President's Messages

March 26, 2026

Dear campus community,

As pundits and critics predict dire things for the future of higher education, I am increasingly convinced that this need not be true for regional public universities like SFSU. Our mission to provide access to transformative educational experiences and upward mobility in service to the SF Bay Area and California remains unchanged and critically needed as much today as it has been for generations. I apologize in advance for the length of this email, but the dire narratives that surround us need some correction.

At a recent Senate, I noted the myriad challenges facing higher education and SFSU—significant demographic changes driving enrollments down, growing skepticism about the value of a degree, and increased concerns about affordability, indebtedness, and the alignment between higher education and workforce needs. And then add to all this AI…

I do not want to minimize the headwinds we face nor how volatile the environment for higher education is, but, as I shared with the Senate, SFSU has strategic advantages that ensure our continued relevance and success. We will not look exactly as we did at the beginning of the 21st century, but our mission and our value will remain unchanged—we will continue to be the engine of educational equity that we always have been, producing a well-educated workforce and providing upward mobility to thousands of Californians.

Yes, higher education will look different in the future. Yes, we have a responsibility to make sure we graduate more students and launch them into rewarding careers. And, yes, we need to continuously align our educational experiences with the region’s and state’s workforce needs. But, contrary to the scary headlines, higher education has always been responsive to economic, social and historic changes. That need not be bad, as long as we work together across many internal and external constituencies, to shape higher education. But what won’t change is our overarching role and mission to serve as an engine of social change and economic mobility.

The pace of change, particularly AI, and the number of pressures facing higher education just now are making this moment uniquely hard. I do not want to minimize the challenges facing SFSU nor understate how much work we need to do, but I want to stress our strategic advantages—advantages that position us to remain a competitive regional public university.

In contrast to the concerns about affordability driven largely by the private institutions that dominate media narratives, an SFSU degree is affordable. Most of our students graduate with little or no debt—I yearn for the day when that fact becomes a media headline! I know that the cost of housing in SF pose challenges. We will continue to work hard to lobby the state for additional housing support and to build a more strategic scholarship program to reduce the total cost of attendance. But even in the context of our housing costs, our students continue to graduate with far less debt than most. We are accessible. And for our students, that means a future with a degree with a meaningful outcome at a manageable cost. 

SFSU has always been attuned to the needs of the region, from the growth of the liberal arts in the wake of WWII to the emergence of ethnic studies in the 1960s to more recent innovations like our partnership with Genentech to provide a pipeline for the biotech field as it grew in the region. As the needs of our region and society change, so do we as demonstrated by the number of curricular innovations our faculty are currently driving.

I know many of us cringe when discussions of higher education are coupled with “return on investment.” But I encourage us to view this from a different lens. What better indicates a positive return than the decades of success we have had providing our graduates with upward mobility? We are regularly ranked in the top 5% of institutions for upward mobility, often near the top of all lists. We have launched thousands of students into rewarding careers even as the workforce was reshaped by historical forces, and we will continue to do so.

Our key strengths are our city and our people. There is no better city to study in than here. Our city provides a laboratory for students in a wide range of programs—education and healthcare, arts and culture, social services and civic engagement, bioscience and technology, business and tourism—name the field and there is an opportunity here in SF. Just recently, U.S. News and World Report declared SF’s job market the most robust in the country. We will capitalize on the city’s renaissance to recruit and retain students and continue to provide SF with the educated workforce and citizenry it requires to thrive.

Our greatest asset is our people—you. The last few years have been more than challenging. Just over six years ago, I sent an email moving the university remotely—a modality that lasted close to two years. The post pandemic world brought with it changes in student engagement, technology, enrollment declines, and attendant budget woes. To say it’s been hard is to understate our experiences. But I am most struck by the work you all do every day under extraordinary circumstances, the very work that fuels our success as an engine of educational equity and ensures our future success. As always, I am deeply grateful.
I encourage folks to review our strategic enrollment plan, watch the recording of the spring enrollment forum or reach out to my office or the provost’s to learn more about how we are leveraging these strengths to stabilize our enrollments. As we continue to chart a volatile environment, we have much to be proud of. Our affordability, our proven success at upward mobility, our dynamic location, our willingness to adapt, our talented students, and our exceptionally dedicated faculty, staff and administrators will ensure we remain an engine of educational equity serving a vital function in the San Francisco Bay Area and across the state.

Best,

Lynn Mahoney, Ph.D.

President