Anglo Students Are in Minority at CSUN : Education: Development is a first in school’s history. Ethnic groups reach their highest levels since 1980.

For the first time in the 37-year history of the school, Anglo students at Cal State Northridge are in the minority, a development that mirrors the changing face of the San Fernando Valley, university officials said Monday.

Anglo students enrolled at the Northridge campus dipped to 49.2% this fall, down from a recent peak of 67.3% in 1986. At the same time, the university’s percentages of Latinos, Asians and blacks reached their highest levels since 1980, with future growth expected among the Latino and Asian groups in particular.

Officials attributed the change to growing minority populations in the Los Angeles area and the university’s efforts to make its population more representative of the community.

“While we would love to take credit for all of it, I’m sure a great deal of it is the demographics working their way through,” said Stephen Hull, a CSUN administrator.

The changing enrollment picture at CSUN also mirrors shifts in the broader 20-campus California State University system. Total enrollment there by Anglos dipped to 52.2% of the system’s nearly 348,000 students as of last fall. And that number is expected to drop further when this fall’s systemwide numbers are released in several weeks.

Along with CSUN, which is the system’s fourth largest campus, Anglo enrollments also dropped below majority levels for the first time this fall at Cal State Long Beach (46.5%), the second largest campus, and at Cal State Fullerton (49.8%), the seventh largest campus, officials there said Monday.

Six other campuses in the CSU system already had Anglo minority enrollments as of last fall. They were Dominguez Hills, 33.8%; Hayward, 47.1%; Los Angeles, 20.2%; Pomona, 38.9%; San Francisco, 41.8%, and San Jose, 46.4%. Urban campuses have long tended to have larger shares of minority groups than their more remote counterparts.

Of CSUN’s total 27,417 enrollment this fall, Latinos were the largest minority group with 4,565 students (16.7%), followed by 3,229 Asians (11.8%), and 1,845 blacks (6.7%). Those percentages are the highest for each of the ethnic groups at CSUN since at least 1980, records show. Anglo students at CSUN this fall number 13,478 or 49.2%, down from last fall’s 52.8% figure.

Ten years ago in 1983, by comparison, the breakdown among the campus’ nearly 28,000 students was 66.4% Anglo, 8.7% Asian, 7.9% Latino and 5.1% black, according to university records. Hull, coordinator of analytic studies in CSUN’s academic services office, said Latinos traditionally have been CSUN’s most underrepresented group.

Officials in the CSU system in the mid-1980s began taking steps to prod their campuses toward achieving student enrollments that reflected the areas they served, Hull said. Today, CSUN has larger shares of Asian and black students than those groups’ populations in the surrounding San Fernando Valley, but still a much smaller share of Latinos.

Aiming to close that gap, CSUN in recent years has been targeting local high schools with high Latino enrollments for recruiting efforts.

One such school has been San Fernando High School in San Fernando, where students enrolling at CSUN more than doubled from 34 in 1989 to 72 this fall, although recent budget cuts have curtailed those recruiting efforts, Hull said.

Changing Ethnic Makeup Anglos No Longer the Majority Percentage of CSUN students who are Anglo, 1980-’93. ‘93: 49.2%

Diverse Student Body Ethnic makeup of 1993 CSUN student body. Anglo: 49.2% Latino: 16.7% Asian / Pacific Islanders: 11.8% African-American: 6.7% Other / Unknown: 15.7% Note: Numbers do not add up to 100% because of rounding.