Cal Poly ranks lowest in Black student enrollment for state universities

November 28, 2022

By JOSH FRIEDMAN

Cal Poly has the lowest Black student enrollment rate among all public universities in California, a rank it has held for nearly two decades. [Cal Matters]

The San Luis Obispo campus, which is the most selective university in the California State University (CSU) system, enrolled just 146 Black undergraduate students this fall. The total equates to 0.7% of students enrolled this fall at Cal Poly.

Since 2003, Cal Poly has every year enrolled the smallest share of Black undergraduate among all CSU and University of California (UC) campuses. The enrollment rate has been below 1% for most of those years.

Cal Poly attracts the smallest percentage of Black freshman applicants of any CSU or UC campus, and it enrolls few Black students who transfer to four-year universities from community colleges.

The San Luis Obispo university is the only CSU or UC where more than half of undergraduate students are white, according to fall 2021 and 2022 enrollment data. However, a few other CSU campuses come close to having majority-white student bodies.

Additionally, Cal Poly has had the smallest percentage of low-income students of any UC or CSU since 2008.