Enrollment has been cratering since COVID, and the school now reportedly feels like a ghost town. Faculty are worried. The community is worried. And the Cal State system has installed a new president to try to right the ship. His strategy? Recruit more out-of-area students. Bold.

Here's the thing — that's not really a strategy. That's the same thing struggling universities everywhere say before they either turn things around with a genuine structural reinvention or quietly fade into irrelevance. Sonoma State needs to answer a harder question: Why should anyone choose this school?

As one Bay Area resident put it bluntly, "This school used to be famous for its D1 lacrosse team, wine-making and wine business focus, and being a cheaper option to other Bay Area CSUs. Now it seems like the niche factor it once had has been lost. Unless someone lives nearby, it's a hard sell to go there when there are superior choices nearby instead."

That's the diagnosis right there. The niche is gone. And in a world where community colleges are free, online degrees are proliferating, and students are increasingly skeptical of the ROI on a four-year degree, a mid-tier CSU campus an hour north of San Francisco with no clear identity is in serious trouble.

So what should actually happen? Two options, and both are better than the current slow bleed.

Option one: Merge. Combine operations with SF State or Cal State East Bay. Consolidate administration, cut overhead, preserve whatever programs are actually drawing students. Nobody loves mergers, but nobody should love paying to keep a half-empty campus running either. That's taxpayer money evaporating into Rohnert Park fog.

Option two: Pivot hard. Turn Sonoma State into a focused, workforce-oriented institution — nursing, building trades, applied tech, the wine industry programs that once made it distinctive. California is desperate for nurses and tradespeople. There's a version of this school that becomes a pipeline for well-paying, high-demand careers and fills every seat.

What shouldn't happen is the status quo dressed up as a turnaround plan. The Cal State system has 23 campuses. Not all of them need to exist in their current form forever, and pretending otherwise isn't optimism — it's fiscal negligence. Sometimes the bravest thing an institution can do is become something new.