California State University

History

State Normal Schools

The California State University system traces its history to the Minns Evening Normal School, founded in 1857 by George W. Minns in San Francisco. The school was a normal school, an institution for training teachers, and the first of its kind in California.

The school was taken over by the state in 1862 and moved to San Jose. Renamed the California State Normal School, it eventually evolved into San Jose State University. A southern branch of the California State Normal School was established in Los Angeles in 1882. In 1887, the California State Legislature dropped the word California from the names of the San Jose and Los Angeles schools, renaming them State Normal Schools.

Other state normal schools were founded at Chico (1887) and San Diego (1897). However, at this time they did not form a university system in the modern sense, as each normal school had its own board of trustees and was governed independently.

In 1919, the State Normal School at Los Angeles became the Southern Branch of the University of California; in 1927, it was renamed the University of California at Los Angeles.

State Teachers Colleges

In May 1921, the legislature enacted a reform package for the state's educational system, which went into effect that July. The State Normal Schools were renamed State Teachers Colleges, their boards of trustees were dissolved, and they were placed under the supervision of the Division of Normal and Special Schools within the new California Department of Education. The colleges were managed from Sacramento by the deputy director of the division, who was subordinate to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the head of the Department of Education, and the State Board of Education.

From 1921 to 1960, the State Teachers Colleges operated under a combination of centralized financial control, but with limited supervision over the presidents of the colleges, giving them substantial autonomy in day-to-day operations. According to Clark Kerr, J. Paul Leonard, president of San Francisco State from 1945 to 1957, once described his position as "the best college presidency in the United States—no organized faculty, no organized student body, no organized alumni association, and...no board of trustees." At the same time, state law treated the colleges as state government agencies, subjecting their budgets to the same financial controls as other state agencies, unlike the independent University of California.

During the 1920s and 1930s, the institutions evolved from normal schools, that is, vocational schools narrowly focused on training elementary school teachers to impart basic literacy to young children, into teachers colleges that provided a full liberal arts education and whose graduates were fully qualified to teach all K–12 grades. Charles McLane, the first president of the Fresno State Normal School (now California State University, Fresno), was a major advocate for the transition to a broad liberal arts education for K–12 teachers. McLane had founded Fresno Junior College (now Fresno City College) in 1907. When he founded the Fresno State Normal School in 1911, McLane arranged for it to co-locate with the junior college and synchronize schedules so teachers in training could take liberal arts courses there. San Diego and San Jose also subsequently expanded their academic programs beyond traditional teacher training. These developments had the "tacit approval" of the State Board of Education and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, but they lacked express authorization from the board and the state legislature.

State Colleges

In 1932, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was asked by the state legislature and governor to perform a study of California higher education. The so-called "Suzzallo Report" (after the Foundation's president, Henry Suzzallo) sharply criticized the State Teachers Colleges for their intrusion upon UC's liberal arts prerogative and recommended their transfer to the Regents of the University of California (who would be expected to put them back in their proper place). This recommendation spectacularly backfired when the faculties and administrations of the State Teachers Colleges rallied to protect their independence from the Regents. In 1935, the State Teachers Colleges were formally upgraded by the state legislature to State Colleges and were expressly authorized to offer a full four-year liberal arts curriculum, culminating in bachelor's degrees, but they remained under the Department of Education.

During World War II, a group of local Santa Barbara leaders and business promoters (with the acquiescence of college administrators) were able to convince the state legislature and governor to transfer Santa Barbara State College to the University of California in 1944. After losing a second campus to UC, the state colleges' supporters arranged for the California state constitution to be amended in 1946 to prevent it from happening again.

The period after World War II brought a great expansion in the number of state colleges. Additional state colleges were established in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Long Beach from 1947 to 1949, and then seven more state colleges were authorized to be established between 1957 and 1960. Six more state colleges were founded after the enactment of the Donahoe Higher Education Act of 1960, bringing the total number to 23.

California State Colleges

During the 1950s, the state colleges' peculiar mix of fiscal centralization and operational decentralization began to look rather incongruous in comparison to the highly centralized University of California (then on the brink of its own decentralization project) and the highly decentralized local school districts around the state which operated K–12 schools and junior colleges—all of which enjoyed much more autonomy from the rest of the state government than the state colleges. In particular, several of the state college presidents had come to strongly dislike the State Board of Education and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Roy E. Simpson, whom the presidents felt were too deferential to the University of California. Five state college presidents led the movement in the late 1950s for more autonomy from the state government: Glenn Dumke at San Francisco State (who had succeeded Leonard in 1957), Arnold Joyal at Fresno State, John T. Wahlquist at San Jose State, Julian A. McPhee at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Malcolm Love at San Diego State. They had three main objectives: (1) a systemwide board independent of the rest of the state government; (2) the right to award professional degrees in engineering and the doctorate in the field of education; and (3) state funding for research at the state college level.

The state legislature was limited to merely suggesting locations to the UC Board of Regents for the planned UC campus on the Central Coast. In contrast, because the state colleges lacked autonomy, they were vulnerable to pork barrel politics in the state legislature. As early as 1932, the Suzzallo Report had noted that "the establishing of State teachers colleges has been partly the product of geographic-political considerations rather than of thoughtful determination of needs". In 1959 alone, state legislators introduced separate bills to individually create nineteen state colleges. Two years earlier, one bill that had actually passed had resulted in the creation of a new state college in Turlock, a town better known for its turkeys than its aspirations towards higher education, and which made no sense except that the chair of the Senate Committee on Education happened to be from Turlock.

In April 1960, the California Master Plan for Higher Education and the resulting Donahoe Higher Education Act finally granted autonomy to the state colleges. The Donahoe Act merged all the state colleges into the State College System of California, severed them from the Department of Education (and also the State Board of Education and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction), and authorized the appointment of a systemwide board of trustees and a systemwide chancellor. The board was initially known as the "Trustees of the State College System of California"; the word "board" was not part of the official name. In March 1961, the state legislature renamed the system to the California State Colleges (CSC) and the board became the "Trustees of the California State Colleges."

California State University and Colleges

In 1966, James R. Mills, a state assemblyman from San Diego, suggested studying the possibility of changing the name of the system to California State University. Much of the leadership on this matter emerged from the San Diego area in the following years, but several bills introduced by San Diego legislators failed to pass in the face of staunch opposition from the University of California. The final compromise was that the system would become the California State University and Colleges. Alex Sherriffs, then serving as an education advisor to Governor Reagan, later explained that he was among those who fought the name change because "most of the campuses are not, by any definition I've ever seen, a university. A university ... includes several colleges and is heavily engaged in scholarship and research. It gives the doctoral degrees". Governor Ronald Reagan signed Assembly Bill 123 into law on November 29, 1971 and the board was renamed the "Trustees of the California State University and Colleges".

In accordance with the new systemwide name, on May 23, 1972, the board of trustees voted to rename fourteen of the nineteen CSU campuses to "California State University," followed by a comma and then their geographic designation. The five campuses exempted from renaming were the five newest state colleges created during the 1960s.

The new names were strongly disliked at certain campuses. For example, CSUSF drew the humorous response "Gesundheit," and was frequently confused with CCSF, USF, and UCSF. Over Dumke's objections, state assemblyman Alfred E. Alquist proposed a bill that would rename the San Jose campus back to San Jose State. As passed and signed into law, the bill also renamed San Diego and San Francisco back to their old names. A few years later, the Sonoma and Humboldt campuses secured passage of similar legislation.

In September 1976, the chancellor's office was moved from Los Angeles to a custom-built headquarters at 400 Golden Shore on the Long Beach waterfront. This was the first time CSU had owned its own headquarters building.

California State University

Two major changes occurred in 1982. First, CSU was able to quietly obtain passage of a bill dropping the word "colleges" from its name. Second, W. Ann Reynolds succeeded Dumke as CSU's third chancellor, and brought a dramatically different management style to the CSU system. In many ways, Reynolds was the opposite of the "quiet" and "apolitical" Dumke. Despite the severe budget pressures brought about by the passage of Proposition 13, Reynolds was able to achieve moderate success in improving parity between CSU and UC funding. She was unsuccessful in her other long-term objective, securing for CSU the right to award doctorates independently of UC. When she asked Dumke for help, he replied that "he had given his word in 1960 and did not believe it principled to change." A week later, he testified before the state legislature and did not support the independent doctorate for CSU.

Meanwhile, various problems with the 400 Golden Shore building forced the chancellor's office to move to a new building after only 22 years. The solution was to trade spaces with the parking lot across the street to the north, a site with better soil conditions. In spring 1998, CSU moved into its current headquarters at 401 Golden Shore, then demolished the old building and turned its site into a parking lot.

In 1995, California Maritime Academy joined the California State University system as the twenty-second campus. In 2015 it was renamed as California State University Maritime Academy.

In May 2020, it was announced that all 23 institutions within the CSU system would host majority-online courses in the Fall 2020 semester as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of the pandemic on education.

Near the end of 2022, the CSU actively opposed the proposed expansion of the California Community Colleges' right to confer a limited number of four-year bachelor's degrees. The community colleges involved noted how ironic it was for CSU to be pushing back against them, in light of CSU's long-running battle with UC over the right to award the doctorate.

In July 2023, CSU's systemwide Title IX compliance was harshly criticized in a report prepared by the Cozen O'Connor law firm at the request of the Board of Trustees (at a cost of over $1 million) and separately in another report prepared by the California State Auditor at the request of the Legislature. The Cozen report found that CSU's legal department and Title IX coordinators were severely understaffed. Cozen reported there was a widespread perception throughout the CSU system that "individual campus administrators act to protect the interests of the institution rather than care for the individuals who have been harmed".

Governance

The governance structure of the California State University is largely determined by state law. The California State University is ultimately administered by the 25-member board of trustees of the California State University. The trustees appoint the chancellor of the California State University, who is the chief executive officer of the system, and the presidents of each campus, who are the chief executive officers of their campuses.

The Academic Senate of the California State University, made up of elected representatives of the faculty from each campus, recommends academic policy to the board of trustees through the chancellor.

Board of trustees

The California State University is administered by the 25-member board of trustees, composed of:

The governor of California (president ex officio)

Sixteen members appointed by the governor of California with the consent of the Senate

Two students from the California State University appointed by the governor with the recommendation of the Cal State Student Association

One tenured faculty member appointed by the governor selected from a list of names submitted by the Academic Senate

One representative of the alumni associations of the state university selected for a two-year term by the alumni council of the California State University

Four ex officio members aside from the governor:

Lieutenant governor

Speaker of the Assembly

State superintendent of public instruction

The CSU chancellor

The board meets six times each year in the Glenn S. Dumke Auditorium at the Office of the Chancellor in Long Beach. Unlike the Regents of the University of California, the board does not regularly rotate the locations of its meetings between Northern and Southern California.

Chancellor

The chancellor is the chief executive officer of the CSU, and all presidents of the campuses report directly to the chancellor.

The following persons had served as the chancellor of the California State University system:

Student government

All 22 campuses have student government organizations, and are all members of the California State Student Association (CSSA). California Education Code § 89300 allows for the creation of student body organizations at any state university for the purpose of providing essential activities closely related to, but not normally included as a part of, the regular instructional program.

Campuses

The CSU is composed of 22 main campuses, of which 10 are located in Northern California and 12 in Southern California. The 22 campuses are listed here by order of the year founded:

* U.S. News & World Report ranks several universities in the California State University system in the National Universities category as they offer several Ph.D. programs. The other universities are ranked in the Regional Universities (West) category as they offer few or no Ph.D. programs.

Peripheral enterprises

Off-campus branches

Several of the universities in the Cal State system operate branch campuses. Some of these branches have become or were formerly independent. Notably, California State University Channel Islands transitioned from an off-campus branch of CSU Northridge, and Cal Poly's Solano campus and Maritime Academy were originally an independent campus of the Cal State system.

The following is a list of schools and their off-campus branches:

Laboratories

Research facilities owned and operated by units of the CSU include the following:

Desert Studies Center, a research consortium and field site in Zzyzx managed by California State University, Fullerton

Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, an independent degree-granting campus and oceanographic laboratory located in the Monterey Bay area managed by San Jose State

Southern California Marine Institute, an oceanographic laboratory in the Los Angeles Basin

Telonicher Marine Laboratory, a Cal State Humboldt marine research laboratory in Trinidad that is home to the research vessel R/V Coral Sea

Observatories

Established in 1968, the Mount Laguna Observatory, managed by San Diego State's Department of Astronomy, is the oldest observatory in the CSU system. The CSU's other observatories include the Sonoma State Observatory and Cal State San Bernardino's Murillo Family Observatory.

High-performance networking

The California State University is a founding and charter member of the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, a nonprofit organization that provides high-performance Internet-based networking to California's K-20 research and education community.

Research and academics

The California State University (CSU) and most of its campuses are members of Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU).

The CSU is a founding and charter member of CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, the nonprofit organization which provides extremely high-performance Internet-based networking to California's K–20 research and education community.

The California State University Program for Education and Research in Biotechnology (CSUPERB) mission is to develop a professional biotechnology workforce. CSUPERB provides grant funding, organizes an annual symposium, sponsors industry-responsive curriculum, and serves as a liaison for the CSU with government, philanthropic, educational, and biotechnology industry partners. The program involves students and faculty from Life, Physical, Computer and Clinical Science, Engineering, Agriculture, Math and Business departments at all 22 CSU campuses.

The Hospitality Management Education Initiative (HMEI) was formed in 2008 to address the shortage of hospitality leaders in California. HMEI is a collaboration between the 14 CSU campuses that have hospitality-related degrees and industry executives. CSU awarded 95% of hospitality bachelor's degrees in the state in 2011.

ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) is the recognized U.S. accreditor of college and university programs in applied and natural science, computing, engineering, and engineering technology. The California State University has 18 colleges with ABET-accredited engineering programs (Pomona, San Luis Obispo, Maritime, Chico, Dominguez Hills, East Bay, Fresno, Fullerton, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Northridge, Sacramento, San Bernardino, Humboldt, San Diego, San Francisco, and San José).

Admissions

Historically, the requirements for admission to the CSU have been less stringent than the UC system. However, both systems require completion of the A-G requirements in high school as part of admission. The CSU attempts to accept applicants from the top one-third of California high school graduates. In contrast, the UC attempts to accept the top one-eighth. In an effort to maintain a 60/40 ratio of upper division students to lower division students and to encourage students to attend a California community college first, both university systems give priority to California community college transfer students.

However, the following CSU campuses use higher standards than the basic admission standards due to the number of qualified students who apply which makes admissions at these schools more competitive:

Furthermore, five California State University campuses are fully impacted for both freshmen and transfers, meaning in addition to admission into the school, admission into all majors is also impacted for the academic 2025–26 program. The five campuses that are fully impacted are Fullerton, Long Beach, San Diego, San Jose, and San Luis Obispo.

The only CSU campuses that are not impacted at either the freshman or transfer level for any academic program are Dominguez Hills, Fresno, and Monterey Bay.

Student profile

A 2016 study by the Cal State system estimated that as many as one in ten Cal State students experience homelessness during their time in college.

Impact

The CSU confers over 110,000 degrees each year, awarding almost half of the state's bachelor's degrees and one-fourth of the state's master's degrees. The entire 22 campus system sustains over 209,000 jobs statewide, generating $1.6 billion in tax revenue. Total CSU related expenditures equate to $26.9 billion.

The CSU produces 62% of the bachelor's degrees awarded in agriculture, 54% in business, 44% in health and medicine, 64% in hospitality and tourism, 45% in engineering, and 44% of those in media, culture and design. The CSU is the state's largest source of educators, with more than half of the state's newly credentialed teachers coming from the CSU, expanding the state's rank of teachers by nearly 12,500 per year.

Over the last 10 years, the CSU has significantly enhanced programs towards the underserved. 56% of bachelor's degrees granted to Latinos in the state are from the CSU, while 60% of bachelor's awarded to Filipinos were from the CSU. In the Fall of 2008, 42% of incoming students were from California Community Colleges.

Campus naming conventions

The UC system follows a consistent style in the naming of campuses, using the words "University of California" followed by the name of its declared home city, with a comma as the separator. Most CSU campuses follow a similar pattern, though there are many exceptions. Several are named only for their home city or county, such as San Francisco State University, San Jose State University, San Diego State University, or Sonoma State University.

The Fresno and Sacramento campuses formally follow the standard naming pattern, but respectively market themselves as "Fresno State" and "Sacramento State", and use those terms for their athletic programs. Chico, Long Beach, and Stanislaus also formally use the standard naming pattern, but use "Location State" for athletics only. Northridge brands its athletic program as "CSUN", and uses that term alongside its formal name in marketing.

Channel Islands, and San Marcos are the only campuses whose names do not include a comma.

To reflect their polytechnic status, the San Luis Obispo, Pomona, and Humboldt campuses have added "Polytechnic" to their formal name, but differ on placement. The San Luis Obispo campus is officially a California Polytechnic State University, while the Pomona and Humboldt are California State Polytechnic Universities (emphasis added).

Some critics, including Donald Gerth (former President of Sacramento State), have claimed that the weak California State University identity has contributed to the CSU's perceived lack of prestige when compared to the University of California.

Differences between the CSU and UC systems

Both California public university systems are publicly funded higher education institutions. There are 22 CSU campuses and 10 UC campuses representing approximately 437,000 and 237,000 students respectively. The cost of CSU tuition is approximately half that of UC. Despite having far fewer students, the largest UC campus, UCLA, as a result of its research emphasis and medical center, has a budget ($7.5 billion as of 2019) roughly equal to that of the entire CSU system ($7.2 billion as of 2019).

According to a 2002 study, faculty at the CSU spend about 30 hours a week teaching and advising students and about 10 hours a week on research/creative activities, while a 1984 study reports faculty at the UC spend about 26 hours a week teaching and advising students and about 23 hours a week on research/creative activities.

CSU's Chancellor, Dr. Charles B. Reed, pointed out in his Pullias Lecture at the University of Southern California that California was big enough to afford two world-class systems of public higher education, one that supports research (UC) and one that supports teaching (CSU). However, student per capita spending is lower at CSU, and that, together with the lack of a research mission or independent doctoral programs under the California Master Plan, has led some in American higher education to develop the perception that the CSU system is less prestigious than the UC system. Kevin Starr, the seventh State Librarian of California, described CSU in a published history of California in the 1990s as "in so many ways the Rodney Dangerfield of public higher education".

According to the California Master Plan for Higher Education (1960), both university systems may confer bachelors or master's degrees as well as professional certifications, however only the University of California has the authority to issue Ph.D degrees (Doctor of Philosophy) and professional degrees in the fields of law, medicine, veterinary, and dentistry. As a result of legislation introduced in 2005 and 2010 (SB 724 and AB 2382, respectively), the California State University may now offer doctoral degrees in Education and Physical Therapy. Additionally, the California State University (CSU) offers Ph.D degrees and some professional doctorates as a joint degree in combination with other institutions of higher education, including joint degrees with the University of California and accredited private universities.