Summer Session Enrollment Hits All-Time High

“I saw it as a great opportunity to get ahead and focus on research during the regular semester.”

An expanded lineup of summer courses to help students stay on track to graduation is proving successful at San Diego State University.

Whether it’s catching up on high-demand general education courses or squeezing in a prerequisite for a major, thousands of undergraduate and graduate students are taking advantage of a combined 429 classroom and online courses, being offered in two six-week sessions and an overlapping 13-week schedule.

Course enrollment for summer 2019 stands at a record 16,953 as of June 24, a preliminary figure for the San Diego and Imperial Valley campuses, with additional students still registering for the session that gets underway July 9. The current session began May 28.

Radmila Prislin, associate vice president for academic affairs-resource management, said ready access to general-education courses and small lab sections that can sometimes fill quickly in fall and spring is a major appeal for many summer students. Much of this year’s growth, she said, was concentrated in the College of Arts and Letters and in STEM disciplines.

Prislin said students are becoming increasingly focused on the importance of completing courses needed for timely graduation. Most of the enrollees are juniors and seniors.

Jameel Zaki is among those taking two summer classes. Mechanical Engineering 330, a six-week lecture and lab,“is a prerequisite for other classes that I need to take next semester in order to graduate in May,” he said. It has “definitely benefited my progress towards graduation.”

Well over half the summer courses at SDSU are conducted online, which give students a chance to log in and do their course work at their own pace, from anywhere and at any time they choose.

New online offerings for summer 2019 included General Biology, a beginning course as well as many other upper-division courses.

This year’s course enrollment is up from 12,542 in summer 2016. The figures include students taking more than one course.

Since 2017 there has been a concerted effort by SDSU’s Division of Academic Affairs, Division of Business and Financial Affairs, and Division of Student Affairs to build the summer session to better serve students’ needs. It includes increased assistance for summer tuition and fees for low-income students.

For summer 2019, financial aid is projected to total more than $8 million, up more than $2.5 million from the previous year. Sources include Federal Pell Grants and two grants administered by California State University: the State University Grant program and the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP).

Summer advantage

Anushka Sharma, a biology major in her sophomore year, took a biochemistry class that meets four mornings a week. “I saw it as a great opportunity to get ahead and focus on research during the regular semester,” she said. “The class…is pretty small, which allows more one-on-one time with the professors, which has been beneficial for me.”

Josh Strelitz, who took two online classes last summer and is enrolled in Human Anatomy this summer, said he wanted to get hard classes out of the way. “My schedule has not been as challenging during the fall or spring,” he said, “so my grades are better. It’s great to be in the class multiple days a week which has helped me understand the material better and provide me with lots of opportunities to ask questions.”

Additional information on summer sessions can be found here.