Here at the Washington Monthly, we try to shine a light on universities that serve their community and our country rather than ones that serve only a few students. That was our goal with our original 2005 College Guide, and it’s our goal with the most recent College Guide, which focused on regional public universities. These state universities, unlike many of the flagships, graduate students who tend to stay in the state and contribute to the economies that funded their education.
California State University—San Marcos is one such university. With its 96 percent acceptance rate, it’s not the type of school where affluent, educated parents usually hope to send their children. Not that CSUSM minds. Like most regional public universities, it focuses on helping students achieve the middle-class American Dream. For the most part, they’ve succeeded—and that’s why they rank 27th in our Best Bang for the Buck Rankings—West (out of 201 schools), with a price of attendance of $10,248 for families who make less than $75,000 and median earnings nine years after matriculation of $52,828, right around the median income for that age.
I spoke to Ellen Neufeldt, the president of Cal State San Marcos, about leading a regional public university, the challenges her university faces, and the goals she wants them to achieve. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
MN: I’m from California. I grew up thinking of Cal State University campuses—particularly Cal State Northridge in my area—as a launching pad for the middle class. But for the uninitiated, why don’t you tell us how the Cal State system works and how San Marcos fits in?
EN: The Cal State University system really is a launchpad for the middle class. It is that promise. It was built to include families, communities, and students across California. Cal State San Marcos started 35 years ago. We are a baby university, and we grew up with this region, built to emulate the vision of what Cal State is supposed to be. We are a university of the place we serve, which is southwest Riverside County and San Diego County. It is about including a population whose families haven’t always had access to higher education. We believe in strong partnerships with K-12 schools and strong partnerships with community colleges, and I think that’s met California’s intention in creating the Cal State system.
MN: What does social mobility mean for Cal State San Marcos?
EN: It’s about expanding who has access to higher education, making sure that our figurative doors are open for students from across the region, and partnering with the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation on inclusive economic growth. Our surveys tell us that 8 out of 10 students stay in the region and fuel our local economy.
MN: One big focus of our college guide is regional public universities, including CSUSM. We highlight them because they’re publicly funded institutions that churn out graduates who produce a high return on investment for the taxpayers. And as you said, 8 out of 10 of your students stay in the community after graduating. How do you accomplish that?
EN: We know that, in addition to student success, part of our mission is to be a university of place. Social mobility means contributing to inclusive economic growth for the region. We recruit in this region; we have 23 memoranda of understanding with partner school districts that include guaranteed admission and campus tours for students as young as 3rd grade. We have partnerships with the community college system to ensure we’re building that pipeline.
MN: Cal State San Marcos accepts around 95 percent of applicants. What does it mean to be a school where almost everybody who applies gets in?
EN: It’s part of the way we should rebuild higher education. So many times, what has been touted in higher education is how exclusionary it is, the idea that your greatness is based on who you exclude. What we should be about is the public good. The taxpayers help fund us, so we should be fueling the needs of our region. We partner with high schools and community colleges to ensure students meet California’s entry requirements. Letting in most students who apply is about representing the greatness of higher education.
MN: The six-year graduation rate at CSUSM is around 60 percent? Why do students leave at all? Why isn’t it 100 percent?
EN: We would love for 100 percent of our students to graduate. For those that left us, we’re trying to invite them back in many ways. At the same time, many different life journeys and challenges come along the way. One of the biggest challenges is affordability. We’re trying to knock that down every day, thinking about more creative ways to give financial aid. Other times, we’ve got to work harder to establish that sense of belonging and preparation for the classroom. There’s not one reason students are not graduating, so we must stay vigilant about everything.
I just had a student testify before the CSU trustees about being locked out of the federal student aid application—the FAFSA—and not knowing if she could return this fall. We had to find scholarship funds through private donations to support her. The pandemic was when many students stopped, and we need to ensure they’re on the road to graduation.
I don’t think you can compare a school like ours with a school like Harvard on graduation rates. We are bringing students into the university who often don’t have a family support system and don’t always know what college is like. Everybody who crosses our stage at graduation is changing lives and communities. We’re going to work to make sure there are even more.
MN: I’m curious about the effect that COVID-19 had on the student body across family income levels and other demographic differences.
EN: We did lose students through COVID, as did most universities. We had students who had to work to help their families and who had ill families. Many of our students were disproportionately affected by COVID. We had closed the achievement gap, and it opened again. So, we’re working hard to close that again because COVID-19 affected people differently.
MN: Do you have any regrets about policymaking during COVID? How quickly you got back into class or restrictions on student activity?
EN: We changed our policies during COVID. Our Faculty Senate stepped up. We gave more grace around grades and academic warnings. In the long term, we even changed how we refer to it to avoid discouraging a student. Right now, we have a new policy where students in the first year receive no credit as opposed to a D or F grade because those are so hard to come back from. There is research that shows that first-generation or low-income students are more likely to be dissuaded by a difficult moment like that.
The saying is, “You don’t see the holes in the roof when the sun is shining.” The pandemic was a rainy day, but it was actually a kind of light on how we needed to look at the very best we could do for students’ experiences and learning.
MN: CSUSM offers master’s degrees, and I recently published an article for our college guide about them and how many aren’t the best value proposition for students. I’m curious about how you evaluate when to start a master’s degree program and how much you know to charge.
EN: For most of them—not all—there’s value beyond the workforce, but many are workforce-ready, like social work or the MBA. Some degrees are within our regular university tuition, but others are on the extended learning self-support side, so we charge at the cost of offering the degree. Social work was on the self-support side, adding cost to the degree, so we just moved part of that program over to what we call the state side of the university, a more affordable state-supported realm.
MN: I understand that the share of students from the bottom 5th of the income distribution—disadvantaged students from poor families—at Cal State San Marcos is around 7 percent. How do you get students from those communities to apply and go and stay?
EN: By expanding the alliance program with local schools from 10 partnerships to 23, by really working in the K12 system. And then it’s guaranteed admission as long as you meet the admission requirements. It is getting students acclimated to our university and the idea of a university.
We recently received a $10 million grant from Price Philanthropies, so we are working on dual enrollment programs with three school districts. We’re allowing students to pursue a three-year bachelor’s degree in mental and behavioral health, which is a degree that makes these students eligible to take insurance when they become healthcare providers, which means that the wage is higher.
We started our engineering program five years ago with electrical and software engineering. About 50 percent of those students are Hispanic. The national average is about 9 percent, and the Cal State System average is about 20 percent. We built this program so that you can come into it in different ways. For every software engineer we graduate, four jobs are waiting, including many in the military.
Our programs are built on career services, paid summer internships, and support staff helping these students.
MN: You’ve been president for five years. What’s your goal for the next five years?
EN: We want to double down on who we are. We want to build our community partnerships in the region and ensure we are a link to the future economy. We want to offer students an opportunity for education that historically hasn’t always been available and then graduate them. There’s more work to do.
If I can digress, one of the things that’s important and has yielded positive outcomes is the engaged learning process, and we want to double down on that. So, for instance, in our business program, our students go through a senior experience where they’re a consulting group for a business. That program just celebrated its 30th year.
Another area is our science labs. We raise money to pay students to work in our science labs over the summer and provide them with a stipend to live and eat. Typically, the students who can work in science labs are those who could afford not to work elsewhere, so this program diversifies our science labs.
One student I met—now in a doctoral program in cancer research—was in the lab working on alopecia. In her second summer as an undergraduate in the lab, her research group found a genetic marker for alopecia and wrote a manuscript for publication. Undergraduates have those hands-on opportunities; there’s much data and research around how that makes a difference. So, we want to double down on both the engaged learning on campus and the internships and opportunities within our community.
MN: Those are my questions. Do you have anything else that you want to discuss?
EN: The idea in higher education of “What is value?”
The early rankings looked at one thing. I have nothing against Harvard; it’s an amazing place. But when we talk about the California States or other regional publics like Cal State San Marcos, the point is the public good. We have to think about higher education differently across the board. The economy will depend on it because there are demographic challenges both in the US and the world.
If we keep excluding students in higher education and do not pay attention to the universities that are bringing students in and looking for new ways to make them successful, that’s a problem.
The positive spin is that we need to embrace a wider net for talent from our high schools, community colleges, and adult learners for the sake of our future.
