college chancellors and presidents, working to increase the number of transfer students.

Sonoma State also plans to launch guaranteed admission and early admissions programs for local high school and community college students. And Lopez has worked on clarifying financial aid to help to make it easier for students to choose to attend school.

“Somebody from a local community college and we’re partnered with, or somebody at the high school would get a paper, says, ‘Congratulations, you’re guaranteed admissions to Sonoma State!’’’ Lopez explained.

Sonoma State’s budget

The school also appointed a new interim president, longtime Sacramento State administrator Mike Lee, in late June. Faculty and staff say they hope his appointment will help Sonoma State turn a page from a recent run of scandals in its executive office.

Many faculty members and students place at least partial blame for the university’s recent failings on the school’s former president, Judy Sakaki, who resigned in June amid questions about her handling of sexual harassment allegations against her husband and against a university vice president.

In 2017 when the Tubbs fire burned down Sakaki’s home, it also took 18 pieces of art from a collection that was donated to the Sonoma State, according to the Los Angeles Times. She had kept the works of art — meant for the university — in her home.

Sakaki chose not to discipline a vice president found to have inappropriately touched and made unwanted sexual comments toward women while working at a different CSU campus, the Los Angeles Times reported. The CSU system this year paid $600,000 to a former Sonoma State provost to resolve her claim that Sakaki retaliated against her after the administrator reported sexual harassment allegations involving Sakaki’s husband, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Sakaki and her husband have issued statements denying the allegations, but the series of reports led to a no-confidence against Sakaki by the university’s Academic Senate in May.

“This has sullied Sonoma State’s name quite a bit,” said Emily Cripe, a Sonoma State graduate from the class of 2022. “So I definitely think this will contribute to further lowered enrollment rates.”

Aside from the scandals, Morimoto of the Academic Senate said enrollment and the university’s budget suffered in Sakaki’s final years.

The 2021-2022 school year saw an $11.2 million deficit in its budget — with the school crediting declining enrollment as the main factor. The university used Higher Education Emergency Relief Funding — money that comes from the federal CARES Act — campus reserves, and other temporary funding solutions to make up for the deficit. But these solutions won’t last forever.

“Although the one-time solutions will resolve the deficit this year, the University will continue to carry the base deficit each year until base solutions are identified,” Laura Lupei, senior director for university budget and planning for Sonoma State, wrote in a message to staff in September 2021.

The budget deficit led to budget cuts, affecting departments across the campus, and sparking student protests.

“My peers and I were all really concerned because it was going to affect our majors directly,” Cripe said. “It’s just hard to know that maybe the administration doesn’t value your major as much as it does others. So it was really disheartening to know that this was the place I was gonna get a degree from.”

Bryan Burton, professor and Vice-Chair of the Academic Senate at Sonoma State, said that some in smaller departments were concerned about their jobs, and some are even concerned about the school shutting down entirely.

“I can tell you that folks are definitely stressed out about things like, ‘Are we’re gonna lose our jobs?’” Burton said.

Why aren’t students going?

Plenty of external factors could be blamed for Sonoma State’s lack of students. The pandemic contributed to a general decline in enrollment throughout the country, with the nation’s undergraduate headcount falling by 7.8%, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Sonoma State’s enrollment fell at more than twice that rate.

Lopez, who is in charge of strategic enrollment at the school, said that since 56% of Sonoma State students come out from an area farther than 50 miles away from the school, which posed problems with the pandemic. COVID prevented families from visiting the campus, and campus recruiters couldn’t travel to bring in students.

Sonoma State has also been plagued with wildfires for years, another thing Lopez blames for low enrollment.

“I think that gave people pause,” Morimoto said. “They think ‘Is that a campus where my kid is gonna be safe?’ In knowing you know, what the experience of their students gonna have, nobody I think wants to see their freshman student have to come back home in the middle of the semester because of the wildfires.”

In 2017, 30 Sonoma State students, faculty, and staff lost their homes. In 2019, students were evacuated early in the fall semester, during which residence halls were burglarized. More evacuations followed in 2020.

But the enrollment issues of the school predate the wildfires and the pandemic. Morimoto ultimately thinks something deeper is going on, and many students and faculty agree — Sonoma States is struggling to display a distinct identity.

“I think you can go on campus and ask people like, ‘So what is Sonoma State?’ And they’ll be like, ‘uhh, I don’t know,’” she said.

Morimoto said a lack of identity and poor marketing made the campus an afterthought when difficulties such as fires and COVID arise — a sentiment students agree with.

Cripe graduated from Sonoma State this past year and has remained in Rohnert Park.

“I feel like Sonoma State has kind of a weird reputation among the other CSUs,” Cripe said. “I know when I signed up to go here, people were telling me that it was boring, it’s in the middle of nowhere. And there’s just not a lot of people here already. So I think that turns people away.”

Morimoto and Burton have worked over the past year to try to embrace Sonoma State’s identity as a liberal arts institution. Sonoma State is the only CSU that is a member of the Council of Liberal Arts Colleges, something Morimoto and Burton believe should be embraced and advertised.

”I would love to see us embrace that and do more interdisciplinary work,” Morimoto said. “Most of the problems of today are not solved by just one field. It’s by different fields working together.”

A new Cal Poly

When other CSU schools faced similar enrollment problems, the schools and the state invested in makeovers designed to make campuses more attractive.

In 2015, after California State University, Hayward, saw stagnating enrollment, the school changed its name to California State University, East Bay. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, university officials expected the name change to raise enrollment — a solution that had worked well up until the pandemic.

And earlier this year, Humboldt State University became Cal Poly Humboldt. That change, backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, includes $433 million in spending for new laboratories and other facilities that would elevate science programs at the remote campus in Arcata on California’s far north coast.

Humboldt’s rebranding followed a steep enrollment decline of 31% between 2017 and 2021.

North state lawmakers and community advocates hailed the investments in Humboldt State, which is one of the largest employers in the region.

Neighbors of Sonoma State are starting to make a similar argument, contending the state should pay attention to enrollment declines there. While the mayor of Rohnert Park and the member on the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors representing the school expressed faith in the university, they are both concerned about the falling enrollment.

So far, neither Rohnert Park’s representatives in the Legislature nor the CSU have put forward a proposal.

“Sonoma State is a big part of our economy like any other university city,” said Jackie Elward, Rohnert Park’s mayor. “It’s no difference.”

This story was originally published August 19, 2022 at 5:00 AM.