The Guardsman

Does City College of San Francisco struggle with keeping students?

By Logan Dang ldang27@mail.ccsf.edu

Community colleges were on a steady increase in student enrollment from 2001 to 2012, but have been on a decline since. Data from the National Center for Educational Statistics, based on 5,831 postsecondary institutions, shows the student population increased from 23 million to 29 million from 2001 to 2012, but have seen a steady decline with an overall headcount of 25 million in 2021. Moreover, the decline in student enrollment also is evident at City College of San Francisco.

According to City College’s Argos Institutional Headcount datablock, in 2010-2011, the overall headcount of both credit and noncredit students reached 83,718. However, in recent years, City College has been losing students by the thousands, and most recently in 2019-2020, the total headcount reached 53,601, losing around 36% in student enrollment since 2010.

As every student has their own unique circumstances, the reasons vary for why one is deciding to call it quits. During the pandemic, through Opportunity Insight’s Economic Tracker, showed 30.2% of small businesses closed at the height of the pandemic in March and April 2020, leaving many unemployed. Public

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