I wonder if at some point we would see consolidation in the CSU system? Granted we'd probably see if at a directional school in a rural state first.

My 2 cents as someone who graduated recently:

-I think students taking the community college to transfer route will only continue to grow rapidly. With the price of tuition and the lack of focus from professors teaching lower division classes (I mean I seriously think most students I know feel that most of the professors teaching lower division classes are only doing it because they have to and are more focused on research, especially in STEM fields).

-The CSU is either going to have to somehow fix the funding issues asap, adjust or lose large amounts of students to UC schools or OOS schools when it comes to non-STEM (and more) programs. With schools close to Davis like SSU and SFSU dropping multiple liberal arts degrees (and a variety of less popular stem degrees in the case of SSU) I only see students leaving in droves to UC campuses that are still able to fund these programs. Whether you want to debate the viability of these degrees in relation to workforce hiring, income, etc is another topic, but the desire for many of the degrees that are on the chopping block at these campuses (especially in programs that are often enrolled in by students needing said degrees for teaching or other professional careers) is going to only continue to hurt CSU enrollment. Its a catch 22 of cutting programs because they don't have enough students but then losing students in the process.

-Another topic that could be looked at in a ton of different ways, but objectively federal cuts to research are coming at a really tough time for campuses and creating uncertainty in students looking for graduate degrees. I have heard from a large amount of current and former students at Davis (and other universities) that are uncertain about going back for a graduate degree because of the uncertainty of financial support and research funding for projects they could be involved in.

-I think we might see some merging of administration units (like some CSU's in the Bay Area are doing) or campus entities for regional state schools that are either close in location or with an urban school taking over rural colleges struggling.

-We are going to see a huge boom in student housing for community college campuses that are feeders to UC campuses.

Haha you beat me to it. I know that the admin units and services of some of the CSU campuses in the bay have been combining to save money and resources. I could imagine seeing moves like Cal Maritime becoming part of Cal Poly continuing. There is a part of me that feels like a merger of CSU East Bay or SFSU with SJSU in some form could happen. Sonoma State is possible too but its a bit of an outlier with its liberal arts programs (despite them being cut).

Its pretty telling of the times financially when SFSU, the school that founded the first ever ethnic studies major and courses (with spurred a ton of anthropological and sociological research programs) is cutting its program (even the online degree). The school has proudly noted that they founded the program for years and now its gonna be gone. I know quite a few people personally (and have seen some posts form admin) that this move was a shocker considering how much the school leaned on the notability of SFSU founding the program.