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  • Cal State, University of California ban encampments, impose protest rules

    Cal State, University of California ban encampments, impose protest rules


    Hundreds of San Diego State students protest in support of Palestinians on April 30, 2024.

    Credit: Jazlyn Dieguez / EdSource

    California State University and the University of California are welcoming student activists back to campus this fall with revamped protest rules that signal a harder line on encampments, barriers and, under certain circumstances, the wearing of face masks.

    Cal State, the nation’s largest public university system, was first to issue its policy Thursday, a bundle of restrictions that govern public assemblies on university campuses. UC President Michael Drake followed Monday with a letter outlining his expectations for campus chancellors to impose restrictions on how students could engage in protests this fall.

    The two systems join a wave of colleges that have revisited rules about how and where people can demonstrate on their campuses in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests last spring. Critics say some strengthened restrictions could limit free speech rights.

    The Cal State policy bars tent encampments and overnight demonstrations, a signature of the spring’s protest movements both within CSU and across higher education institutions. Erecting unauthorized barricades, fencing and furniture is also prohibited.

    “Encampments are prohibited by the policy, and those who attempt to start an encampment may be disciplined or sanctioned,” CSU spokesperson Hazel Kelly said in a written statement to EdSource. “Campus presidents and their designated officials will enforce this prohibition and take appropriate steps to stop encampments, including giving clear notice to those in violation that they must discontinue their encampment activities immediately.”

    Kelly said the encampments “are disruptive and can cause a hostile environment for some community members. We have an obligation to ensure that all community members can access University Property and University programs.”

    UC campuses similarly will ban encampments or other “unauthorized structures,” Drake said in a letter to campus chancellors Monday morning directing them to enforce those rules. He also said they must prohibit anything that restricts movement on campus, which could include protests that block walkways and roadways or deny access by anyone on campus to UC facilities.

    “I hope that the direction provided in this letter will help you achieve an inclusive and welcoming environment at our campuses that protects and enables free expression while ensuring the safety of all community members by providing greater clarity and consistency in our policies and policy application,” Drake added. 

    UC faces Oct. 1 deadline

    As part of this year’s state budget agreement, lawmakers directed Drake’s office to create a “systemwide framework” for consistently enforcing protest rules across UC’s campuses. Lawmakers are withholding $25 million from UC until Drake submits a report to the Legislature by Oct. 1 detailing those plans.  

    A variety of higher education institutions have bolstered policies that constrain demonstrations and similar gatherings in reaction to protests over the Israel-Hamas war last school year.

    The University of Pennsylvania’s “temporary guidelines” include a ban on bullhorns and speakers after 5 p.m. on school days as well as a two-week limit on the display of posters and banners, according to The Associated Press. Indiana University’s policy allows “expressive activities” like protests from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. only and requires prior approval to hang or place signs on university property. The University of South Florida rules stipulate that no protests are allowed in the final two weeks of a semester, AP reported, among other restrictions. 

    Tyler Valeska, an assistant professor of law at Loyola University Chicago, said that even if a university has not seemed keen to enforce protest rules strictly in the past, many are now telegraphing a more forceful approach in the future.  

    “For years, maybe even decades, it did seem to be the case that university officials had a policy on paper and then another policy in their actual approach to enforcement,” he said. “And we saw a major change from that status quo in the spring, where universities around the country started suddenly enforcing policies that had been on the books for years or decades, but had never really been enforced against relatively nondisruptive student speech.” 

    “It may be the case that the universities are hyping up their policies with no actual intent to enforce them stringently, but based on what we saw in the spring, that would surprise me,” he added.

    Applies to all Cal State campuses

    The interim policy at Cal State applies to all 23 of the system’s campuses, replacing rules at each school. University leaders still have discretion on specifics, such as determining which buildings and spaces on campus are considered to be public areas and which hours of the day those spaces can be accessed, which they will spell out in addition to the systemwide policy.

    Drake’s letter to the campus chancellors is not a systemwide policy. Instead, his letter directs each campus to come up with its own policies. Those policies must meet certain requirements, including the banning of encampments. 

    Some campuses likely already have the necessary policies, Drake said in his letter. If they don’t, they should develop or amend existing policies as soon as possible, he added. In either case, each campus must provide a document or webpage that describes those policies. 

    Both of California’s four-year university systems have come under fire for how they responded to protests in solidarity with Palestine this spring. Some campus leaders approached student activists with a light touch, allowing students to camp overnight in quads peacefully and negotiating with representatives until they voluntarily disassembled encampments. But as conflicts between protesters, counterprotesters and administrators flared on some campuses, university leaders called in law enforcement agencies to break up encampments and arrest students who did not comply with orders to disperse.

    Highlights for both systems

    The new protest guidance suggests that Cal State and UC are now headed in roughly the same direction, taking a stronger stance against practices that featured frequently in spring protests. 

    Highlights of the policies include:

    • Camping: Cal State’s policy bans “encampments of any kind, overnight demonstrations … and overnight loitering.” It outlaws the use of camping paraphernalia, including recreational vehicles and tents. Bringing “copious amounts of personal belongings” to campus without permission is also a no-go, except as allowed in student housing and university work spaces. Drake’s letter instructs UC chancellors to clarify their policies to make clear that setting up a camp, tent or temporary housing structure is not allowed without prior approval.
    • Barricades and other structures: Drake requests campuses make sure their policies prohibit building unauthorized structures on campus. Cal State’s interim policy additionally lists a range of temporary and permanent structures — “tent, platform, booth, bench, building, building materials (such as bricks, pallets, etc.), wall, barrier, barricade, fencing, structure, sculpture, bicycle rack or furniture” — that aren’t allowed without permission.
    • Masking and refusing to self-identify: Cal State and Drake’s letter invoke the same policy on face coverings almost to the word. Both warn that masks and other attempts to conceal one’s identity are not allowed “with the intent of intimidating and harassing any person or group, or for the purpose of evading or escaping discovery, recognition, or identification in the commission of violations” of relevant laws or policies. Cal State’s language, additionally, notes that face masks are “permissible for all persons who are complying with University policies and applicable laws.” Similarly, both systems bar people from refusing to identify themselves to a university official acting in their official capacity on campus.
    • Restricting free movement: Drake’s letter emphasizes that campus policies should prohibit restricting another person’s movement by, for example, blocking walkways, windows or doors in a way that denies people access to the university’s facilities. The guidance comes days after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that barred UCLA from “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students” on its campus. Cal State’s interim policy includes blanket advisories against actions that “impede or restrict the free movement of any person” and block streets, walkways, parking lots or other pedestrian and vehicle paths. 

    Kelly, the CSU spokesperson, said sections of the policy about encampments, the use of barricades and face coverings “are not new and are already in place for the most part at each university and at the Chancellor’s Office.” 

    In the spring, students built encampments at UC campuses including UCLA and UC San Diego as well as Cal State campuses including Sacramento State and San Francisco State. Bobby King, a spokesperson for San Francisco State, said the school granted students last spring an exception to the campus time, place and manner policy. 

    Pro-Palestinian student encampment in front of Royce Hall at UCLA on April 30, 2024.
    Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource

    “The new CSU policy will create greater urgency in resolving a situation like the one we had last spring,” he said. “Obviously, with the new policy in place, campus leaders who engage with the students would need to convey that urgency.”

    The interim policy at Cal State takes a comprehensive approach to defining what is and is not allowed during demonstrations, outlawing items like firearms, explosives and body armor as well as actions like shooting arrows, climbing light poles and public urination. The policy outlaws demonstrations in university housing, including the homes of employees living on university property when “no public events are taking place.”

    Drake’s directive describes a tiered system for how campuses should police individuals if they violate any rules. They would first be informed of the violation and asked to stop. If they don’t, the next step would be to warn them of potential consequences. 

    After that, UC police or the local campus fire marshal could issue orders that could include an unlawful assembly announcement, an order to disperse or an order to identify oneself. If the conduct doesn’t change at that point, the individuals involved could be cited for violation of university policy and, if they are breaking a law, they could also be detained and arrested. Police could order them to stay away from campuses for repeat offenses or what they deem more severe violations.

    That response system, however, “is not a rigid prescription that will capture all situations,” the guidance states. 

    Cal State’s interim policy is effective immediately for students and nonunion employees, Kelly said. Unionized employees will work under the previously-negotiated campus policies until a meet-and-confer process for the new policy is complete.

    Each Cal State campus asked to elaborate

    Cal State Dominguez Hills and Stanislaus State were the first two campuses to publish addenda for their schools as of press time.

    The Dominguez Hills addendum, for example, lists areas where protests are permitted without pre-scheduling, including the north lawn in front of the Loker Student Union and a sculpture garden adjacent to the University Theater. But the document limits events in those places to the hoursbetween 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. and allows only “non-amplified speech and expression.”

    The campus-specific policy will also describe any restrictions on signs, banners and chalking. The Dominguez Hills addendum prohibits the use of sticks or poles to support handheld signs, does not allow signs “to be taped to any campus buildings, directory signs, fences, railings, or exterior light poles” and by default limits signs to a two-week posting period. It also includes a list of “designated posting places” on the campus.

    Margaret Russell, an associate professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, said Cal State’s policy is clearly motivated by a desire to minimize disruptions from protests. Russell said that though many of the restrictions target students’ conduct rather than their speech, she is troubled by broad language seeming to require written permission for posters, signs, banners and chalking.

    Russell said such language could create “a chilling effect” because it “is so potentially broad and far-reaching that people don’t know ahead of time what’s allowed and what’s not allowed.”

    “The overall message is, ‘Be careful. Be careful where you express your opinion aloud.’” And so to me, it seems suppressive of freedom of speech, which is probably what they want,” she said.

    Kelly, the Cal State spokesperson, said that the policy overall is meant to describe how the universities’ property can be used without inhibiting free expression.

    “Generally, separate individual written permission is not required for signage unless the person is trying to post on a facility where it is not permitted,” she said. “This rule does not apply to signs and posters people carry or use personally.”

    An Aug. 14 statement from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) did not name any universities but broadly criticized school administrations for policies it said “severely undermine the academic freedom and freedom of speech and expression that are fundamental to higher education.”

    “Many of the latest expressive activity policies strictly limit the locations where demonstrations may take place, whether amplified sound can be used, and types of postings permitted,” the statement said. “With harsh sanctions for violations, the policies broadly chill students and faculty from engaging in protests and demonstrations.”

    The AAUP statement said some institutions have gone so far as to require protest groups to register in advance. AAUP argued that such provisions effectively block spontaneous protests and may discourage protesters wishing to avoid surveillance. 

    The AAUP statement came a day after the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) released a “guide to preventing encampments and occupations on campus.” The guide encourages universities to ban encampments and to act decisively to punish students who violate those policies.

    “Once an encampment has occupied the campus, the institution has very few options to avoid an ugly spectacle that at best will make the administration look ineffectual and even make the board appear derelict,” the guide says. “Negotiating and making concessions are invitations to more and increasing demands. They embolden others to employ similar coercive tactics in the future and further undermine the university’s mission.”

    Cal State’s interim policy says the university embraces its obligation to support the free exchange of information and ideas, but that such freedom of expression “is allowed and supported as long as it does not violate other laws or University policies and procedures.” 

    Cal State spokesperson Kelly said the university system “places the highest value on fostering healthy discourse and exchange of ideas in a safe and peaceful manner, by sustaining a learning and working environment that supports the free and orderly exchange of ideas, values, and opinions, recognizing that individuals grow and learn when confronted with differing views, alternative ways of thinking, and conflicting values.” 





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  • Q&A: How one Cal State professor plans to teach politics during ‘the most important election since 1860’

    Q&A: How one Cal State professor plans to teach politics during ‘the most important election since 1860’


    Credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Sipa via AP

    David McCuan is no stranger to strong disagreements in his political science classes.

    “Everything is framed as a life or death struggle and decision, in a very serious way,” said McCuan, a professor at Sonoma State University. “So what I do tell students at the beginning of the class is, ‘We’re going to work hard. We’re going to disagree. And everything is going to be OK, because politics is a game for adults.’”

    McCuan should know. Over the past two decades, he’s guided easily 400 budding politicos through an election-year course that teaches them not only how to unearth the money and power structures behind state ballot measures but also asks them to register voters, educate fellow citizens on the election and, quite frequently, work with a student from the opposite end of the political spectrum.

    Sonoma State political science professor David McCuan
    Sonoma State political science professor David McCuan
    Credit: Courtesy of David McCuan

    This fall’s course comes ahead of what McCuan’s syllabus calls “the most important election since 1860” — the election that preceded the Civil War.

    In the 2024 election, roughly 8 million youth nationwide will age into the electorate in a divisive election year that has highlighted deep fissures on issues like immigration and the war in Gaza. 

    It’s also a moment of generational transition. Sonoma students returned to the Rohnert Park campus the same week as the Democratic National Convention, where Vice President Kamala Harris’ brisk rise to the top of the ticket signaled the passing of power to a younger group of Democratic Party politicians. 

    All of that means fall 2024 could be a volatile time to teach politics, a reason why McCuan wants students to work with peers with whom they don’t see eye to eye. Students entering his classroom even fill out a questionnaire to gauge their political views, information McCuan uses to pair students with their ideological foil on class projects.  

    “I try to take two opposite individuals and put them together to work on a team to understand what’s going on,” he said, “because I’ve found over the years that actually lends itself to a lot of help for each other.”

    The idea behind the class dates to the late 1990s, when as a young academic, McCuan began to contemplate the disconnect between the political science literature — where whether political campaigns even matter is an ongoing subject of debate — and the world of politics as it’s practiced on the ground. 

    McCuan’s students work with the League of Women Voters to research state ballot measures. The league compiles arguments in favor and against each measure, while students piece together the story of who is funding the ballot issue, how much money they’re spending, which consultants they’ve hired and how those strategies could swing the campaign.

    The course also has a service learning component. Students lead a public forum in which they present their ballot measure research to the rest of the campus and receive training on how to register voters. Many interactions with the government can feel punitive, McCuan said, like serving on a jury or paying taxes, so the hope is that more positive experiences of democracy will inspire students to stay civically engaged for the rest of their lives. 

    “We know that voting is a habit, so if you get people civically minded and engaged to register people to vote or to analyze what’s on the ballot, it has an educative effect,” McCuan said. “The idea is to create something that’s positive about what it means to be civically minded.”

    Sonoma State also does not shy away from political science programming that can provoke strong emotions, McCuan said. The university has hosted a lecture series on the Holocaust and genocide, he noted, and McCuan himself teaches a course that examines terrorism and political violence.

    McCuan said high-profile events have galvanized youth interest in politics in recent years. The 2016 election of Donald Trump, the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision holding that abortion is not a constitutional right each emerged as lightning rods for youth political engagement. 

    Efforts to harness students’ political energy on McCuan’s campus have paid off in the past: 88.3% of registered voters at Sonoma State cast a ballot in 2020, besting the 66% average turnout rate across more than 1,000 colleges and universities in a national study of college voters that year. 

    It’s not just young people at Sonoma State who are eager to cast a ballot. CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, found that turnout for voters age 18 to 29 rose from 39% in 2016 to 50% in 2020.

    Will younger voters turn out this year? More than half of voters 18 to 34 told pollsters they were “extremely likely to vote.”

    What those numbers don’t show is the long-standing voting gap between college goers and people without a bachelor’s degree. In 2020, 75% of 18- to 29-year-olds with a college degree voted compared to just 39% with a high school education, a CIRCLE analysis of census data found.  

    McCuan recently discussed why he thinks universities should invest more in civics education and how he prepares students to discuss difficult issues in the classroom.

    The following Q&A was edited, condensed and re-ordered for length and clarity.

    What should K-12 schools be doing to teach students about civics and politics?

    We’re integrating civics rather than holding it separate. We’re trying to integrate things across the curriculum because we have so many things that we want people to learn or that we demand that they know. And I think that’s losing depth of understanding in the guise of trying to provide breadth of coverage.

    (In political science), we pay very close attention to the relationship between economic, social and political variables, (also known as) ESP. They (students) might be able to name off ESP components of American history and American politics. It’s the what they’re really good at. It’s the why that is always the struggle.

    They might be able to note certain things on the history timeline, but how those were moments of change or inflection points — or why they matter, or how they’re consequential — that’s the part that’s often still the same as it was before. All the stuff they’re covering from K through 12 is ticking off boxes that aren’t necessarily providing greater understanding.

    Is there anything that would better prepare students before they reach your classroom?

    Invest in civics. I struggle, because I was a department chair for a long time and, as you know, in higher education, it’s faced a lot of pressure and a lot of financial pressure.

    I have a great passion about learning. I’m a first generation college student. I’m the son of a cop. I’m not supposed to even be here. The neighborhood I grew up in is the ‘hood, man, and if I can do it, others can do it. It takes a great deal of courage to call things out, and I don’t see that with a lot of higher education leaders, so I need an investment in civics that’s greater.–

    And as we’re cutting budgets and we’re cutting requirements, we’re taking things out– like how to write and how to think — because we’re trying to cram other things in there, or graduate people faster, or push things through. 

    Do you ever have to step in as a conciliator between students in your classroom?

    I haven’t generally had to weigh in on severe disagreements. I think your question, though, is appropriate for this fall, where everyone’s made up their mind about how they’re going to vote, except for 5% of people. So I’m going to have people in this class who are on far sides of the political spectrum trying to work together. Can that be combustible? Yeah, sure, maybe.

    I just feel like a professor who hadn’t been teaching this course for as long as you have would run in the opposite direction from starting now.

    I want a lively, engaged classroom, man!

    And also, remember, while we’re looking at the election, paying attention to candidates, we’re also concentrating a lot on non-candidate on ballot measures. Now, those are our proxy for blue and red, for left and right, sure — but we are concentrating on ballot measures, non-candidate elections, so it does remove some of that heavy partisanship.

    Do you hear this sentiment among colleagues, a reluctance to talk about political views with students?

    What I do hear from colleagues, especially younger colleagues or newer colleagues, is a frustration with trying to delve into issues that are hard. They often avoid those because they’re worried that they won’t have a chair or an administration that will back them up if things get heated. 

    Sometimes I have newer, younger colleagues who try to steer around issues if it makes students uncomfortable or will lead to aggression in the classroom. I’m not afraid of that.

    What makes you not afraid of that?

    I trust that we can get to a place of respect, if not understanding. I want a classroom that’s lively, engaged. I think the best thing in a student in my class is intellectual curiosity. That’s what I want. I’m not interested in the politics — and what I mean by that is, I’m not interested that they feel strongly this way or that way. I need them to be intellectually curious, because I can work with that. We can work together on that. And intellectual curiosity is something we see less and less of, so it’s harder.

    You don’t strike me as somebody who’s disillusioned with political processes — or are you?

    I think to be in this profession, to do this job, you have to have an optimistic view of the human condition. Because you don’t do it for the pay. You don’t do it for the benefits. You do it because you have a passion and a mission that the next generation can do it better. 

    When you see that ‘aha’ moment with students, it’s not because they’re mimicking your view. It’s not that at all, and I don’t do this in the classroom. It’s that they are understanding and making connections that I never saw. Or that they are finding and understanding in depth and making those connections that are analytical, not political. And that’s really helpful, because that’s a skill. 

    Is there some way that the students you’re teaching have changed since you started this course in 2003?

    They use social media tools to get an idea of what’s going on. So in other words, as the digital space has grown in campaigns, they’re in that space. 

    I don’t know what the hell a “Swiftie” is. I didn’t know the BeyHive is Beyoncé, and I would have spelled it like a beehive. But they know, so they’re operating in the space where the BeyHive and the Swifties are operating. 

    They’re understanding that space, and therefore, they are understanding the colors that are used by Kamala and her team, that lime green color. They know what that means, right?

    Their understanding of social media, their clarity about what messages are being communicated, would fly over the head of most pointy-headed academics. So I need them.





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  • ACLU says Cal State Long Beach sound amplification rules ‘unconstitutional’

    ACLU says Cal State Long Beach sound amplification rules ‘unconstitutional’


    A teach-in on Palestine at Cal State Long Beach on May 2, 2024.

    Credit: Courtesy of Ben Huff

    California State University, Long Beach is facing accusations that a policy limiting amplified sound on campus violates free speech rights and has been selectively enforced to single out faculty members who criticized the university. 

    The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California last Thursday sent a letter to campus leaders on behalf of two faculty members it said received notices warning that they violated the school’s sound amplification policies during a teach-in about Palestine last spring.

    Cal State Long Beach regulations for devices like megaphones and microphones “are unconstitutional as written, and there is good reason to suspect that warnings … may have been issued because of disagreement with the professors’ political speech,” ACLU attorney Jonathan Markovitz wrote.

    Cal State Long Beach spokesperson Jeff Cook said in a statement that the university respects “the perspectives expressed in the letter from the ACLU but (disagrees) with several of the characterizations made. As our review of the letter continues, we also reaffirm that campus policies related to ‘Time, Place and Manner’ are viewpoint-neutral.”

    The confrontation at Cal State Long Beach highlights the potential for backlash as universities around the country place a new emphasis on rules around how, where and when people can assemble on their campuses this fall, a reaction to a wave of pro-Palestinian protests last spring. University officials frame revamped guardrails as promoting the peaceful exchange of ideas in continuation of past practices, but critics argue the restrictions will chill free speech.

    The California State University Chancellor’s Office last month debuted a systemwide time, place and manner policy in response to legislation requiring schools in both the Cal State and University of California systems to notify students of free speech rules on their campuses at the start of the academic year.

    Cal State Chancellor Mildred García additionally notified campus presidents in an Aug. 27 letter that activities like forming encampments and occupying buildings “are also prohibited by law and by systemwide directive.” García’s letter has sparked pushback from the California Faculty Association, which argues the university system is imposing new standards of employee conduct unilaterally, failing to give the faculty union an opportunity to bargain.

    The ACLU letter was sent on behalf of professors Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson and Jake Alimahomed-Wilson, who in May co-wrote an article with four other Cal State Long Beach faculty members condemning the university’s ties to Boeing and other defense contractors. 

    “My understanding is that, while many faculty members used amplified sound while participating in the teach-in that provides the ostensible basis for the warning emails, the only faculty members who received these warnings (the Alimahomed-Wilsons, Araceli Esparza, Steven Osuna, Azza Basarudin) were the co-authors of the article,” Markovitz wrote. “I hope that this is mere coincidence, but the correlation is at least notable.” 

    The letter asks the university to stop enforcing its sound amplification restrictions and repeal them until they can be amended “to comport with constitutional requirements.”

    Looking back to the spring

    Both the university’s current sound amplification policy and the policy in effect last spring require advance permission to use any kind of amplification. University policy also sets a decibel limit and specifies times and places where amplification is permitted.

    The matter discussed in the ACLU letter stems from a May 2 teach-in held at the campus.

    The student-organized demonstration started with a march from the school’s upper campus to its lower campus, where a group of hundreds gathered for a teach-in outside an administration building, the five professors named in the ACLU letter said in a group interview. They recalled that roughly eight to 12 speakers shared remarks using a megaphone or a microphone.

    “The whole time, we had mic and megaphone problems,” Osuna said. “It wasn’t very loud. So that’s the part that’s really funny to me – we all kept on trying to tell people, ‘Can you hear us? Can you hear us?’”

    Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson, Esparza and Basarudin shared remarks about why Palestine is a feminist issue, while Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Osuna gave a talk describing the university’s connections to Boeing. The latter presentation became the basis for an opinion piece the five professors and a colleague published on May 20 in the website Mondoweiss, which argued that the university’s close relationship with Boeing makes it complicit in the violence in Gaza.

    The five professors said that on Aug. 19, the first day of the fall term, they each received emails notifying them that they had violated the time, place and manner policy and would risk formal written reprimand or other disciplinary action if they did not comply with it in the future. 

    “They waited all this time to send us this message on the first day of the semester,” Osuna said. “It’s kind of letting us know, ‘We have our eyes on you.’ That’s the feeling.”

    Osuna said that a similar warning email sent to a sixth person was rescinded because there wasn’t evidence to show they had used a microphone.

    A free speech argument

    Markovitz argued in the letter addressed to Associate Vice President Patricia A. Pérez last week that Cal State Long Beach’s amplified sound policy is unconstitutional because regulations affecting speech must be narrowly tailored. 

    While some limits on amplified sound may be legitimate, he wrote, it is “clearly impermissible to require advance permission for any use of amplification anywhere on campus.” He argued that the campus’ volume limitations could be used to prohibit shouting or chanting without amplification, even if that is not the university’s intention. And he said the time limitations are “poorly written and unclear,” making it difficult to decipher when and where amplification is allowed.

    “The policy’s lack of clarity is a serious problem in its own right, because it makes it impossible for members of the University community to know when they might be in violation of the policy, or when they will be denied permission for amplified sound,” Markovitz wrote. “The risk of arbitrary enforcement is especially pronounced because the policy provides no guidelines indicating when the required requests for advance permission will be granted or denied.”

    Markovitz’s letter also expressed concerns that the university has not enforced its sound amplification consistently, but rather is using the policy to discriminate against faculty members based on their political views. 

    “The inference of viewpoint discrimination or retaliation is bolstered by my understanding that faculty have regularly used amplified sound at union rallies without obtaining advance permission, and without receiving warnings of (time, place and manner) violations later on,” Markovitz wrote. “Again, I hope that the apparent inconsistent application of the university’s amplification has been merely an honest mistake, but I am concerned that hope may not be justified.”

    ‘A fabric of our university’

    Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson said she and other faculty who received the emails have used megaphones at previous teach-ins and protests, including an event following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. 

    “Teach-ins have been a fabric of our university,” she said, “and have never been policed in these ways.”

    “Our students see this, too,” Alimahomed-Wilson added. “So what does it mean when all our students are like, ‘Oh, those professors have gotten doxed over this. Now, those professors are getting criminalized over this. They’re getting charged.’”? I think the impact is really chilling.”

    Alimahomed-Wilson and her colleagues said their support for student protesters is an extension of their duties as faculty members: research, teaching and service to students. 

    “We teach our students about justice, about the military-industrial complex, about settler-colonialism, and if we don’t speak out against what is happening right now, we’re not doing our job,” Basarudin said.





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  • UC, Cal State, community colleges should work together to boost transfer rates, auditor says

    UC, Cal State, community colleges should work together to boost transfer rates, auditor says


    The Transfer and Reentry Center in Dutton Hall at UC Davis helps transfers get acclimated to their new environment.

    Credit: Karin Higgins/UC Davis

    Few students who intend to transfer from California’s community colleges do so successfully. To reverse that trend, the state’s public college systems will need to work collaboratively.

    That’s the finding of a report released Tuesday by the California State Auditor, which, at the direction of the state Assembly’s Joint Legislative Audit Committee, examined the state’s community college transfer system. 

    Only about 1 in 5 students who entered community college between 2017 and 2019 and intended to transfer did so within four years, the audit found. Rates were even lower for Black and Latino students, as well as for students from certain regions of the state, including the Central Valley.

    Many students struggled to navigate what critics call a complex transfer system in California, with variations in transfer requirements across the University of California and California State University systems, the audit found. 

    The report recommends that UC and CSU work with the community college system to streamline the transfer process. UC should consider widely adopting the associate degree for transfer (ADT) model that is already in place at CSU, and the systems should also share more data, according to the audit’s recommendations. The Legislature could also step in and appropriate funding to help CSU and UC better align their transfer requirements.

    Complexity leads to low transfer rates

    Students wishing to transfer often face obstacles that prevent them from getting to a four-year university. If students are considering multiple four-year universities for transfer, that often means a different set of requirements for each.

    For example, the auditor reviewed six potential four-year campuses to which a community college student studying computer science could transfer: UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, CSU San Marcos, San Diego State and Stanislaus State. 

    The course requirements vary greatly across the four-year campuses. UC San Diego and San Diego State require potential transfer students to complete a course in intermediate computer programming, whereas the other four campuses do not. UC San Diego is also the only campus to require an additional calculus course. Meanwhile, that campus does not require students to take differential equations, but UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara do.

    The audit calls out the ADT as a promising model at CSU, but even that has shortcomings, the report notes. The ADT, created in 2010, is a two-year degree that is no more than 60 credits and is fully transferable to CSU.

    Although completing the ADT guarantees a student admission into CSU, it does not guarantee students admission to a specific major campus. That’s a problem, the audit notes, because transfer-intending students are more likely to enroll if they’re admitted to their preferred program.

    UC, meanwhile, has not adopted the ADT at all and instead relies on its own transfer programs, such as the transfer admission guarantee. That program does admit students to specific campuses and majors, but not all campuses participate in the program, and for those that do, some majors are excluded. UC’s three most selective campuses — Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego — are the three that do not offer the transfer admission guarantee.

    Among the transfer-intending students who entered community college between 2017 and 2019, 21% transferred within four years and less than 30% did so within six years.

    Among Black students, between 16.1% and about 17.3% successfully transferred within four years for each cohort. For Latino students, between 14.5% and 15.6% in each cohort transferred in that time frame. That compares to more than 28% of white students in each cohort and as many as 30% of Asian students. 

    There were also differences depending on a student’s location.

    The audit found that community colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego regions, for example, had higher transfer rates than colleges in the Central Valley, Inland Empire and northern parts of the state.

    “One factor contributing to this difference may be the distances between community colleges and CSU and UC campuses in those regions. Students are more likely to transfer to a nearby university for a variety of reasons, including challenges associated with relocating,” the audit states.

    That’s true for students at Lassen Community College in northeastern California, according to an administrator there. The administrator told auditors that “proximity is a major barrier” for transfer-intending students. The closest CSU or UC campus is Chico State, which is still more than a two-hour drive. In fact, about three-quarters of students who did transfer from Lassen went to an out-of-state university.

    Streamlining transfer 

    The report offers several recommendations to lawmakers and the public college systems that could streamline the transfer process.

    Auditors recommend that lawmakers consider providing funding to the colleges to align requirements and make the ADT more widely accepted across the state. 

    The community colleges and the four-year systems could also do their part to improve the ADT. For the community colleges, that means analyzing why certain community colleges don’t offer the ADT for some majors. CSU, auditors recommend, should do the same for campuses that don’t accept the ADT for certain majors and then determine whether their reasons make sense.

    UC should either widely adopt the ADT model or, for campuses unwilling to do that, ensure that their transfer options “emulate the ADT’s key benefits for streamlining course requirements,” auditors say. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom did sign Assembly Bill 1291 to create a pilot program at UCLA in which students beginning in 2026-27 will get priority admission if they complete an associate degree in select majors. The pilot will eventually expand to more campuses, though some students and advocacy groups criticized the legislation because it won’t guarantee students admission to their chosen campus.

    The audit also recommends better data-sharing between the three systems. 

    The community college system could share data with UC and CSU about students who intend to transfer, which UC and CSU could use to better tailor their advice to those students. 

    Additionally, UC and CSU could share more data with the community colleges about the students who successfully transfer, which could help the community colleges better evaluate their transfer efforts and determine which ones are most effective.

    Sonya Christian, chancellor of the community college system, said in a letter responding to the audit that the system looks forward to working with UC, CSU and lawmakers to implement the report’s recommendations, but said there could be challenges, including with data-sharing.

    Christian said consistent and timely data remains a “persistent challenge” for the system because of its decentralized nature, which requires each of the 73 local community college districts to individually report data to Christian’s office. 

    “The lack of a common data platform hampers our ability to collect timely and reliable data on transfer rates and gaps and hinders our ability to be able to accelerate transfer for the students of California through real-time data sharing with four-year system and institutional partners,” she said.

    But, Christian added, she has made it a priority since becoming chancellor last year to improve those processes and “let the data flow.” 

    “I look forward to carrying forward recommendations around improvements to our data, research, and system-wide policy leadership,” she added.





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  • New Cal State Bakersfield president says campus should see Kern County’s education problems ‘as our own’

    New Cal State Bakersfield president says campus should see Kern County’s education problems ‘as our own’


    A portrait of Vernon B. Harper, Jr.

    Vernon B. Harper Jr.

    Courtesy of California State University, Bakersfield

    Vernon B. Harper Jr. is scratching the word “interim” from his nameplate at California State University, Bakersfield. 

    Harper, who has served as the university’s interim president since the end of 2023, was named CSUB’s permanent president on Wednesday, the second day of a Cal State board of trustees meeting dominated by discussions about the financial pressures facing the university system. The system is projecting a $400 million to $800 million budget gap in 2025-26 as state leaders signal their intention to reduce funding for CSU.  

    CSU Bakersfield has been able to prevent students from feeling the effects of a reduced budget, Harper said, buoyed by growing enrollment this school year. His focus is on making what he calls a “pivot towards the community” — expanding programs to boost the number of Kern County high school graduates and community college transfer students who enroll at CSUB. The Central Valley is growing rapidly but has lower college attainment than the rest of the state. 

    Harper envisions the university taking a more active role alongside local K-12 schools to increase the number of students who meet A-G requirements, the coursework that makes students eligible to start college at a Cal State or University of California campus. Only 36% of Kern County high school graduates completed such coursework in the 2022-23 school year, according to state education data, compared with 52% of high school graduates statewide. 

    “That’s the real transition that the institution is making. It is to accept those problems as our own,” Harper said. “We’re partnering with our K-12 providers and making sure that we’re doing absolutely everything we can to raise that statistic. We’re not just going to sit back passively and watch our community go in a direction that we don’t want it to go.”

    One example of the work Harper hopes to get done: CSUB’s teacher education program is forming a task force with the Kern County Superintendent of Schools Office and the Kern High School District in a bid to increase the number of students who are A-G qualified, he said.

    The campus is also experimenting with ways to get local students thinking about college even before they leave middle school. It recently started a pilot program with four middle schools and four high schools in which students as young as 12 will receive notices that they are guaranteed admission to CSUB so long as they meet A-G requirements. 

    “We’ve seen that with young people, especially in under-resourced populations, their vision is truncated by their circumstance,” Harper said. “Whatever we can do, we have a responsibility to do, to extend that vision as far as it can go.”

    The past decade has seen rising graduation rates at CSUB. Among first-time, full-time freshmen who entered Cal State Bakersfield in 2017, 49% graduated in six years, an almost 10 percentage-point increase from 2007. But the school has not caught up to some of its Cal State peers. Systemwide, the six-year graduation rate for the same group of students in the fall 2017 cohort was roughly 62%. 

    Harper said that the intervention that seems to have the most impact on improving graduation rates is pairing students with an academic adviser who works with them throughout their time at CSUB, guiding them through unforeseen challenges, like switching into a course that fits the student’s work schedule.

    “As much as we can invest in that activity, the more positive outcomes that we (see),” he said.

    The university is also experiencing some of the same longstanding graduation equity gaps that exist across California higher education. The six-year graduation rate among Black students who entered CSUB as freshmen in the fall 2017 cohort was 40%, lagging Asian, Latino and white students. 

    Harper has backed several CSUB initiatives to attract and retain Black students. Harper said that community college students at Bakersfield College who participate in the Umoja program, which includes courses on African American culture as well as mentorship and academic counseling, will find they can continue receiving similar support now that CSUB has its own Umoja program for transfers. The campus plans to open a Black Students Success Center in the spring and has already hired a group of faculty members whose work is focused on minoritized communities, Harper said.

    Harper’s tenure as CSUB’s permanent president begins at a moment when the California State University system is raising financial alarm bells.

    Cal State leaders are anticipating that a $164 million increase in revenue from tuition hikes will not be enough to alleviate other stresses on its budget. The system expects that state general fund revenue will drop nearly $400 million, according to a September budget presentation, and that $250 million in compact funding will be delayed. The university system also faces rising projected costs, including for basics it can’t avoid like increased health care premiums and utilities expenses.

    Speaking at a Sep. 24 meeting, trustee Diego Arambula said the university system has “almost been too effective at making these cuts year over year over year” without explaining to legislators the impact those budget reductions are already having on students.

    “We are doing everything we can to make them as far away from students, but a hiring freeze is a hiring freeze, and that does impact students if we’re not bringing someone into a role that we know is important,” Arambula said. “It’s impacting our staff, who are taking on more to try and still meet the needs of the students who are here.”

    CSUB officials last spring said they planned to cut the school’s 2024-25 net operating budget by about 7%, citing a decline in enrollment and increased salary and benefits costs. The school had less than a month of funding in its rainy day fund in 2022-23, slightly less than the net operating budget across the CSU system at that point.

    But Harper said enrollment this year is up between 4% and 5%, driving tuition growth that is alleviating some budget pressure. The campus also has made temporary cuts to areas that aren’t student-facing, he said, such as professional development. 

    “We’ve been able to really, really shield any negative effects on students,” Harper said.

    Harper succeeds Lynnette Zelezny as president. He was previously Cal State Bakersfield’s provost and vice president for academic affairs. He will receive a salary of $429,981 and a $50,000 housing allowance.

    Harper was first hired at CSUB in 2016. Prior to his arrival at Cal State Bakersfield, he worked at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, Wilkes University of Pennsylvania and the State Council for Higher Education of Virginia.

    He holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from Pennsylvania State University, a master’s degree in rhetoric from West Chester University and a doctorate in human communication from Howard University. He served eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve.





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  • Enrollment ticks up 2% at Cal State, its first increase since 2020

    Enrollment ticks up 2% at Cal State, its first increase since 2020


    Cal State Fullerton commencement 2022

    Credit: Cal State Fullerton/Flickr

    California State University’s fall 2024 enrollment has risen to 461,000 students, driven by record gains among first-time, first-year students that nonetheless left the system short of its fall 2020 peak.

    Preliminary data shows enrollment across the 23-campus system has inched up 2%, buoyed by more than 68,500 new first-year students this fall. 

    But Cal State has not yet returned to its 2020 high point, when enrollment hit 485,550 students. Headcount dipped for each of the next three school years, settling at 454,640 students in fall 2023. 

    In a news release, Chancellor Mildred García said the system is pursuing a “multi-year, holistic enrollment growth strategy” and is focused on recruiting and retaining students, including community college transfers. 

    “This promising upward momentum demonstrates the confidence that Californians have in the extraordinary power of a CSU degree to transform lives, particularly for America’s new majority, comprised of first-generation students, students of color, low-income students and adults seeking new opportunities,” García said.

    Cal State reported a 7% increase in enrollment among transfer students, a 2% increase among graduate students and a 1% increase among continuing undergraduate students.  

    Preliminary figures show that 54% of CSU’s first-year students are Latino and that 4% of first-year students are Black. CSU did not break out data on Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islander student enrollment, nor was campus-level enrollment reported. The university system expects to release final systemwide numbers in November.

    FAFSA fallout? 

    Increased enrollment at Cal State will be welcome news to observers who feared that the rocky rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) application might depress enrollment.

    Changes to the application that debuted last year were designed make the process faster and more efficient for families. But delays and glitches plagued the new form, a critical step students must complete to find out whether they’re eligible for federal aid such as Pell Grants, loans and work-study programs. 

    The troubled FAFSA cycle sparked worries that students who were uncertain about their financial aid packages would put off enrolling in college this school year. Previous research has found that receiving grant aid boosts students’ persistence and degree completion.

    Financial aid officers and advocates also voiced concern about how the new application was affecting California students from mixed-status families. Many of those students — those with at least one parent without a Social Security number — had trouble submitting the FAFSA form.

    The delays prompted both Cal State and the University of California to extend their spring deadlines for new students to declare their intent to register for fall 2024 classes, a recognition that many families would need more time to better understand how much their education would cost.

    California ultimately fared better than most other states in terms of FAFSA completions, according to data from the National College Attainment Network. The state notched a 56% FAFSA completion rate, exceeding a rate of roughly 52% among high school seniors nationwide. That’s despite a 7% year-over-year decline in the number of FAFSA completions in California.

    Cal State credited financial aid staff at its universities with helping students to work through a frustrating FAFSA cycle and processing provisional financial aid offers quickly. (The news release cited a rise in federal Pell Grants at CSU, but did not say how much awards increased.) 

    Difficulties with the FAFSA rollout might also have been offset by California’s universal FAFSA completion policy, which was passed in 2021. Assembly Bill 132 tasks school districts with ensuring that graduating seniors complete the FAFSA or the California Dream Act Application, but gives students the ability to opt out of doing so. A recent report by the Public Policy Institute of California found that applications from high school seniors ahead of UC and CSU’s March 2 deadline climbed 16% in the policy’s first year.

    Denise Luna, the director of higher education policy at research and advocacy nonprofit EdTrust-West, said in a written statement that Cal State’s preliminary numbers indicate that giving prospective students more time to consider the costs of a CSU education was not just the right thing to do, but also “the strategic thing to do.”

    “This year’s applicants need the same flexibility,” she wrote. “Since financial aid application timelines are delayed again, we will be looking to the CSU to plan to once again extend their intent-to-register deadline in 2025.”

    Post-pandemic prognosis

    CSU’s preliminary fall headcount is also a step toward reversing pandemic-era enrollment declines.

    Enrollment across the CSU system fell 1.7% in fall 2021, part of a nationwide drop during Covid-19. Seventeen of the system’s 23 campuses saw a year-over-year enrollment slump. 

    Cal State campuses reacted with strategies designed to entice students back, including programs to re-enroll students who stopped attending college with incentives like waived fees and priority registration.

    But CSU enrollment continued to slide in fall 2022, a consequence of record-low enrollment at the state’s community colleges, which had the knock-on effect of fewer transfer students entering Cal State. 

    Demographic trends in the state’s K-12 system may also affect CSU’s student body going forward. In the 2022-23 school year, K-12 public school enrollment fell for the sixth consecutive year. The California Department of Finance projects a drop of more than 660,000 public K-12 students over the next decade if current fertility and migration trends continue.

    Still, CSU sees this fall’s numbers as a good omen. Preliminary fall 2024 enrollment, though 5% below the 2020 peak, “signals additional growth in the coming years,” a system announcement said.





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  • 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.





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  • 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. 





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  • 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. 





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  • 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.





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