City College of San Francisco recently announced plans to close its Downtown Center at Fourth and Market streets in July, marking a rare acknowledgment that the institution operates at a scale far beyond local demand. Driven by state funding formulas that penalize chronically low attendance, the campus could no longer justify its operations with a mere 152 full-time equivalent students. That external fiscal pressure was required to force this consolidation speaks volumes about the district’s resource management over the last decade.
Even with the closure, City College of San Francisco remains built for a long-gone demographic era. While the college served 32,600 full time equivalent students in the early 2010s, it has only 9,172 full-time equivalent students this year, a collapse accelerated by prior accreditation battles and pandemic disruptions.
It is worth considering how we got here. Founded in 1935 as San Francisco Junior College, the institution experienced its most aggressive expansion following World War II to absorb returning veterans and the subsequent baby boom. California’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education mandated that community colleges absorb the growing wave of high school graduates. The core infrastructure of the 56-acre Ocean Campus was financed and constructed to serve this historical anomaly, reflecting an era when young families dominated the city demographics.
The demographic profile that justified such an expansive footprint has vanished. Skyrocketing housing costs have driven families to the East Bay and beyond, replacing a family centric population with single professionals, childless couples, and retirees. Consequently, the share of city residents under the age of 18 has persistently declined. The pipeline of high school graduates available to enroll at the college is smaller today than in any decade during which the district built new facilities. There is no plausible macroeconomic trend or local policy lever capable of reversing this decline in the school age population.
As a result, CCSF finances are upside down. Its 2025 financial audit shows the college collecting approximately $15.9 million in net tuition and fee revenue while incurring $329 million in operating expenses. This means the district spends roughly 20 dollars for every dollar collected from students. The remainder is covered by a patchwork of ad valorem property taxes, a $99 parcel tax, dedicated sales tax revenues, federal funds, and state apportionments. Salaries and employee benefits consume $222.5 million, or about 68 percent of total operating expenditures, leaving administrators with little flexibility to balance the budget absent layoffs or union givebacks.
The state subsidy structure makes this financial position even more precarious. Under California’s Student Centered Funding Formula, the district’s actual enrollment justifies only a fraction of its total state apportionment. The college relies heavily on state hold harmless provisions that inject tens of millions of dollars in gap filling subsidies to artificially inflate its budget to a guaranteed floor. These protections are not permanent, and as the state budget tightens, the district faces a severe fiscal cliff. A multiyear budget projection shows that the college faces large deficits and exhaustion of its fund balance if expenditures are not drastically curtailed.
San Francisco taxpayers also remain burdened by demands to maintain and improve the college’s oversized infrastructure. Over the past two decades, voters approved three general obligation bond measures, including a $195 million authorization in 2001, a $246.3 million measure in 2005, and an $845 million bond in 2020. Facilities require heating, staffing, and continuous maintenance regardless of how many students sit in the classrooms.
While the district has budgeted for early retirement incentives to shrink its oversized payroll, projecting net savings of roughly $2.3 million in the next fiscal year, these measures generate only modest savings relative to the structural deficit. Another critical area requiring reform is the ongoing subsidization of noncredit adult enrichment courses. The fundamental redistributive mission of the community college system is to provide accessible workforce training and transfer pathways for low-income students. Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize leisure courses for financially secure retirees and mid-career professionals while the institution hemorrhages cash.
The closure of the Downtown Center must be the beginning of a broader contraction, not a standalone anomaly. The district needs to close more facilities and allow them to find higher and better uses, such as housing. Administrators should also transition all enrichment courses to a strict cost recovery pricing model, protecting low-income residents through targeted fee waivers. It is time to right size City College to the realities of 2020s San Francisco making it more affordable for the city’s taxpayers.