COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL) — Columbus State University is three weeks into its fall semester, and enrollment numbers are coming into focus.
WRBL News 3's Chuck Williams has been looking at the numbers and spoke to CSU President Dr. Stuart Rayfield.
Rayfield spoke to a local civic club this week and said that the atmosphere on campus has returned to pre-pandemic levels.
The bottom line is that Columbus State University enrollment has declined year over year, but Rayfield says she does not expect this to immediately impact the school's budget.
"It is cause for concern, but I'm 100% convinced that we are doing all the right things for this to be a blip on our radar," Rayfield said.
CSU's fall 2025 enrollment is going to be somewhere between 7,600 and 7,700 students.
Last fall, there were more than 7,900 students attending the university. Surprisingly, the graduate degree program enrollment is off.
"Where we see the greatest growth opportunity for Columbia State to keep the students we have and to continue in our graduate programs. And so this fall, what was a little surprising was we were not up as much in our graduate programs as we have historically been over the past few years," Rayfield said.
This week, Rayfield talked about the direction of CSU to the Rotary Club of Columbus.
Columbus State is making a push to retain current students. One of the things that stands out is that the university has extended its reach into the Metro Atlanta counties.
Right now, about half of the 6,000 undergraduate students are from the Atlanta area.
"It used to be the case that Columbus drew from the west side of our state and we have slowly, slowly gotten into the metro Atlanta area. And the students who come from metro Atlanta have a great experience here," Rayfield expressed.
She added, "it's a chance for them to get outside of Atlanta, but also stay in a metropolitan area. We obviously have several programs that are specific and attractive to students from all over the state. But a lot of our music students come from the metro Atlanta area as well."
CSU currently offers about 90 different degree programs.
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