June 20, 2023
Dear Colleagues,
I have debated with myself and others about the necessity of a response to the June 8 Ventura County Star article, 鈥�,鈥� and by the 厂迟补谤鈥檚 Editorial Board. I have been reluctant to do so because a response that shares needed context can be interpreted as defensive, and defensiveness is anathema to my belief in data-based decision making and the servant-leadership style that inspires me. However, dire as it is, our enrollment story has not been fully told. That matters to me. I suspect it does to you, the talented, caring, and hard-working people I am honored to lead, as well. In the interests of transparency and fairness, I鈥檒l take the risk if what follows is inaccurately construed.
In my many conversations with community members who have asked me about the newspaper鈥檚 enrollment story on 91视频 over the past week, I have found consistently that what people are wanting to know is context on our reported challenges. I am certain that some of you are being queried, too, so I offer the following perspective and encourage you to share it with others if you find it helpful in understanding the critical contextual aspects of our enrollment status.
Our action plan for growing student enrollment, shared with the campus community in February 2023 under the heading of Our Way Forward, details our strategies for growth necessitated by significant losses since 2020. Only the departure of our AVP for Enrollment Management & Marketing represents a change in that plan (and we are in the process of contracting for our immediate marketing needs; the web redesign project is also moving forward). The rest of our immediate, intermediate, and long-term efforts described in that action plan are unchanged and aggressively underway.
I want to be clear that nothing in our campus planning has ever indicated an expectation that our enrollment status is on the verge of an immediate turnaround, as was implied in the headline, 鈥淪tudent enrollment at CSU Channel Islands isn't rebounding.鈥� We are approaching the challenge of enrollment growth within the context of a 4-5 year framework and implementation timeline, which has been consistently communicated and expressed through enrollment models shared in Strategic Resource Planning Committee meetings and in other ways with the campus community, as well as with the Chancellor鈥檚 Office and news reporters. These projections indicated clearly that our numbers would be down in 2023-24, that we plan to stabilize in 2024-25, and that we will begin to see turnaround potentially as early as 2025-26. If this plays out, we have a chance of meeting our adjusted funded enrollment target and avoiding the projected $2.5M appropriations cut from the Chancellor鈥檚 Office in 2026-27.
Enrollment growth is complex work involving internal and external factors. It is particularly challenging in the context of the pandemic and a number of other existential threats that our young people are navigating 鈥� including climate change and the uncertain global future it foretells; the tragic normalcy of gun violence; and hate speech and hate crimes rising in parallel with the rise in authoritarianism around the world. Imagine holding all of this as a high school graduate. Today鈥檚 environmental, political, social, and economic realities are understandably threatening to a young person鈥檚 sense of hope and desire for learning, engaging, and contributing. At some level, this must be true for us all.
This is one of the very most important reasons we matter. Education is an antidote for every threat. Our work builds hope, and hope builds our collective future.
We had the luxury of growing our student body pre-pandemic, without need of a Strategic Enrollment Management Plan. The landscape has shifted, and we are moving with it. We have already seen positive developments through the offering of new programs, such as the 100+ students who have already registered for an online Psychology degree completion program 鈥� a response that is more than three times larger than program organizers anticipated. Though these students will not count toward stateside enrollment since the program is offered through Extended University (the auxiliary self-support unit whose programs and students are not subsidized through state support), this example illustrates the promise of the new academic degrees we are developing through our Academic Master Plan, approved in .
The 厂迟补谤鈥檚 Editorial Board is entirely correct in their concluding paragraphs:
I appreciate this spirit of community partnership, which is essential for us to deliver on our University mission. The new Academic Master Plan, along with the myriad of other strategies shared in Our Way Forward for bringing the campus out of the current enrollment decline, is designed to allow 91视频 to do exactly this. With the gift of continuing and unflagging support of the communities we serve, we will achieve our mission, and be responsive to the workforce and service needs of our region and state.
Enrollment updates will continue to be provided regularly as new information becomes available.
Sincerely,
Richard Yao, Ph.D.
President