Tackling the Diversity in Stem Problem

The California State University (Cal State or CSU) is a public university system in California. With 23 campuses and eight off-campus centers enrolling 485,550 students with 55,909 faculty and staff, CSU is the largest four-year public university system in the United States. It is one of three public higher education systems in the state, with the other two being the University of California system and the California Community Colleges. The CSU system is incorporated as The Trustees of the California State University. The California State University system headquarters are in Long Beach, California.

The California State University system was created in 1960 under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, and it is a direct descendant of the California State Normal Schools chartered in 1857. With over 110,000 graduates annually, the CSU is the country’s greatest producer of bachelor’s degrees. The university system collectively sustains more than 209,000 jobs within the state.

In the 2015–16 academic year, CSU awarded 52 percent of newly issued California teaching credentials, 33 percent of the state’s information technology bachelor’s degrees, and it had more graduates in business (50 percent), criminal justice (50 percent), engineering (51 percent), criminal justice (53 percent), public administration (60 percent), and agriculture (75 percent) than all other universities and colleges in California combined. Altogether, about half of the bachelor’s degrees, one-fourth of the master’s degrees, and three percent of the doctoral degrees awarded annually in California are from the CSU. Additionally, 62 percent of all bachelor’s degrees granted to Hispanic students in California and over half of bachelor’s degrees earned by California’s Latino, African American and Native American students combined are conferred by the CSU.

Partnering with them this year focused specifically on their STEM partnership and promotion, we pushed out a series of films to help California and the world know the impact they were having.