The California State University - San Marcos Student to Faculty Ratio & Faculty Composition

What is the faculty composition at Cal State San Marcos?

Check out the information on class structures and faculty to get a feel for the academic life at Cal State San Marcos.

Student to Faculty Ratio Here is Low

California State University - San Marcos, with 24 students for every instructional faculty member, ranks among the lowest in comparison to the national average of 14:1. This ratio indicates that the number of students split between the same faculty is much higher than normal, and could mean students will experience larger class sizes and fewer opportunities to connect with professors, especially in introductory courses.

Instructional Staff at the College

The following table shows all the employees the school considers instructional, and therefore, part of the above student-to-faculty ratio. These include both those employees designated as either "primarily instructional" or as "instructional combined with research/public service". It does not include employees that have been identified by California State University - San Marcos as primarily performing research or public service.

Average Use of Full-Time Teachers

At California State University - San Marcos, 48.0% of the teaching staff are full time, which is on average when compared nationally.

This School Hires an Average Number of Adjuncts

51.0% of the teaching staff at California State University - San Marcos are part-time non-faculty or non-tenure track faculty. This use of adjuncts is on par with the national average of 49.0%.

Colleges often use part-time professors and adjuncts to teach courses, rather than full-time faculty. This hiring practice is primarily a way to save money amid increasingly tight budgets. However, it is a controversial practice with strong views on either side. We encourage you to understand this topic more deeply, and how the colleges you are interested in approach faculty hiring. It's your education and your money on the line. Make sure you know what you are getting for it.

Additional Information

• What is an Adjunct?

  On this page, we refer to an adjunct teacher or a part-time teacher interchangeably, although each school may have a slightly different definition. In short, an adjunct professor can either work full-time or part-time during a school semester, but they have no contract or a contract that lasts only a short amount of time. To come up with the numbers for this page, we use the total number of part-time non-faculty and non-tenure track faculty to represent the count of adjuncts for the college or university.

Grad Assistants May Teach Classes

California State University - San Marcos has 41 instructional graduate assistants that teach or provide teaching-related duties. These responsibilities could range from entirely teaching lower-level courses themselves, to assisting professors by developing teaching materials, preparing or giving exams and grading student work. We suggest you ask the college to what extent graduate assistants are relied on for instruction, so you know what you are paying for.

Additionally, the school has 23 non-instructional graduate assistants.