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Cal Poly San Luis Obispo reaches diversity milestone

October 29, 2024

By KAREN VELIE

For the fist time, Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo achieved an important diversity milestone in its effort to achieve Hispanic serving institution designation. In its fall enrollment, the university’s Hispanic student enrollment hit the required 25%.

If the university maintains the 25% threshold for two consecutive years, it will achieve Hispanic serving institution status which unlocks access to resources and grants. Hispanic students make up approximately 29% of the incoming undergraduate class.

Hispanic enrollment has seen an 87% growth over the last decade, compared to 13% overall enrollment growth since 2014. Hispanic students accounted for roughly 15% of the student population in 2014.

“We are excited and proud to have achieved this important milestone on our journey toward designation as an Hispanic serving institution — which in itself is an important marker toward opening our doors more widely to underrepresented, first-generation, lower-income, and other students who in years past may not have had the option of attending Cal Poly,” said President Jeffrey D. Armstrong. “This progress speaks to the hard work and dedication of many of our staff, faculty and administrators. However, this effort is far from finished. We need to grow, and we need to continue to attract and enroll a more diverse student body.”

This is the second year in Cal Poly’s history that no single ethnic student group makes up more than 50% of the total enrollment. In addition, underrepresented minority students make up 30% of the university’s incoming undergraduate class this fall, compared to 18% 10 years ago. For transfer students, the number is 44% this fall, compared to 30% in 2014.

Cal Poly also has seen growth in enrollment of transfer students and local students — important metrics in the university’s role as a steward of place. This year, the university has seen a 12.5% increase in the incoming transfer student class. As well, local students are two times more likely to gain admission than non-local students (60% admission rate versus 30%), and the university’s incoming class will include more than 800 students from the local area — an increase of more than 25% versus last year.

 


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Cal Poly is a “steward of place”? I guess it all depends on how you define being a steward of place. Cal Poly has been a horrible steward of place in terms of its impact on the 9,178 acre chunk of land where it is located and all the associated adverse impacts on the adjoining City of San Luis Obispo and its citizens. I’ll concede that economically it’s an open pit gold mine, but all the adverse environmental/transportation/housing/community/crime and quality of life impacts on San Luis Obispo and the rest of the county began to outweigh the positives sometime around the early to mid-1980’s.


Cal Poly’s enrollment hit the sweet spot of the societal & community benefit/detriment ratio somewhere around 9,000 to 12,500 fulltime students. What justification is there to locate a university and a major men’s prison adjacent to a city with a population of just 38,000 (1990 census)? Weren’t there other larger and equally deserving cities to be graced by state run penal colonies and colleges? Santa Maria had a population of 62,000 in 1990 and lots of affordable flat land on which to build and expand a wonderful institution of higher learning & diversity. Similarly, cities such as Santa Ana, Stockton, Modesto, Porterville, Lancaster/Palmdale, Menifee, Tulare, Lompoc, Lakeport, Yreka, Alturas, Indio, El Centro, Barstow, Bishop and dozens of other cities all had similar or much larger populations in 1990 as SLO. Additionally, many such cities were located far closer to underserved demographic groups than SLO. Why not accommodate and economically stimulate some of those communities with institutions of higher learning and/or rehabilitation? Are we really accommodating underserved groups with affordable higher learning if we force their attendance at distant towns with higher costs of housing and living?


0

Cal Poly as an institution does not care one bit about diversity. It is a large profitable business that wants to stay in the game. That grant money is icing on the cake.


5

I can only assume that this article was written without mentioning that supposedly Cal Poly acceptance standards were not lowered for any ethnic groups, so all the MAGA’s here lose their stuff. If standards were lowered, can someone please post the source?


-11

Wow. Racist, much? I don’t remember anyone whining about, or so much as mentioning “lowered standards” back when the white kids were rioting for free beer. Or when white guys attack (and even kill) female coeds, or any other time when the selection process might be questionable, as long as the offenders or the underachievers have been white. I find it amusing that those who consider themselves superior due to the color of their skin are obviously so very threatened by (and demeaning to) anyone who has a bit more melanin.


Surprisingly (to some of you, I guess)), there is no need to lower any standard to make top notch schools available to those with the talent and determination to get in. And this county cannot afford to waste any more talent and intelligence, wherever we find it. The larger world is competitive, and prestige, based only on one’s skin color is laughably weak as a basis to claim superiority when we need all hands on deck and functioning to the best of their ability. Anyone who does not recognize that is not grounded in the current reality.


-17

Why should race be a consideration ?


29

Access to federal grant money.


5

Because if only white students are allowed into the school, it should be considered to be a “private” and exclusively white facility and therefore not qualified to be paid for, in any way, by the general public. A public school should be equally accessible to all qualifying members of the general public. It may come as a bit of a shock, but those who qualify come in all colors and orientations, etc. If the population of a school does not meet those standards, I have zero interest in one dime of my money going into it.


You may have been raised that way, but it is way past time for our society to get beyond apartheid thinking. You can bet that when it was almost entirely white, race was THE consideration. Well, that and money, of course.


-7

I could make open boarder jokes, but my real concern is, “are we reaching this non-academia goal by enlisting higher tuition from foreign students”?


4

Oh that’s great! But, but what about standards?


25

The standards must fit the approved narrative.


6

This is wonderful news. The poverty rate among Hispanic children is 22% in California. Compare that to only 7% among white children and only 4% among children who have college educated parents. In most cases, a college education is a path out of poverty. I think we should all be happy to see our friends and neighbors pulling themselves up through higher education.


-31

I’ll assume the the goal will be reached when all ethnic groups reach 22% child poverty rate.

Pulling themselves up would be a merit based system.


19

Well, standards must have been low for a long time because they enrolled me in 1966. Of course, I’m white and I only remember a handful of Hispanics on campus when I went there. You can always Google Cal Poly’s admission criteria. They seem pretty stiff. I don’t think Hispanics have been excluded because they didn’t qualify, it’s mainly because they couldn’t afford it. My daddy was rich, as were many of my classmates, unless they were total brainiacs or good athletes, so it wasn’t a problem for me.


-4

I thought only merit mattered when applying to colleges?


53

Nope. Affirmative action was banned years ago, but the practice simply continued using some other name or no name at all. Currently that name is apparently “diversity milestone”.


30

Think again.


-2

So?


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