California State University

The California State University (Cal State or CSU) is California's system of public universities. Headquartered in Long Beach, the system includes 22 campuses and seven off-campus centers, and serves more than 460,000 students. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the California State University is a part of the state's three-tier system public postsecondary education plan, which also includes the California Community Colleges and University of California systems.

Established in 1960, the CSU system traces its history to the California State Normal Schools, which were chartered beginning in 1857. The system is governed by a 25-member Board of Trustees, which appoints the Chancellor as the system's chief executive officer. The system employs 63,375 faculty and staff members.

The CSU is the largest public university system in the United States and awards the most bachelor's degrees of any public university system in the country. Since 1961, more than four million people have received degrees from the CSU system. It offers more than 1,800 degree programs in about 240 subject areas.

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.

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.

Chancellors

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

Notes

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).

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