اینترنت

برچسب: Cal

  • Cal State posts uneven graduation progress as initiative finish line approaches

    Cal State posts uneven graduation progress as initiative finish line approaches


    Cal State Northridge is one of 23 CSU System institutions.

    Larry Gordon/EdSource

    As the end of a decadelong push to graduate more students nears, California State University made slight progress in 2024 on increasing the four-year graduation rate for freshmen but saw six-year freshman rates stall and four-year transfer rates drop, new statistics show.

    Those numbers show the difficulties the university system faces in its final efforts to improve its graduation rates, even after significant overall improvement toward ambitious goals over the previous nine years.

    The data were presented Tuesday at a two-day symposium on graduation goals ahead of spring 2025, when the system’s much-scrutinized Graduation Initiative 2025 effort is supposed to end. California State University (CSU) officials urged colleagues to learn more about why many students are dropping out or taking so long to finish. 

    Across the CSU system, freshman six-year graduation rates have plateaued at around 62%, the same as in 2023 and 8 percentage points below the system’s graduation goal for 2025. Freshman four-year graduation rates ticked up to 36% in 2024, a 1 point gain from the previous year. But they fell shy of the system goal to hit 40% by 2025. 

    Transfer students’ performance was a mixed bag. Cal State is just 1 percentage point from reaching its goal of a 45% two-year graduation rate for transfers, a decent increase from 41% in 2023. But among transfer students who entered CSU in 2020, four-year graduation rates dropped from 79% in 2023 to 75% this year, putting them 10 points below the Graduation Initiative 2025 target.

    CSU also tracks graduation rates for its 23 campuses, all of which have been assigned varying goals. But the university system has not published campus graduation rates for 2024 to a dashboard available online, and those were not included in the public report Tuesday. 

    Though the system’s current graduation rates compare favorably to similar public universities, Chancellor Mildred García said they are “not good enough.”

    About 25,000 first-time students who entered CSU in 2018 did not graduate in six years, Garcia noted. “That’s 25,000 students whose dreams are deferred, 25,000 students who left — and because of the cost of living in the state, are leaving with debt,” she said. “We’re not going to take responsibility for that? I think we have to, we have to talk about the elephant in the room and really examine, again: Are support services really helping? Are we listening to our students?”

    García said the university system must also do more to connect recent graduates with careers, like a Cal State graduate she encountered working in a hospitality job who said they can’t find work in their desired field. 

    “Where is our responsibility there?” she said. “There’s so many options for them. How are we teaching them about the amazing career options that are out there, so they could know which way they want to go?”

    García’s remarks followed a presentation about the system’s graduation and persistence rates by Jennifer Baszile, the associate vice chancellor for student success and inclusive excellence.

    The system is yet to close the gap between students without Pell Grants (more affluent students) and lower-income students receiving such assistance. Among the CSU cohort that started in fall 2017, roughly 68% of more affluent students without Pell Grants graduated in six years. Among Pell Grant recipients, that figure was just 56%.

    Officials have previously attributed at least part of their trouble closing equity gaps to the coronavirus pandemic, which added pressure on students who have to work or care for family members.

    Cal State also touted some good news. Since the effort began, the system has nearly doubled its four-year graduation rate, Baszile said. A Cal State analysis comparing CSU to state systems like the City University of New York and the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education — after making adjustments to leave out top-tier research institutions — found that CSU’s six-year graduation rates for freshmen was near the top of the pack.

    Higher graduation rates are also a good deal for students. Baszile noted that getting their degrees faster means money in the pockets of Cal State graduates, since they can join the workforce sooner and save on the additional fees and tuition they would have paid if it took longer to finish their programs. 

    A closer look at how some students fared

    The past 10 years have seen notable demographic changes at Cal State. The university saw its incoming freshman classes grow 31% between 2009 and 2019. During the same period, the population of first-generation, Pell Grant and/or historically underserved students increased by 50%, according to Baszile’s presentation.

    Baszile then turned to persistence rates, which measure the percentage of students who return to a campus after each year of education. 

    Overall, the analysis found that 84% of first-time students in the 2018 cohort came back to campus for a second year. But equity gaps emerged early. First-year persistence among students who were Latino, male and first-generation was 78%, lagging 6 points behind the system average.

    Disparities were amplified in subsequent years. The divide ultimately fed into lower graduation rates: 48% of Latino, male and first-generation students graduated in six years, again trailing the 62% graduation rate among all students in the 2018 cohort. 

    “More than 50% of the Latino, male, first-generation students who started in 2018 are no longer with us. They are gone,” Baszile said. “We might be able to help them re-enroll. There’s always a chance. But think about on your university campuses: How much energy, how much effort, how much investment is required to have students fully depart and have to identify them, re-engage them and bring them back?”

    How to stop students from ‘leaking out of the pipeline’

    Baszile and Dilcie D. Perez, Cal State’s deputy vice chancellor of academic and student affairs, urged colleagues to learn more about the specific reasons why students leave CSU — in the hopes of preventing more students from following them out the door. 

    Students, Perez said in remarks following the presentation, are “leaking out of the pipeline.” She said a Cal State initiative to welcome back students who have stopped out has been difficult to establish, hampered by bureaucracy and processes. 

    “We’ve got to find a way to go get those students and bring them back,” Perez recalled saying to Baszile in one of the many conversations the two have had about improving student persistence. “And (Baszile) was like, ‘Yes, but how about we never lose them?’”

    President Richard Yao of Cal State Channel Islands said his campus has started using exit surveys. The first challenge is getting a response; once students leave, he said, they can be hard to reach. The next is making sense of the idiosyncratic reasons students depart.

    “When we look at the exit data, why students are leaving, it is not just one thing,” Yao said. “The variability is off the charts, and it’s so individual. So for us, right now, we’re struggling.”

    One throughline in the data, he said, is that students who leave are struggling academically. But he encouraged colleagues to look beyond academic performance, too.

    “We have to identify what’s happening in that first year in our classrooms, in our residential areas, in our co-curricular — what is it that may be contributing to those poor outcomes, whether it be mental health, basic needs — and maybe taking a deeper dive into what is contributing to those poor academic outcomes as well,” he said.





    Source link

  • Cal Maritime’s merger with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo approved

    Cal Maritime’s merger with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo approved


    The California State University board of trustees discusses a proposal to merge Cal Maritime and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo on Nov. 20, 2024.

    Credit: Amy DiPierro / EdSource

    This story was updated on Nov. 21 following a Cal State board of trustees vote approving the merger.

    California State University approved a merger uniting the financially troubled Cal Maritime in Vallejo, its smallest campus, with the university system’s most selective institution, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

    The full board of trustees greenlighted the merger proposal Thursday, a decision designed to keep the maritime academy in operation following enrollment declines that threatened its financial viability as an independent institution. The decision followed Wednesday’s unanimous vote for the merger by the trustees’ Joint Committee on Finance and Educational Policy.

    System officials argue that combining the two Cal State locations will ultimately benefit both universities. Cal Poly will gain access to maritime academy facilities including a $360 million training vessel and pier; Cal Maritime hopes to boost the number of students seeking merchant marine licenses. 

    “Please do not think of this as a contraction of the system,” said Chancellor Mildred García in remarks following the committee vote. “This is indeed an expansion — an expansion of opportunity for current and future students, of authentic and equitable access,” she said, as well as a benefit to the maritime industry.

    The system will face a tight timeline to unite the two institutions under the same administration by July 1, 2025. After that deadline, the combined university plans to continue under the Cal Poly name, and Cal Maritime will be rechristened Cal Poly, Solano Campus. The intent is for all students at the newly merged university to be enrolled as Cal Poly students starting in fall 2026.

    The Solano campus will be led by a vice president and CEO reporting to Cal Poly’s president. A superintendent with the rank of rear admiral in the U.S. Maritime Service will lead the maritime academy, which will remain in Vallejo. 

    Cal State envisions a blitz of activity as 2025 and 2026 deadlines approach, including navigating accreditation processes and updating the curriculum. Perhaps the biggest challenge is to revive the number of students earning their merchant mariner licenses, programs which will be housed at a renamed entity called the Cal Poly Maritime Academy pending approval from the U.S. Maritime Administration and other agencies. Merchant marines are the civilian workforce responsible for operating commercial shipping vessels; they also supply U.S. military ships and bases. 

    The maritime academy is due to receive a new, 700-student training vessel in 2026, but the school’s interim president, Michael J. Dumont, has warned that without a merger, Cal Maritime “is not going to be able to operate that ship because it won’t have the people to do it. It won’t have the budget to support it.”

    Cal Maritime has 804 students enrolled this fall. To boost that number, Cal State officials have said “substantial investments in recruitment and marketing” at high schools must begin now. 

    Officials have said cratering enrollment — headcount tumbled 31% between the 2016-17 and 2023-24 school years – and rising operating expenses are to blame for Cal Maritime’s difficult financial position.

    Dumont said in an email to the campus in August that the campus expected to notch a $3.1 million budget deficit in the 2024-25 school year, counting deficits in both its general operating and housing funds. This fall, the campus laid off 10 employees as the school year started.

    Steve Relyea, Cal State’s chief financial officer, and Nathan Evans, the system’s chief academic officer, framed the merger choice as one between combining the two institutions quickly or preparing to close the maritime academy. Presentations to the board co-led by Dumont and Cal Poly President Jeffrey D. Armstrong also note that Cal Maritime’s situation has been worsened by a flurry of departures among important campus leaders, among them its chief financial officer. Cal Maritime has tried to cover for those positions by striking agreements with Cal Poly, Cal State officials said in September, creating “the problematic misperception that leadership is moving ahead with the integration before board action in November.”

    Cal State formed 23 workgroups to study issues relevant to the merger, which it has since reorganized around a handful of themes like academics and enrollment. 

    Both faculty senate and student government representatives are already contemplating what it will take to knit the two institutions together, including questions about how to blend existing governance structures and distribute fees that support student government, according to a memo summarizing the process. Faculty additionally have been tasked to identify “overlapping, adjacencies and duplication in academic programming and curricula,” the memo said.

    Dustin Stegner, chair of the English department at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and a statewide senator in the Academic Senate of the CSU system, said he was amazed by the committee members’ enthusiasm for the proposal.

    “This was born out of a financial crisis of Cal Maritime not being sustainable, and it is being described as a great opportunity for the whole system,” he said. “It certainly seems like making a lot of lemonade out of a lot of lemons.”

    Stegner, who has served on one of the workgroups assembled to provide feedback on the integration proposal, said he is still waiting for the board of trustees to address questions about whether faculty members’ job security could be impacted by the merger. He said there are also open questions about whether the combined university will offer more online courses in order to reach students on both campuses and whether students who switch majors may also be permitted to switch campuses. 

    Cal State representatives have not yet decided which metrics the system should use to gauge the merger’s progress. Financially, Cal State will be eying anticipated cost savings and also checking to make sure absorbing the maritime academy “does not become a financial burden to Cal Poly,” according to a memo to the board. Updates on areas like how many students are enrolling in programs that yield a merchant mariner license and the student body’s diversity are also expected. CSU officials anticipate a report updating the board on the merger’s progress next May.

    The university system has hired consulting firm Baker Tilly as an adviser to guide the merger effort and monitor its success based on the to-be-determined accountability metrics. System records show the chancellor’s office inked a $500,000 contract with the firm in September. 





    Source link

  • Graduation rates up at most Cal State campuses, but some worsen

    Graduation rates up at most Cal State campuses, but some worsen


    Cal State Fullerton commencement 2024.

    Credit: Cal State Fullerton/Flickr

    While 14 Cal State universities notched six-year graduation rate increases over the previous year, nine schools in the system saw their rates decline.

    San Jose (+ 4.6 percentage points), East Bay (+ 2.4 percentage points) and Fresno (+ 2.1 percentage points) were among the campuses with the greatest increases in six-year graduation rate. Those figures represent the difference in completion among first-time, full-time freshman students who started in 2018 and those who began in 2017.

    But several campuses’ graduation rates slipped year-over-year, with the deepest dips at three of Cal State’s smallest campuses. Cal Maritime posted the biggest downswing, falling 7 percentage points. Stanislaus (- 4.6 percentage points) and Monterey Bay (- 4.1 percentage points) recorded the next-largest decreases. Two of Cal State’s largest campuses — San Diego (- 1.8 percentage points) and Long Beach (- 1 percentage point) — also saw six-year freshman rates go down slightly. 

    That’s according to campus-level statistics the system unveiled this week, coinciding with Cal State’s November board of trustees meeting. The university system is nearing the end of a decadelong campaign to graduate more students, which will conclude in spring 2025. It has made marked improvement toward hitting top-line goals across the system, but is falling short on some targets. Cal State officials have said that the pandemic set back progress on some graduation metrics. They also cite a need to focus on retaining students entering their second and third years of school, particularly students of color.

    Cal State knows “that we have a leak, that in that second to third year we’re losing a significantly high number of our students of color and probably male students of color, quite honestly,” said Dilcie D. Perez, Cal State’s chief student affairs officer. “We’re bringing them in. But if the mechanism doesn’t change, we’re going to lose students.” 

    Systemwide data presented last month shows that Cal State’s freshman four-year graduation rate across all campuses increased slightly during the 2023-24 school year over the previous year, but that its six-year freshman rate plateaued and four-year transfer rate fell.

    Cal Maritime, the university system’s smallest campus, was an outlier in terms of how much graduation rates fell from spring 2023 to spring 2024. The school, which specializes in shipping and oceanography programs, experienced the system’s greatest decrease in four-year graduation rates among students transferring from the California Community Colleges over the past two school years. Flagging enrollment has plunged the school into financial difficulty, which culminated this week in a vote to merge the maritime academy with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in order to keep it afloat. 

    Eight other campuses including Bakersfield (- 3 percentage points) showed declines in four-year transfer graduation rates. Humboldt (+ 5.8 percentage points) and Monterey Bay (+ 4.1 percentage points) gained the most, comparing four-year transfer graduation rates for the 2018 cohort to their peers a year earlier.

    Systemwide, Cal State is aiming to have 40% of first-year students graduate in four years and 70% of first-year students graduate in six years by spring 2025. Individual campuses also have their own graduation rate targets, which can be more or less ambitious than those that apply to the system as a whole. 

    None of the system’s universities met their individual campuses’ graduation rate targets for first-time, six-year graduation rates among students who started in 2018. There has been more success on four-year rates. San Diego, Long Beach, San Jose, Sacramento and Northridge met their four-year target for first-time students who started in 2020. 





    Source link

  • Enrollment climbs at some Cal State campuses, tumbles at others

    Enrollment climbs at some Cal State campuses, tumbles at others


    Students walk on a college campus.

    Students walking on the campus of Cal State San Marcos on Dec. 3, 2024.

    Credit: Amy DiPierro / EdSource

    Diego Lopez, a student in his last year at Cal State San Marcos, gives the north San Diego County campus high marks. The Army veteran likes his classes, feels the campus is generally well-managed and appreciates that at the school’s current size, “you can just chill, and relax, and not get too overwhelmed.” 

    But Lopez can tell the student body is expanding, especially at the start of the semester, when he has to navigate crowded parking lots.  

    “The parking lots are so full, so you have to make sure you get here early. And then just right across the street, you see all the construction being done,” he said. “You can definitely tell: This school is growing a lot, and it’s growing fast.”

    The number of students at the suburban Cal State San Marcos campus has mushroomed over the past decade. It’s now home to 14,655 students, an almost 15% jump since 2015, among the sharpest increases of any Cal State campus in that period.

    But that is not the case across the 23 campuses of the California State University system. Overall system enrollment has settled at 2.7% lower than a decade ago after tumbling more deeply during the pandemic. And behind that number is a more complicated picture, with some individual campuses showing double-digit percent increases even as others have experienced big decreases.

    While San Marcos students have raced to find parking in the first weeks of recent academic years, Sonoma State students in contrast can usually find dozens of empty spaces in the Bay Area school’s main parking lot. The campus has suffered the worst enrollment loss in the university system, contracting from 9,408 students in 2015 to 5,784 students in 2024. Recent statistics suggest it had the highest dorm vacancy rate in the Cal State system in spring 2023, prompting the university to open some housing to nonstudents.

    Falling enrollment has prompted a period of tight finances at the Sonoma State campus. Tess Wilkinson, a fourth-year transfer student studying communications, said she saw fewer courses being offered. She suspects budget cuts are one reason why.

    “I even noticed some professors that had regularly taught courses in my major were no longer on the course schedule at all,” she said. “Some courses were thrown together to accommodate abrupt faculty changes — and student engagement in my classes felt like it had decreased.”

    The divergence between San Marcos and Sonoma shows how the enrollment challenge facing the nation’s largest university system defies a one-size-fits-all solution about how to serve students and where to spend money around the state.

    The trend continued this fall, with enrollment up from the year before at 15 campuses and down at eight. That uneven distribution of new students is in part due to regional differences in population, the cost of living and labor markets. It may also reflect whether they cater primarily to commuters or on-campus residents, offer higher- or lower-demand degrees and serve more or fewer students sensitive to last year’s federal financial aid delays.  

    Enrollment at community colleges, a major feeder into Cal State, also slipped during the pandemic, though student headcount has started to recover. Going forward, Cal State will have to grapple with a long-predicted decline in the number of recent high school graduates in California. The Public Policy Institute of California, a think tank, nonetheless projects that CSU enrollment will continue an upward trajectory through 2035, thanks to larger shares of high school students completing college preparatory courses and higher college-going rates. 

    Even in a year when enrollment across the Cal State system rose a modest 1.5%, some campus leaders enjoyed a banner college acceptance season. Cal State Monterey Bay, whose 16% enrollment bump was the system’s largest 2023-24, sold out on-campus housing for the first time in a decade this fall, according to Ben Corpus, its vice president for enrollment management and student affairs. 

    At the other extreme, lower-enrolled CSU campuses must contend with the financial fallout from less revenue from tuition and fees. Sonoma State and Cal State Los Angeles, which notched the largest year-to-year enrollment drop in the system, have instituted hiring freezes and cut course sections to bridge funding gaps.

    Starting this school year, Cal State also has reallocated funding to universities that exceeded enrollment targets or showed they have higher demand and away from those with dropping enrollments. Anticipated cuts in state funding because of overall state budget conditions may have additional ripple effects, even at campuses with flourishing student bodies. 

    Those stakes have not escaped the notice of campuses at both ends of the enrollment yo-yo. EdSource interviewed students, faculty and administrators at Sonoma State and Cal State San Marcos about how they think course offerings, student clubs, construction and, yes, parking are changing as their schools get bigger or smaller. 

    Students walk on the campus of Sonoma State University.
    Credit: Ally Valiente / EdSource

    Sonoma State

    An hour north of San Francisco, Sonoma State University celebrates its location on the edge of the Russian River Valley by naming its dorms for wine varietals and regions from Beaujolais to Zinfandel. 

    But wildfires have destroyed thousands of homes in this region of the state since 2017, a shock from which its population and already expensive housing market are still recovering. That has made it harder to recruit students from other parts of the state, who are a significant part of the student body, officials said. Sonoma State’s enrollment has slid almost 39% since 2015. Cal State’s 2022-23 financial statements put the school’s average residence hall occupancy at just 65%. The university has opened some of its student housing to faculty, staff, students with young children or even people visiting campus for a conference.

    Collapsing enrollment over the decade slowed to a 1% dip this year. Still, the smaller student body has prompted a serious cash crunch. Sonoma State, which has a $130 million operating budget this school year, anticipates a $21 million budget deficit going into 2025-26. 

    “It’s pretty simplistic sort of math: We just don’t have enough students paying the tuition to fully cover all of the expenses we have,” Emily F. Cutrer, the university’s interim president, said at an Oct. 28 town hall to discuss Sonoma State’s budget forecast. 

    Cutrer said the university would have to add more than 3,000 students — a 52% increase over fall 2024 — to cover its current deficit, a goal she estimated is likely three or four years away. The loss of tuition and fee revenue is compounded by rising employee benefits costs, state funding cuts and an estimated $3.6 million that Cal State is expected to reallocate to other campuses.

    Sonoma State is under a hiring freeze and is also pressing pause on some travel. The campus in recent years has offered employees early retirements and buyouts. Part-time and full-time lecturer headcount has fallen almost 25% in the last several years, a spokesperson said. Sonoma State notified the faculty union in October that layoffs could be on the way.    

    “I would ask people to stop asking us to do more with less. It’s exhausting,” Lauren S. Morimoto, who chairs the university’s department of kinesiology, said at the town hall. “We’re demoralized and we’re burnt out.”

    Sonoma State’s struggles are a comedown from a campaign under then-President Ruben Armiñana to bill the university as a “public Ivy” – offering plush new facilities at a state university price – in the 1990s through 2010s. Armiñana’s critics charged that the strategy attracted a wealthier and whiter student body compared with the state’s other public universities. 

    Judy Sakaki succeeded Armiñana in 2016 with the explicit goal of making Sonoma State more accessible and less elitist. Sakaki’s 2022 resignation ushered in a period of leadership turnover; Cutrer is the third person to lead the university since then.      

    Tim Wandling, who chairs the English department and serves on the board of the California Faculty Association at Sonoma State, said he’s concerned about leadership instability on campus. He also worries that the university’s top brass “want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing blitzes and new programs, and what they really need to do is just downsize their administrative staff and focus on keeping the good faculty that they have, the good students they have.” 

    Sonoma State is not alone among Bay Area universities hurting for students. San Francisco State and Cal State East Bay are facing similar declines.

    Sonoma State’s relative distance from major population centers has long encouraged admissions staff to look outside their own backyard for prospective students.

    Sonoma currently draws 35% of its students from its home county, an additional 63% from elsewhere in California and 1.6% from out of state. University administrators and attendees speaking at the October town hall appeared to favor an all-of-the-above recruitment strategy. 

    Locally, the campus has struck guaranteed admissions deals with several of the region’s school districts and community colleges. And looking outside Sonoma State’s immediate region, the university is also recruiting in Southern California, looking at ways of retaining students it already has and bringing back students who do not immediately re-enroll each term.

    Students work at a library on the campus of Cal State San Marcos on Dec. 3, 2024.
    Credit: Amy DiPierro / EdSource

    Cal State San Marcos

    On a mild December afternoon, Cal State San Marcos student Diana Ortega Caballero was reading a book on a terrace overlooking construction cranes. Building sites are among the most visible cues of how the campus is expanding after some pandemic dips.

    Ortega Caballero, a transfer student from MiraCosta Community College in nearby Oceanside, said she had “a really easy transition” to San Marcos. Almost a third of San Marcos students start at a California community college.

    San Marcos is in good company among Southern California’s CSU campuses that have welcomed more students over the past decade due to regional population growth. San Diego State University is leading the system in enrollment gains since 2015, followed closely by Cal Poly Pomona and San Marcos. 

    Campus leaders have also taken concrete steps to steer more students to campus. Administrators have signed a series of guaranteed admissions agreements with school districts and other local education entities. They’ve also coordinated coursework with Murrieta Valley Unified School District and Mt. San Jacinto College to aid students earning software engineering degrees.

    Students interviewed at the campus said they’re largely satisfied with San Marcos. Several noted that the campus feels more accessible than larger CSU campuses. But they conceded experiencing occasional snags as the campus expands, like trouble getting into certain classes or a long wait time to see an academic adviser.

    Jackson Puddy, who is studying business administration, was standing outside the library waiting for students to arrive for a pickup chess game. He hoped the school’s growing enrollment would bring more money, more professors and perhaps even more members for the small chess club he runs. The only con? “The parking situation — it’s not going to get any better,” he said, even if students can now reliably find a space in a dirt lot downhill from the main quad. 

    Students recently approved a $210 per-semester fee increase to fund a new wellness and recreation center. Plans call for a turf field on a rooftop deck, indoor courts, cardio and strength training facilities and 550 beds for student housing. In addition, the campus opened a new dorm for 300 students two years ago and is currently building another one for 500.  

    Cal State system statistics suggest San Marcos has some of the busiest classroom and laboratory space of any school in the CSU system. One of the school’s most urgent goals is to meet surging demand for its engineering program, which began in 2019 with 300 students and has ballooned to 2,000. Campus leaders plan to build a three-story, $110 million building to house its College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The project is expected to break ground in July 2025.

    San Marcos’ growth does not immunize it from the belt-tightening other CSU campuses have begun in anticipation of lower state funding. At a board of trustees meeting in September, President Ellen Neufeldt said a lack of additional faculty could lead to larger class sizes and noted that the school has deferred maintenance on aging electrical systems. 

    “The challenge we now face is that while we are growing, we are unable to hire the essential employees needed to support our mission of student success,” Neufeldt said. “We urgently require more advisers, success coaches, tutors, financial aid specialists and counselors, and the list goes on and on, to assist our amazing students.”

    Ally Valiente, a student at Sonoma State University and a member of the Student Journalism Corps, contributed to this story.





    Source link

  • How Cal State’s first Black woman trustee influenced the university system

    How Cal State’s first Black woman trustee influenced the university system


    Donna J. Nicol, author of a book about Claudia Hampton, the first Black woman to serve on the Cal State board of trustees.

    Credit: Courtesy of Donna J. Nicol

    It was the photo of a Black woman dressed in university regalia that caught Donna J. Nicol’s eye. 

    “Trustee Claudia Hampton,” the caption read, “appointed by Reagan.”

    Nicol, an associate dean at Cal State Long Beach who studies the history of racism and sexism in higher education, was stunned. Ronald Reagan, as governor, opposed mandatory busing as a tool of school desegregation and, as president, attempted to undo affirmative action policies in the workplace. How could it be, Nicol wondered, that he appointed the first Black woman to sit on the California State University board of trustees? And what did Hampton do once she got there?

    “Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action”, Nicol’s recent book, answers those questions and others about Hampton’s two-decade stint on the board of trustees that governs the 23-campus public university system. Prior to her appointment at CSU, Hampton worked to enforce desegregation orders in the Los Angeles Unified School District and earned a doctoral degree from the University of Southern California. She rose to the CSU board when an opportunity to meet then-Gov. Reagan’s education secretary turned into an informal vetting process for a board seat. (She met Reagan only once, as far as Nicol can tell, an encounter Hampton described as pleasant.) 

    The book tracks Hampton’s emergence as a master tactician and a skillful diplomat on the Cal State board of trustees. Initially excluded from the informal telephone calls and meetings in which fellow board members discussed CSU business outside of regular meeting times, Nicol writes, Hampton traded votes with trustees to earn influence. Eventually, she began hosting board members for dinner to ensure she had a voice in important decisions, a practice she continued as board chair. Hampton also withstood subtle (and not so subtle) racism to win support for policies benefiting low-income students of color. 

    Though at first skeptical of Hampton’s approach to board politics, Nicol came to understand her as a pragmatist who worked within the period’s racial and gender norms to wield power on a board dominated by white, wealthy and conservative men. 

    “I realized how genius she was,” Nicol said. “When she became board chair, she had a strategy of letting her supporters talk first, and then her opponents had to play defense later. Everything was strategic.”

    Nicol also details Hampton’s work to implement, monitor and ensure funding for affirmative action programs. Soon after Hampton’s death, California voters passed Proposition 209, a 1996 ballot measure that bans state entities from using race, ethnicity or sex as criteria in such areas as public education and employment.  

    But Hampton’s legacy is still felt in CSU and beyond, Nicol writes. CSU created the State University Grant program after Hampton argued that increases to student fees should be offset by more need-based aid. A student scholarship named in her honor is aimed at underserved Los Angeles-area students. The California Academy of Mathematics and Sciences, a prestigious public high school that was her brainchild, continues to operate on the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills.

    Nicol counts herself among the many students to have benefited from Claudia Hampton’s advocacy. She attended an enrichment program for African American high school students at Cal State Dominguez Hills and received a State University Grant to pursue her master’s degree at Cal State Long Beach. Today, Nicol is the associate dean of personnel and curriculum at Long Beach’s College of Liberal Arts. She spoke to EdSource about the book and Hampton’s legacy.

    This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.   

    You write about a couple of incidents in which Hampton used some savvy diplomatic skills while on the Cal State board of trustees. Would you mind walking us through an example or two of those strategies?

    She was silent (at board meetings) for her first year. She didn’t talk, because she used that time to assess who were the power players, who were the people who had the capital. And so when she identified them, she said, “I have to trade votes with them.”

    One of her first appointments was to be on the Organization and Rules Committee. People treated it as a throwaway committee, but she was the chair, and so she decided, “I’m going to learn all of the board policies inside and out.”

    Before she passed away in (1994), she asked for a very specific rule, which is to hold presidents accountable for the implementation of affirmative action. What she wanted to ensure was that someone besides the middle manager, who would be the affirmative action officer, would be held accountable to make sure that they didn’t fall short on their affirmative action goals. 

    Claudia Hampton faced both subtle and overt racism that challenged the legitimacy of her role on the board. What are some examples of the discrimination that she experienced and how she was able to overcome that opposition?

    She was kind of presumed incompetent, because she was a Black woman coming into the board — even though she actually had a doctorate degree coming in.

    You had a trustee by the name of Wendell Witter. This is a few years in. They’re discussing affirmative action. And he yells out, “Oh my God, there’s a n— in the woodpile.” So she is taken aback by all of this, and all the men on the board, she says, are upset, too. And Wendell Witter is looking around like, “Well, what did I do? It’s just an expression.” 

    Hampton had a lot of experience in administration in (Los Angeles Unified), and she worked explicitly on race relations within the K-12 setting. When she got to the board, instead of yelling at Witter for what he had said, she told the board chair at the time, “I’ll talk to him individually. You keep going with that meeting.” And so the men on the board started to rally around her, because they viewed her as a political moderate, because she had every right at that moment to tell him off for the statements.

    Help me to understand the victories that Hampton ultimately won with regard to affirmative action and related policies.

    California Gov. Jerry Brown was actually kind of an opponent of affirmative action. He would say he supported it, but then when it came to funding, he would support (Educational Opportunity Programs, or EOPs, which help low-income and other underrepresented students attending a CSU campus), but he would not (fund) student affirmative action (in admissions) or faculty and staff affirmative action (in hiring). Hampton put a lot of pressure on Jerry Brown. She would call him out in meetings and say, “What about your commitment to these principles?’” (Hampton ultimately used her board position to ensure funding for student affirmative action pilot programs during a period of budget cuts in the late 1970s.)

    There was an update in the admission standards for students (in the 1980s). And she told people, ‘Yes, we’re going to increase the admission standards, but what we’re going to do is make sure that there’s enough EOP money that would prepare students in low-income areas in order to make sure they could meet those standards.’ She was particularly focused on the fact that L.A. Unified and San Francisco Unified had these large numbers of students of color and low-income students, but they weren’t getting access to things beyond reading, writing and arithmetic. They didn’t have access to a drama club or all those sorts of things. So she made sure that the CSU put funding aside to help support (that programming).

    Hampton and other affirmative action advocates’ success was short-lived because of the passage of Proposition 209, which prohibited state and local governments from considering race and other factors in public education. What were the forces that brought about Proposition 209?

    You have the recession that happened in the 1990s. Wherever there’s a recession and an economic downturn, you see an uptick in either racial violence or racial animus. So that’s one big part of it. The other part is the L.A. riots of 1992 because folks are like, ‘Well, they don’t deserve affirmative action, because look at how they’re behaving in the streets.’ That’s the idea. And then you also have, in 1994, Proposition 187, which has to deal with undocumented students.

    So you take all of those things – the recession, the LA riots, Proposition 187. Then, on top of that, you have (University of California regent member Ward Connerly, who championed Proposition 209) as this Black man who becomes a public face of the anti-affirmative action movement. (Connerly has said he has Native American, Black and white ancestry.) He’s kind of supercharging the debate over whether affirmative action is a good thing or not. So that’s really what led to its falling apart.

    We find ourselves now in a moment when a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision has effectively ended the practice of race-conscious college admissions. Are there lessons from Hampton’s life that you feel are even more relevant today in that context?

    I think that having diversity in our boards is really important because diversity leads to better policy. Too often we think of diversity as a feel-good thing — to make people feel included and inclusive. We talk about representation, but representation is more than just having two or three people from this group here; It’s really about having different perspectives so that you can write better policy.

    If you look at the CSU board, it is more diverse than it was, but is it reflective of what’s happening on the ground with students? I’m at CSU Long Beach, and we have a much larger Latinx population than what is represented on the board.

    I always say that the American project has been built on racism, and we don’t reconcile that. And Hampton just approaches the problem in a different way than others. I was raised in the Black radical tradition. So I had to come to terms with this pragmatic side — that we need the pragmatic and we need the radical at the same time. You need the radical to raise the consciousness of people, but you need the pragmatic in order to turn it into policy and something that has a legacy. 

    I also think that Hampton — her story, her life, what she did for the board— really demonstrates, in a lot of ways, people’s ignorance about how the trustees work. They’re super powerful, but they are super unnoticed. They are appointed by governors, and they are not held to account by the public.





    Source link

  • Future farmers grow real-world skills at Cal State’s working farms

    Future farmers grow real-world skills at Cal State’s working farms


    Fresno State animal science major Toi Johnson givies a bull an oral dewormer on Feb. 20, 2025, to help prevent fungal infections like ringworm from infecting and spreading to the rest of the herd. Adjunct faculty Ryan Person oversees her while other students practice giving shots to the animal.

    Credit: Jesus Herrera/EdSource

    In the heart of California’s bountiful Sacramento Valley lies Yuba City, a small town of about 68,000 people that is rich in agriculture and community.  

    This is where Taryn Chima, a fourth-year animal science major at California State University, Chico, grew up.  

    Growing alongside her were orchards of peaches, walnuts and almonds. Born into a third-generation farm family, Chima knew she wanted to pursue a career in agriculture from a young age. In 2021, Chima began her animal science education at Chico State. 

    Of the 23 campuses of California State University, just four have a college of agriculture: Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Chico State, Fresno State and Cal Poly Pomona. This also means they have working farms that provide food for their campuses and research opportunities for ranchers and farmers in areas like regenerative agriculture, which aims to keep growing systems healthy and effective.

    Students working the land

    Most importantly for the students attending these schools, working on their campus farms enriches their classroom learning with hands-on experience.

    Max Eatchel, a senior majoring in plant sciences at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, had few familial ties to farming, and instead found his passion for gardening while looking for a new hobby during the Covid-19 lockdown. 

    “I got super into all this regenerative agriculture, sustainable agriculture, permaculture stuff, and I just went deep down that rabbit hole,” said Eatchel, who has worked on the school’s organic farm for over a year. “When it came time to apply to college, I thought, ‘Why not try plant science?’”

    Until he worked on the farm, Eatchel didn’t realize how much he still had to learn in the practical application of his education. But with his graduation in June, he now feels “super prepared” for the professional world because of his hands-on experience.

    “I’ve been talking to this orchard back in Utah, and they were looking for someone who could repair tractors. I really hadn’t had any experience with that,” Etchel said. “So I just asked my boss, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, we’ll get you a shift right now.’ So it’s very fluid, and it helps you build the skills you want to build.” 

    Similarly to Eatchel, an agricultural education wasn’t in Anthony Zaragoza’s sights at all. Zaragoza got his associate degree in biology and was planning on eventually attending medical school. That was, until a revelatory six-month experience with the Western Colorado Conservation Corps gave him a new vision. 

    But even when he got to Cal Poly Pomona as an agribusiness and food industry management major, he wasn’t certain how he could turn his education into a career path. Getting his first job with the student farm eased his mind.

    “Out here in the city, we aren’t surrounded too much by a lot of agriculture,” Zaragoza said. “So it could be a little disheartening when we’re not having a chance to get out on an operation and see that what we’re learning is actually a feasible future for us.”

    Zaragoza started as a maintenance technician at the equine center and is now the harvest assistant lead, a new position in which he works with farm operations director Jeremy Mora on the business and marketing side.

    He has noticed peers in his major with the same confusion he had about how their studies translate to the working world. That is why he strongly recommends pursuing a job with the campus farms.

    “They have that passion, but they really need that connection,” Zaragoza said.

    For Chima, that connection and passion are enhanced at Chico State’s University Farm. “If I was not a part of a working farm, I would not be where I am today,” said Chima, who works as the lead student herdsman at the Chico State sheep unit, overseeing daily operations and supporting student research projects. “I’ve developed confidence, and I get to see a lot of different perspectives within the industry.”

    Growing up in Salinas, Karla Ahumada was always surrounded by agriculture and knew she wanted to pursue it as a career. The fourth-year plant science and agribusiness major at Chico State has been grateful for her hands-on experiences at the university’s farm. 

    In a class last semester, Ahumada and her classmates were each assigned a crop to grow at the farm and were graded on how well they took care of their plots.

    Since freshman year, Ahumada has also been offered paid research positions at the university farm. “It is something very unique about our farm, that we can cater to students pursuing both industry and academic focuses,” Ahumada said. 

    At Fresno State, agriculture education sophomore Emma Piedra works in the dairy unit doing milking and maintenance while also learning veterinary skills. The milk is used to produce cheese and ice cream sold by the school. 

    She has no plans to go into the dairy industry after graduation. Rather, Piedra wants to use her time at the farm to help improve her knowledge about how it works and give her future students connections to work there, just as her teachers did for her. 

    “Ever since getting into dairy, I’ve wanted to help students raise dairy heifers someday when I’m a teacher. So this has given me a lot of hands-on experiences of what to do and how to help them,” Piedra said. 

    Another Fresno State student is putting this thinking into practice at the neighboring swine unit. Hannah Williamson is a student manager and graduate teaching assistant while finishing her final semester of her agricultural science masters in animal reproduction. 

    Williamson grew up around the swine unit alongside her father, a professor at Fresno State. Though she worked in a few different farm units during her undergraduate years, it was her experience as a teaching assistant for the swine lab class that helped her realize she wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps and teach at the college level.

    As for students considering taking some agricultural courses, she said, “I will say that the more you get involved, the better it is for you, because it opens a lot more doors. You have a lot more opportunities.”

    Operating, financing student farms

    Though each of these farming operations is different, they all give students experience in numerous areas of agricultural production, from cultivation and conception to marketing and accounting.

    The schools have lab classes where professors can make use of the facilities for the general student population. Research opportunities and paid student positions help students gain advanced knowledge and hands-on skills.

    “We hear often from employers that they really like our students because they can actually do stuff,” said Jim Prince, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s associate dean of the College of Agriculture.

    The San Luis Obispo campus has a range of farms and production facilities, including a vineyard, beef production and ornamental operations, among others. This may sound expensive to operate, and though Prince says it is a “complex mix” of funding, most of the farms are self-supported through their food production businesses.

    Among the products they sell are cheese, ice cream, jam, meat, organic produce, plants and wine. Most of these are available through their online shop as well as the campus markets, and some are available through local retailers. The organic produce is sold directly at local farmers’ markets and during the farm’s U-pick hours.

    The Chico State University Farm has a similar mix of financial support. It consists of 14 units and employs 18 full-time staff and 40 students. 

    All four universities were each awarded $18.75 million in a grant from California’s 2022-23 budget. For Chico, $11.5 million of that is funding the Agricultural Teaching Center and Farm Store, which is expected to be operating by this fall, according to College of Agriculture interim associate dean Kevin Patton. Amid statewide CSU budget cuts, Patton believes this money will not be touched.

    Chris Van Norden graduated from Cal Poly Pomona with a plant sciences degree and continued working on the campus farm until he became the agronomy farm coordinator, overseeing 125 acres. His brother, Bryan, also an alum, runs the orchard, organic farm and sales. 

    California agricultural production variety is extremely diverse, and Van Norden said their 700 acres of farms are well-suited to familiarize the student assistants with a wide range of career possibilities.

    “We’ve got (year-round) overlapping egg production, vegetables, permanent trees (and) subtropical, growing everything possible in California,” Van Norden said. “And showing the students that, ‘Hey, you could do any of this with agriculture,’ it’s a … giant, wide spectrum of agricultural potential.”

    Vincent Roos, the farm operations manager at Fresno State, emphasized the school’s unique position in the Central Valley, which allows for the growth of nearly 400 different crops.

    He noted the importance of hands-on experience in preparing students for diverse agricultural careers.

    “In other words, they can take anything, any kind of circumstances that you’re in, and make it work,” Roos said.

    Jesus Herrera is a third-year journalism student at Fresno State; Layla Bakhshandeh is a senior at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo majoring in journalism and graphic communication; and John Washington is a senior journalism student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. All are members of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.





    Source link

  • Community college bachelor’s degrees stall for years amid Cal State objections

    Community college bachelor’s degrees stall for years amid Cal State objections


    Santiago Canyon College is one of seven community colleges in the state that have yet to get final approval for bachelor’s degrees they proposed in 2023.

    Courtesy of Santiago Canyon College

    Rudy Garcia was excited when he learned that his local community college, Moorpark in Ventura County, planned to offer a bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity and network operations.

    A father of four and the only source of income for his family, Garcia believed getting the degree would help him advance in his career in IT support. He had come to realize that more senior jobs typically required a bachelor’s degree. 

    Getting that degree at nearby Moorpark was appealing, especially because he had already finished an associate degree in cybersecurity at the college. 

    Rudy Garcia has two associate degrees from Moorpark College and hopes to enroll in a proposed bachelor’s degree program in cybersecurity.
    Rudy Garcia

    “Being able to add that to my resume, it would help me get a better job, better benefits and everything,” he said.

    But in the two years since Moorpark first proposed the degree, the college has still not received final approval. It’s one of seven degrees across California that received provisional approval from the state community college chancellor’s office in 2023 but remain in limbo because California State University has flagged them as duplicative of its own programs. The two sides have yet to come to a compromise.

    A 2021 law allows the state’s community college system to approve up to 30 new bachelor’s degrees annually, so long as the degrees support a local labor need and don’t duplicate what any of CSU’s 23 campuses or the University of California’s nine undergraduate campuses offer. 

    Since the passage of that law, many community colleges have successfully launched new degrees: Thirty-two new degrees are now fully approved across the state, joining 15 that already existed as part of a pilot. Some of the most recently-approved degrees include drone and autonomous systems at Fullerton College, emergency services administration at Mission College in Santa Clara and water resource management at San Bernardino Community College.

    But due to disagreements over what constitutes duplication, some degree proposals have stalled.

    Resolution, however, could be coming soon. The seven degrees delayed since 2023 are currently being reviewed by WestEd, a nonprofit research organization that was selected to serve as a neutral, third-party evaluator.

    Some local community colleges have been under the impression that WestEd would render final decisions on the programs, but that is not the case, a spokesperson clarified. Instead, WestEd will evaluate the programs and share an analysis with the community college system’s board of governors that will “help inform the review process,” the spokesperson said. 

    The spokesperson shared the additional details about WestEd’s role on Tuesday morning. WestEd had previously declined an interview request prior to publication of this story. 

    Colleges have been told to expect the reviews from WestEd as early as this month, though it could take longer.

    Officials with the systemwide chancellor’s offices for both the community colleges and CSU also declined interview requests.

    For the community colleges, getting a verdict will be welcomed as they have grown increasingly annoyed that their degrees are being delayed. 

    “My frustration is on behalf of the students that are missing out on this opportunity,” said Jeannie Kim, president of Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, which got preliminary approval for a degree in digital infrastructure and location services. “We talk a really loud game about student success and being student centered. But right now, preventing these kinds of degrees from going forward is not student centered.”

    Although officials from CSU campuses declined to be interviewed, memos obtained by EdSource through a Public Records Act request show that those campuses cited a number of reasons for objecting to proposed degrees. 

    In some cases, CSU campuses objected only to a few courses where they believed there was overlap. For example, CSU San Bernardino’s objection to San Diego Mesa’s proposed physical therapy assistant degree came down to three upper-division courses focused on biomechanics, nutrition and exercise physiology that would be part of the Mesa program. San Bernardino staff argued those courses duplicate classes that they offer as part of a bachelor’s degree program in kinesiology. 

    San Diego Mesa officials believe they may have been able to find common ground if they had more time to negotiate. Their only live interaction with San Bernardino staff was a 30-minute Zoom meeting last year, according to Cassandra Storey, dean for health sciences at Mesa. “We never really had the discussion on those three courses,” Storey said. “I would like to think that we could have a conversation and negotiate this.”

    Other proposals faced stronger objections. Moorpark faces duplication claims from seven CSU campuses over its proposed cybersecurity program. One campus, CSU San Marcos in San Diego County, wrote in a memo that the proposal “substantially overlaps” with its own cybersecurity degree. “Almost all cybersecurity issues are directly or indirectly related to network operation. The proposed program description is a typical cybersecurity degree,” San Marcos staff wrote.

    In the view of Moorpark officials, however, there are fundamental differences between its degree and what San Marcos offers. Whereas degrees like the one offered at San Marcos prepare students for engineering and computer science careers, Moorpark would train students to be technicians and work in cybersecurity support, said John Forbes, the college’s vice president of academic affairs.

    “We understand we need more engineers in this world across every type of engineering, and we need good computer scientists that understand coding,” Forbes said. “But our labor force also needs the people that aren’t authoring and designing and engineering. They need the technicians that are using this stuff.”

    Moorpark’s program would not be a calculus-based STEM degree, he added. The San Marcos degree does require a calculus course and other math classes as prerequisites. 

    That itself is a positive for students like Garcia. If he were to attempt a CSU bachelor’s degree, he would essentially have to start over and take several lower-division courses to be eligible to transfer to a CSU campus and potentially pay more in tuition. At Moorpark, he would need only upper-division credits to get his bachelor’s degree and have to pay $130 per credit. On average, community college bachelor’s degrees in California cost $10,560 in tuition and fees over all four years, much less than attending a CSU or UC campus. Much of Garcia’s tuition would also get covered by financial aid, he said. 

    “So that’s a big plus for me,” he said.

    The other major selling point for Garcia is that the Moorpark campus is just a short drive from his house. He’s hoping it will get approved soon and he can start taking classes in the fall. 

    “The college is like four exits from my house,” he said. “I would totally jump on that.”

    Some students are place bound and can’t attend colleges outside their hometown, the community colleges emphasize. But the law does not mention location, allowing CSU campuses to bring objections even if they aren’t located in the same region as the college proposing the degree. 

    Moorpark, for example, has faced objections from CSU campuses other than San Marcos, including Sacramento State and three San Francisco Bay Area campuses: Cal State East Bay, Sonoma State and San Jose State. 

    Those campuses may be worried about losing potential students to community colleges. Sonoma State in particular has seen its enrollment plummet in recent years. Staff at San Jose State, where enrollment has flattened, wrote in a memo that they are concerned the Moorpark program would “draw from the same pool of students” as their bachelor’s degree in engineering technology. 

    Forbes said he understands those worries but believes they may be misguided. “We are big fans of the CSU system, and we want our students to be successful there, and we’re doing everything we can to help them on the transfer end. But for this program, these are not students who would be going to CSU,” he said. 

    Forbes and other community college officials around the state are eager for resolution. “We’re hopeful, with the smart people we have in California, that rational minds can come to the table and figure out a better path forward,” Forbes said.

    This article was corrected on Jan. 21 to include further detail and clarification about WestEd’s role in the review process.





    Source link

  • Cal State system braces for possible cuts in classes, sports due to budget problems and enrollment decline

    Cal State system braces for possible cuts in classes, sports due to budget problems and enrollment decline


    At Sonoma State University, lower enrollment is worsening financial cutbacks.

    Credit: Ally Valiente / EdSource

    When Kaitlin Anderson committed to play golf for Sonoma State University, she posed proudly in a Seawolves sweatshirt. But last week, school officials announced that they plan to end all NCAA sports next year, part of a bid to balance the school’s budget amid sliding enrollment and anticipated cuts to state funding. Anderson, a business marketing major from Peoria, Arizona, now is thinking that she might leave the campus.

    “I will not be coming back here” if the golf program is eliminated, said Anderson, a first-year student. “I think this school will not do well after doing all this because half the reason we have so many people is because of athletics.”

    Sonoma State, one of the 23 campuses in the California State University (CSU) system, is perhaps the most extreme example of how public universities in the state are tightening their belts in the wake of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January budget proposal and troubling enrollment drops at some campuses. The governor’s plan calls for a nearly 8% reduction in state funding in 2025-26 for both CSU and the University of California (UC), while also deferring previously promised budget increases of 5% until 2027-28.

    The governor’s proposal is not final, and later revisions could paint a rosier financial picture for higher education. But CSU leaders have warned that the plan, if implemented, could result in fewer course sections and larger class sizes, along with some cuts in student services.

    Sonoma State has been taking in less money from tuition and fees as its student body has shrunk 39% over the past decade due to changes in local demographics and some continuing fallout from wildfires in the region. In addition to the sports closures, it is also planning to close six academic departments and eliminate two dozen majors in an effort to plug a nearly $24 million budget deficit. 

    Several other CSU campuses are warning about possible impacts of the governor’s proposal. Stanislaus State, which serves more than 9,000 students in the San Joaquin Valley, could face a $20 million deficit after accounting for the January budget proposal, a Jan. 22 email from the president’s office said. Sacramento State, with a student body of more than 30,000, anticipates making a $45 million one-time cut. CSU Channel Islands officials have outlined plans to permanently reduce the Ventura County campus’s budget by $17 million in recurring expenses in 2025-26, saying that expenses per-student exceed the state average by thousands of dollars.

    Reduced state support could be missed most at schools like Sonoma State, one of 11 CSU campuses where enrollment has dropped over the last decade, reducing revenue from tuition and fees. Enrollment this fall was also a mixed bag, rising year-over-year at 15 CSU campuses and falling at eight. 

    At the Sonoma State campus in Rohnert Park, students responded to the news about the end to NCAA Division II intercollegiate sports and academic cuts with a mixture of anger and disbelief. A video published by the Press Democrat newspaper in nearby Santa Rosa shows an emotionally charged town hall meeting among student-athletes, coaches and university leaders. “So you think that we’re easily replaceable?” one attendee asked interim President Emily Cutrer. (“No, that’s not what I was saying,” she replied.) As tensions escalated, students erupted into bitter laughter and shouted interjections. “Do we get our money back for the semester?” one student asked, prompting applause.

    A group called Save Seawolves Athletics has filed a federal civil rights complaint arguing that Sonoma State’s plan to end the school’s NCAA Division II athletics program will impact minority students disproportionately, spokesperson and assistant men’s soccer coach Benjamin Ziemer said. The group is also considering filing a lawsuit.

    Signs of belt-tightening were also common this fall at San Francisco State, where enrollment is down 26% over the decade. Students and faculty members in December protested academic job cuts by staging a mock funeral march. Earlier in the fall, the university’s J. Paul Leonard Library announced that it expects to trim its budget 30% over the next two years, reducing its spending on resources like books and journals. The university offered 443 fewer course sections in fall 2024 than in fall 2023, a decline of nearly 11%, according to university data. President Lynn Mahoney said in a December message to the campus that the school is planning for “significant reductions in the 2025-26 budget” totaling about $25 million.

    Leaders at California State University, Dominguez Hills — where enrollment has fallen a slighter 3% since 2015, but 20% from its peak in fall 2020 — have already whittled $19 million from the school’s base budget since the 2023-24 school year. If state funding is slashed in 2025-26, campus officials have outlined plans to shave another $12 million, and have contemplated reducing the number of course sections, among other things.

    “I don’t want to cut out Psych 101, but if we have a thousand less students here, then maybe I don’t need 20 sections of Psych 101; maybe I only need 12,” President Thomas A. Parham said at a Nov. 7 budget town hall. “What we are trying to do is reduce the number of sections and, in some cases, fill those higher, so that instead of 15 students there might be 25 in them. But we are still trying to keep the academic integrity intact, even as we work smarter around the limited resources we have.”

    Some faculty and students at Dominguez Hills are worried. Elenna Hernandez, a double major in sociology and Chicano studies entering the last semester of her senior year, said the tighter finances have been evident at La Casita, a Latino cultural center where she works on campus. She said La Casita, which receives campus funding, isn’t staying open as late as it has in the past and received less funding for its Day of the Dead celebration. The center is important to her because it runs workshops where students can learn about Latino history and culture.  

    “A lot of students don’t have access to this education,” she said, noting that more than 60% of the student body is Latino. “The classroom doesn’t teach it, necessarily, unless you’re in an ethnic studies class.” 

    Stanislaus State University President Britt Rios-Ellis said last week in an email to the campus that the university is considering several ways to balance its budget, including reducing the number of courses and looking to save money on utility costs.

    Miranda Gonzalez, a fourth-year business administration major at Stanislaus State and president of the school’s Associated Students student government organization, said she initially was surprised that CSU would need to trim its budget at all in light of a decision to increase tuition 6% each year starting this past fall and ending in the 2028-29 school year. Full-time undergraduate students currently pay $6,084 for the academic year, plus an additional $420 per semester if they are from out of state.

    “It was kind of a shock that the CSU was going to be cutting their budget when they just raised tuition as well,” she said, adding that lawmakers and campus leaders should remember that any reduction “ultimately impacts the lives of our students, faculty and staff.”

    State funding is not the only source of revenue for the CSU and UC systems, which also get money from student tuition and fees, the federal government and other sources like housing, parking and philanthropies.

    The revenue picture is not gloomy at every Cal State campus.

    Cal State Fullerton, which has the largest student body in the system, saw enrollment grow 4% to roughly 43,000 students between 2023 and 2024. The steady growth provides the campus with a revenue cushion that has potentially saved jobs, campus President Ronald S. Rochon said. 

    “We are at a record enrollment, and because of the enrollment, we continue to have the kind of revenue to keep our lights on, people employed and our campus moving forward,” Rochon said in a Nov. 7 presentation to the university’s Academic Senate. “This is something that we all should be taking very, very seriously. We should not rest on our laurels with regard to where we are with enrollment.”

    The California Faculty Association, which represents CSU employees including tenure-track faculty, lecturers and librarians, argued last spring that the university system should tap its financial reserves to balance shortfalls. CSU officials, however, say that reserves leave them only enough money to cover 34 days of operations systemwide.  

    UC’s fiscal outlook is less dire. Enrollment is stable across its 10 campuses and is even increasing at several. Some campuses, like UC Berkeley, may not have to make cuts at all to department budgets. A Berkeley spokesperson cited increased revenues from investments and noted that Berkeley will benefit from a systemwide 10% tuition hike for out-of-state students that kicks in this year. Berkeley enrolls about 3,300 undergraduates from other states and another 3,200 international students.

    Other campuses, however, likely would have to make cuts under Newsom’s proposed budget, including to core academic services. The system as a whole faces a potential $504 million budget hole, due to the possible drop in state funding paired with rising costs. “I think this budget challenge does require us to focus more on some campus budgets than we have perhaps traditionally,” Michael Cohen, who chairs the finance committee of UC’s board of regents, said at a meeting last week. 

    UC Riverside has already saved some money on salaries because of retirements and other employee turnover, said Gerry Bomotti, vice chancellor for budget and planning at the campus. Still, the campus could face a deficit next year because of increasing compensation costs on top of possible cuts in state funding. Bomotti said the campus will try to minimize any harm to academic units if reductions are needed.

    “Our priority obviously is serving students and supporting our faculty and our enrollment. We tend to always give that priority,” he said.

    California’s 116 community colleges, which enrolled more than 1.4 million students as of fall 2023, could face a more favorable 2025-26 budget year than the state’s two university systems. The colleges would get about $230 million in new general funding through Proposition 98, the formula used to allocate money from California’s general fund to K-12 schools and community colleges.

    By some measures, the past decade has seen more state and local dollars flowing into California’s public colleges and universities. State and local spending on higher education in California has been at a historic high in recent years on a per-student basis, hitting $14,622 per full-time equivalent student in 2023, up from $10,026 in 2014, according to an analysis by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, which takes into account funding for both two-year and four-year institutions. Looking at four-year schools alone, the association calculated that California spent $3,500 more per student than the U.S. average in 2023. Living costs and salaries, however, are often higher in California than in many other states.

    Marc Duran, a member of the EdSource California Student Journalism Corps, contributed to this story.

    This article has been updated with the correct spelling of Kaitlin Anderson’s last name and to clarify her plans if the golf program is eliminated.





    Source link

  • Cal State unveils artificial intelligence tools for students

    Cal State unveils artificial intelligence tools for students


    Credit: Pexels.com

    California State University (CSU) will make generative artificial intelligence technologies like ChatGPT available to students, staff and faculty across its 23 campuses at no personal cost to them in anticipation that AI will reshape higher education and the state’s workforce.

    Seeking to train students in AI skills and boost their career prospects, CSU will also be part of a new body, called the AI Workforce Acceleration Board, according to an announcement Tuesday at San Jose State University. That panel will include CSU academic leaders and representatives from the governor’s office as well as firms like Microsoft, IBM and artificial-intelligence chip manufacturer Nvidia.

    “This initiative will elevate the CSU student experience, enhancing student success with personalized and future-focused learning tools across all fields of study, and preparing our increasingly AI-driven workforce,” Chancellor Mildred García said at a news conference.

    The AI Workforce Acceleration Board will aim to ensure that CSU students are prepared for AI-related jobs or graduate school when they finish their degrees, CSU officials said. The board will also organize events challenging CSU students and faculty to use AI to help address problems like climate change and housing affordability. 

    In addition, CSU plans to facilitate faculty use of AI in their teaching and research. It will also connect students to AI-related apprenticeship programs, according to the announcement.

    The rise of artificial intelligence has provoked optimistic predictions that the technology will trigger rapid innovation in higher education — equipping students with chatbot tutors, administrators with the ability to automate rote tasks and scholars with models that advance their research. But those bright visions are counterbalanced by fears AI will erode the value of a college degree, undermine the academic integrity of research and unleash widespread AI-assisted cheating in classrooms. 

    California leaders have been eager to cement the state’s place as a leader in developing generative AI, and say there is a need to educate more home-grown talent to work in the sector. More than half of AI workers in the U.S. were born in other countries, according to a 2019 report by Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. 

    Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023 signed an executive order directing the state to study the impact of AI on California’s workforce and, in August, announced an agreement with Santa Clara-based Nvidia to offer AI certificate programs and workshops at community colleges.

    CSU’s focus on artificial intelligence comes at a time when campuses across the university system, especially those struggling with troubling enrollment downturns, are looking to trim costs ahead of an expected state budget cut. Noting that financial reality, CSU chief information officer Ed Clark said the chancellor’s office has allocated money from one-time savings to fund AI initiatives. “The truth is, we are piecemealing it,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can with the resources we have available one-time, and we’re going to have to do the same thing next year as well.”

    Among the tools CSU is adopting is OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu, a version of the chatbot already in use at higher education institutions including Arizona State University and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Unlike the free version of ChatGPT, conversations using ChatGPT Edu will stay within CSU and cannot be used to train OpenAI models, Clark said. Data privacy is a particular concern for universities, since users may wish to use ChatGPT to analyze sensitive or confidential information.

    An OpenAI official said the agreement with CSU represents the “single largest deployment of ChatGPT around the world.” By negotiating a system-wide deal with OpenAI, Clark said, CSU is making sure the technology is available to all of its campuses, not just those that can afford to purchase enterprise access to ChatGPT on their own.

    The university will pay about $16.9 million over the lifetime of its partnership with OpenAI, which is “less than current and planned expenditures for these technologies,” a CSU spokesperson said.

    Generative AI tools from other companies will also be made available to CSU affiliates, including functions within software the university system already purchases, such as Microsoft Office and Zoom video conferencing. The system also plans to offer AI training modules to teach students, faculty and staff members skills like prompt engineering while guiding them on how to use the technology in a responsible way. Training provided by Nvidia will come with compute power so students can learn to work with GPUs, the electronic circuits used to train and deploy AI models, said Louis Stewart, the company’s head of strategic initiatives.

    CSU officials are still determining the final lineup of the board, Clark said, but anticipate that it will include members of Newsom’s cabinet as well as representatives of Adobe, Google parent company Alphabet, Amazon Web Services, Instructure, Intel, LinkedIn and OpenAI. Clark said CSU-affiliated members will include Elizabeth Boyd, chair of the academic senate; Cynthia Teniente-Matson, the president of San Jose State University; Iese Esera, the president of the Cal State Student Association; and Clark himself.

    Universities have varied in their embrace of artificial intelligence technology, with some eagerly hiring administrators and faculty knowledgeable about the field or updating policies around issues like academic integrity to account for AI. 

    CSU leaders have been contemplating the impact generative artificial intelligence will have on campuses for several years, including in the system-wide academic senate. A CSU committee in June released a list of recommendations for how the university system should incorporate AI.

    The California Faculty Association, which represents CSU employees including professors, librarians and coaches, is seeking to add an article to its contract with CSU regarding the use of AI, citing concerns that adoption of the technology could “replace roles at the University that will make it difficult or impossible to solve classroom, human resources, or other issues” and otherwise negatively impact CFA members. Faculty unions outside CSU have voiced related worries.





    Source link

  • Cal Poly Humboldt will cover gap between tuition and aid for eligible students next fall

    Cal Poly Humboldt will cover gap between tuition and aid for eligible students next fall


    A new initiative at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, seeks to allay students’ doubts about whether they can afford to enroll there. If there is a gap remaining after traditional financial aid awards, Humboldt says it will pick up the balance starting in the fall.

    Cal Poly Humboldt’s Green & Gold Guarantee makes it the second among the 23 California State University (CSU) campuses to launch a last-dollar tuition guarantee after California State University, Fresno began one last fall. Based on previous enrollment trends, the Humboldt program could cover as many as 2,000 students a year.

    The average award is expected to fill a gap of roughly $200 on average, not an enormous amount on its own but enough to provide a sense of stability to worried students, officials say. And by attracting and keeping more students, Humboldt hopes to continue its climb back from a drastic enrollment drop in the past decade. 

    Chrissy Holliday, Humboldt’s vice president for enrollment management and student success, said students will learn whether they are eligible for the guarantee soon after submitting financial aid applications, rather than having to wait for their entire aid package to be determined in detail. “It creates just a level of certainty that they wouldn’t have otherwise,” she said. 

    Cal Poly Humboldt’s guarantee program is open initially to new first-year and transfer students who are California residents or otherwise qualify for in-state tuition and meet financial criteria. It can continue for up to four years for full-time students and two for transfers. There is no separate application after filing the usual Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or the California Dream Act Application. The guarantee at the campus of roughly 6,000 students covers tuition and mandatory fees — such as those used to fund health services and the student center — but does not cover other expenses like food and housing.

    Admissions trends suggest the program could benefit hundreds of incoming students, if not more. Cal Poly Humboldt estimates that 300 first-time students per year would have received the guarantee in 2023 and 2024 if the program had existed. The university additionally admitted an average of 1,700 applicants who would have been eligible had they chosen to enroll at Humboldt. 

    “When it comes to programs like this, it’s so, so helpful to students that are low-income, maybe first-generation, whose primary barrier to college access is going to be financial aid,” said Rachel Perry, who assists high school students with financial aid applications through her work with the North Coast California Student Opportunity and Access Program Consortium. “There are so many students who I see at my workshops every week that are discouraged because they feel like, ‘Even if I get some financial aid, is it going to be enough?’”

    California State University, Fresno, launched a similar initiative, Tuition Advantage, in fall 2024. Phong Yang, the interim vice president for student affairs and enrollment management at Fresno State, said the program is a response to concerns from students who report in surveys that “the cost of college is always towards the top of their priorities.” Given that reality, university officials were also concerned about how the troubled rollout of the 2024-25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid might impact prospective students.

    In its first year, Fresno State awarded 111 students between $70 and $3,300 through Tuition Advantage, Yang said, at a total cost of roughly $200,000. It’s hard to gauge whether the new program was a deciding factor for those students in its first year, he added, but enrollment rose 3.6% this fall from 2023.

    Students weighing whether to pursue a college degree may have difficulty estimating how much their education will cost because the sticker price on many academic programs can deviate from students’ actual costs after scholarships, financial aid and loans. Living expenses can also add to students’ overall cost of attendance, adding to unpredictability.

    At Cal Poly Humboldt, a full-time, first-time undergraduate living off campus with family and receiving in-state tuition could expect expenses of $12,316 a year including food, housing and other costs before aid, according to federal data for the 2022-23 school year. An in-state student living on campus faced estimated expenses of $24,856 before aid. 

    But if a student qualifies for financial aid, that won’t be their final price tag. At Cal Poly Humboldt, in-state undergraduates in the lowest income bracket — those with a family income of $30,000 or less — faced an average net price of $8,090 for all costs in the 2022-23 school year after average aid awards, the most recent data available. Those in the next-highest income bracket, which is capped at $48,000, had an average net price of $9,623.

    The Green & Gold Guarantee could reduce tuition and fee costs further for selected students. Eligibility will be based on a measure of financial need called the student aid index, which is calculated when students apply for state or federal assistance to attend college. Manny Rodriguez, the director of policy and advocacy in California for The Institute for College Access & Success, said the program seems like it will support low- to moderate-income students, including those who receive a minimum or partial Pell Grant, a common form of federal aid. It also could support students who do not qualify for a Cal Grant because of factors like age or time out of high school, he said, even though they are Pell-eligible.

    Students who take a break from school or return to Humboldt after transferring to another institution lose eligibility. The guarantee is also not open to students in graduate, credential or extended education programs, nor to students who entered Humboldt before fall 2025.

    To be eligible, students must also be enrolled full time, maintain at least a 2.0 GPA and renew their financial aid application annually.

    Cal Poly Humboldt, formerly Humboldt State, has in recent years transitioned to a polytechnic university, concentrating more on science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs. 

    The university in far Northern California anticipated that its polytechnic status would bring a wave of new students after a period of decline. That prediction has proven at least partially true: The student body grew 5% between 2021, the year before its name change became official, and fall 2024. However, overall enrollment remains more than 30% lower than a decade ago in 2015. While Cal Poly Humboldt’s beautiful location attracts students, others have felt too far away from metro areas around the state. 

    Cal State data shows that another challenge has been retaining students who are already enrolled. Though Cal Poly Humboldt’s first year continuation rate has risen slightly in recent school years, it still lags most of its sister campuses in the CSU system. Across the CSU system, 83% of full-time, first-time freshmen who started in fall 2023 continued to a second year, while a slimmer 76% of Cal Poly Humboldt first-year students returned to the campus for year two. 

    Mary Mangubat, a Cal Poly Humboldt student who participates in the Students for Quality Education internship program, which is funded by the California Faculty Association, said one of her concerns about the Green & Gold Guarantee is that it’s not open to current students. “We as continuing students don’t get a lot of support or outreach from the university,” Mangubat said, “and so people often can’t sustain themselves here on this campus and they transfer out.” 

    The university anticipates that the program will cost about $82,000 annually. In its first year, it will receive one-time funding from the university’s contract with food vendor Chartwells, Humboldt VP Holliday said, and will be funded by tuition revenue going forward.

    This post has been updated with the legal name of California State University, Fresno.





    Source link