Students and faculty marked the latest round of academic job cuts at San Francisco State, which administrators attributed to shrinking enrollment. The campus, which is part of the California State University system, faces ongoing financial woes that are expected to deepen next year due to state budget cuts.
Other CSU campuses, such as Sonoma State University, Cal State East Bay and Cal Poly Humboldt, are also experiencing enrollment declines. Administrators at San Francisco State said the city’s high cost of housing contributed to the school’s challenges in competing with CSUs in Southern California that meet or exceed their enrollment targets, as well as other colleges with more elite reputations.
Moore said that as SF State becomes smaller, the course and job cuts are disproportionately hitting certain academic departments, such as the humanities and liberal arts. He believes those reductions threaten the state’s vision of higher public education for all, regardless of ability to pay.
“We are losing this vision, the idea that everybody deserves access to not just some kind of vocational training, but like a full, well-rounded education in the humanities and in the social sciences,” Moore, 54, said.
SF State enrollment hovered around 30,000 throughout much of the 2010s, but since the fall of 2019, it has been declining quickly. In the fall 2024 semester, the college had just over 22,300 registered students. That enrollment drop has led to less money from tuition and state allocations, the two main sources of revenue for SF State.
Campus administrators eliminated 1,080 course sections between the fall of 2019 and 2024, letting go of 155 lecturers whose positions were dependent on the availability of classes to teach.
That figure does not include current job cuts. SF State won’t know how many lecturers are losing their positions until it finalizes its course schedule in January, according to a spokesperson.
“This is a political decision that politicians and administrators are making. They’ve chosen this response, and it’s the wrong response,” said Sean Connelly, a lecturer who was told he would not be rehired next semester.
After 17 years teaching in the school’s humanities and comparative literature department, Connelly’s last day is Dec. 30. He likened the loss of his job to the “death of a friend.”
“This is my vocation. This is the thing that I studied for years and went into debt to do,” said Connelly, 57, who is applying to positions at high schools and other universities. He even put in an application with the U.S. Postal Service.
“I was very depressed, anxious about the future,” he said. “Angry, though, too, because public education is a fundamental right, in my view, and the state of California needs to fund it.”
As a public institution, CSU has served as an avenue for upward mobility, especially for young people from lower-income backgrounds. Nearly one-third of students at SF State are the first in their families to attend college, and 70% receive financial aid.
