Enrollment reaches a record high, surpasses pre-pandemic numbers

Enrollment at Cosumnes River College is up 7% from last spring and is at a record high with more than 17,000 enrolled students, said College President Edward Bush.

The location of the campus plays a part in rising enrollment, said Vice President of Instruction and Student Learning Michael Lawlor.

“We want to be as accessible as possible,” Lawlor said. “We’re in a region that’s growing, and so we want to make sure that we can satisfy the educational goals for the students in our region.”

To keep up with the growing numbers, Lawlor said administrators keep increasing the amount of classes.

“As enrollment goes up, we need to offer more sections to keep up with that and we’ve been doing that,” Lawlor said.

Paul Meinz, an IT business and technology analyst, said there are various factors that impact campus enrollment, including economic recession, persistence, the Zero Textbook Cost program and how classes are scheduled.

About 50% of classes offered at CRC are online, which is low compared to the pandemic era, but historically high compared to pre-pandemic times, Meinz said.

“There’s another possibility that just having these online courses facilitates a larger enrollment increase when things get bad economically,” he said.

Bush said it’s not just about getting students enrolled, but keeping current students enrolled and making sure they’re taking enough units.

The opt-out schedule and ZTC initiative has attracted students to CRC specifically, with 76% of classes using the Open Education Resources, a program that allows teaching or learning materials to be easily accessible and free, according to an FAQ PDF from OER Commons, and ZTC programs, Bush said.

Bush said CRC is the only college in the Los Rios district that encourages the opt-out schedule, a program that allows new students to have a full-time schedule curated for them based on their major.

“There’s been some other colleges around the state that have adopted our model because of the impact that it’s had in not only increasing student enrollment, but increasing student success,” Bush said.

Raymond Neuharth, an instructional assistant for the photography department, said that with OER and ZTC classes, students come to class needing more camera equipment.

“Students at the beginning were coming in and going, ‘Hey, I got this digital camera. I’d like to learn how to use it,’ and they’d come to class with a digital camera,” Neuharth said. “Now we’re having students just coming straight here with no camera and needing a camera.”

Neuharth said that they have always known they will have to supply students with film cameras, but with more students enrolling into introductory digital photography classes without a camera, the department is having to buy and source more digital cameras.

“We’ve known in our hearts that we’re going to always have to go out there looking for these cameras that are 30, 40 years old now and just keep them going,” Neuharth said. “Year after year we have to start buying more and more cameras and keeping more cameras in stock to provide.”

Though not everybody knows about tutoring services or what they have to offer, their student-use rate continues to grow every semester, said Tutoring Services Coordinator Ryana Fisher.

“Every year since the pandemic we see an increase of utilization going up and up and up, sort of back to pre-pandemic times,” Fisher said.

The use of tutoring services has gone up 12.5% between the fall 2024 semester and the fall 2025 semester, according to a CRC Tutoring Services fall 2025 data overview.

Bush said there’s an academic advantage to taking in-person classes, from engagement to student success.

“It exposes students to a variety of different types of learning that happens outside of the classroom,” Bush said.

He said he wants to do right by not only new students, but also students currently enrolled.

“We make sure that we’re providing the support necessary to meet them where they are to ensure that they stay with us once they get to our institution until they’re ready to go into the workforce and are transferred to another institution,” Bush said.