LONG BEACH (CBSLA.com) — A growing gender gap in higher education enrollment is prompting efforts to recruit and retain more male students at one California university.

Cal State Long Beach is among the schools where female students outnumber male students by more than 15 percent. The numbers are even lower for Latino and African American men.

“I looked around and I realized there are literally no dudes in here,” said freshman Anthony Elam.

In the late 1960s, higher education institutions made a push to recruit greater numbers of women to attend college. Twenty years ago, female students started to outnumber male students, a trend that has continued.

Three years ago, Cal State Long Beach launched the Men’s Success Initiative, an effort to get more students to enroll and keep them from falling through the academic cracks.