MiraCosta College's San Elijo Campus in Encinitas's Cardiff-by-the-Sea district opened in 1988 on 42 acres overlooking San Elijo Lagoon, serving as the district's transfer-focused satellite for nearly 40 associate degrees and career certificates. The campus sits directly across Manchester Avenue from the San Elijo Lagoon and Ecological Reserve, integrating the 979-acre wetland into its environmental science and biology field-study curricula. Each semester, more than 200 course sections enroll upward of 3,000 students pursuing UC and CSU transfer credits, general education requirements, or career-education pathways through the MiraCosta Community College District founded in 1934. Art, communication studies, and humanities departments anchor the campus's liberal-arts transfer track, feeding graduates into advanced studio programs including the classical drawing and painting curriculum at Watts Atelier of the Arts in Leucadia. Highest-tier transfer programs include accelerated 22-month associate-degree tracks in business and communication studies designed for students targeting guaranteed-admission articulation agreements with the University of California system.