Stockton and Concord makes sense geographically. Booming areas with CSU representation at least an hour’s drive away. Chula Vista? 20 minute drive from SDSU? Building a UC would make more sense in Chula Vista IMO.
Great, Stockton has one of the highest crime rates in the U.S. Makes CSU Fresno look bucolic…
UCSD is not far away either.
However, both UCSD and SDSU are among the more selective campuses in the UC and CSU systems. Could it be that there many students who are CSU-eligible but unable to get into UCSD or SDSU who find the commute to CSUSM to be too difficult?
However, these three new locations may not help people in Fairfield or Visalia that much in terms of a commutable CSU.
Lots of universities are in not so desirable areas…UoP does pretty well for itself. And Stockton does have some very nice areas also.
Having said that, yes parts of Stockton is pretty bad and combined with hot weather and the fact that it’s pretty far from a big metropolis is potentially a bad combination.
Concord would be even better if they would run a BART line to Vallejo.
I’ve heard Roseville (near Sacramento) is also in the running
http://www.thepresstribune.com/article/4/17/16/sac-state-campus-roseville-area-moves-forward-without-developer
There’s already a CSUEB extension in Concord so, they have somewhere to start. It is in a pretty crowded area though… that’s going to be some EXPENSIVE land - and EB still has room. To me, Mare Island near Vallejo would make more sense. Stockton has cheap and abundant land but, two campuses an hour away, one non-impacted. Since both San Marcos and SDSU have become somewhat selective, they are forcing well qualified locals to relocate - which runs counter to the CSU mission… so I could see that as a priority. Chico has a satellite campus in Redding which would also address a big (geographically) section of the state that’s pretty under-represented on the CSU map. Cheap and abundant land and community likely to be supportive would all make it an attractive option.
Stockton itself is a decent size city with about 310,000 people that is 43 miles (nearly an hour drive) from the nearest CSU (Stanislaus). There are other nearby cities like Tracy (90,000) and Lodi (60,000) as well that would be more local to a proposed CSU Stockton than existing CSUs in Sacramento, Stanislaus, or East Bay.
But that leaves the Fairfield (110,000) / Vacaville (100,000) / Vallejo (120,000) area without a nearby CSU (other than the small specialized California Maritime Academy).
Of other populated areas without a nearby CSU, Redding has about 90,000 people, while Visalia has about 130,000 people.
Another area that could be called underserved would be southern San Luis Obispo and northern Santa Barbara counties, because (like the San Diego area), both state universities (CPSLO and UCSB) are popular around the state and therefore highly selective, putting them out of reach of most CSU-eligible local students.
An option that is being considered in the SLO/Santa Maria area: allow one of the local college community colleges (Allan Hancock) to offer 4-year degrees, instead of just 2-year degrees. AHC wouldn’t be able to match the full variety of options available at CPSLO or UCSB, but they could certainly offer some of the most popular undergraduate degrees, like business, education, or computer science. And this would be much less expensive than building another CSU campus.
In practice, AHC is functioning like a 4-year school anyway, because they are partnering with privates like Chapman, LaVerne, and Embry-Riddle. The privates come to the AHC campus to offer the final two years of 4-year degree programs. Check it out: http://www.hancockcollege.edu/university_programs/
There must be other CCCs doing the same thing. But these CCC/private partnerships seem like unnecessary hassle and expense. Why not let the CCs can handle such 4-year programs by themselves? Then we could have dozens of new 4-year public schools in California, not just two or three.
A lesson learned in Florida.
Once the CC’s start offering 4 year degrees, they no longer think of themselves as CC’s, but as CSU’s (in fact, the Florida CC’s started to rename themselves “state colleges”). They lose focus on the original mission (preparing students to transfer to a 4 year institution), and switch to becoming a 4-year college themselves.
In fact, last year, the Florida state legislature was proposing bill/law to force the CC’s to rename themselves back to CC’s, and to put more restrictions on the number of 4 year degrees they could offer.
The CSU system in California is large, unified, and well connected politically. If CCCs start encroaching into the 4-year education space (which I personally think is inevitable), the CSU system will make very sure to protect its own turf. There won’t be any confusion between 4-year CCCs and CSUs.
In fact, some CCCs are already issuing their own 4-year degrees. There are now pilot bachelor’s programs underway at select CCCs in specialized vocational fields (like automotive technology or mortuary science) that the CSU’s don’t cover. http://www.lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3722
Ironically, the model for this sort of “degree encroachment” is the CSUs themselves. Under the original California Master Plan for Higher Education, the CSUs were barred from issuing doctoral degrees – the UC system had that monopoly. But the CSUs have been able to negotiate exceptions, and now offer their own professional doctorates in fields like education and physical therapy.
Interesting to see where future CSU growth will be. Not sure if Chula Vista will fly, but underrepresented Central valley/inland areas completely make sense.
I can see Concord, CA and Chula Vista, CA but Stockton, CA? The crime rate, the city is paying people not to leave and it is no place you’d want to leave your children for four years IMHO. University of the Pacific is there already as well. It will be a commuter school I imagine
The CSUs exist at least partly to provide broad-access low-cost commuter schools to as much of the state population as possible. Admission policies that include local area preference, and financial aid policies that favor commuter students are examples of how this intent is put into practice.
Stockton is a fairly large population area which does not have a CSU in convenient commuting range.
Seems like it may be politically more feasable for a CSU like CSUB to open a satellite campus at AHC for the most popular majors, in order to offer students a commutable option to complete their bachelor’s degrees if they are not able to get into CPSLO or UCSB (which, even though they are the closest state universities, are still rather far to commute to, even if a student does get admitted), without the political controversy of CCs encroaching on the CSUs’ part of the higher education domain.
It would make sense for a CSU to start an accessible satellite operation for bachelor’s degree completion on the Central Coast, rather than yielding this market to privates like Chapman or LaVerne.
However, AHC is clearly in the Cal Poly SLO service area – in fact, the main AHC campus in Santa Maria is only 33 miles by car from the CP campus in SLO. Every other CSU is >100 miles away. None of them are motivated to travel that far just to serve another CSU’s territory.
So it’s really up to Cal Poly. But CP has shown no interest in setting up a less selective, more accessible satellite campus. Even if they did, it’s possible that any CP satellite campus would quickly be flooded by non-local applicants, just as the existing one is. Non-locals rejected by the main CP campus could move to SLO anyway and simply commute the 33 miles to AHC instead.
The bottom line is that the CSU system isn’t working in that part of the state, and there is no apparent movement by the CSU system to do anything about it. So the locals have turned to CCC/private partnerships for accessible 4-year education instead. It’s not exactly what the Master Plan envisioned.
The fundamental problem for the Central Coast is that Cal Poly is too good. In terms of undergraduate selectivity and statewide appeal, it’s become a UC-equivalent, instead of a CSU. So the Central Coast doesn’t have a CSU anymore, except on paper.
Many people would like to see more campuses in the UC System. The quickest and cheapest way to add an attractive new UC campus would be to reclassify CP. Beef up its research capability, add doctoral programs, and rebrand it as UCSLO. It would be an instant hit.
Then the CSU System would be forced to admit that no CSU exists on the Central Coast. So they would have to build one, and then the locals would have an accessible CSU again, like they did before Cal Poly got gentrified.
This scenario is not completely ridiculous, but it has the disadvantage of being illegal, so it’s not going happen. Two existing UC campuses (UCLA and UCSB) were formerly parts of the CSU System (technically, the ancestors of the CSU System), but were reclassified as UCs. The State ultimately passed a law banning further conversions.
If a new CSU Chula Vista is being considered, despite the presence of SDSU, CSUSM, and UCSD relatively nearby, wouldn’t a new CSU in the central coast also be possible for similar reasons?
While converting a campus from a CSU to a UC is not allowed, legislation could remove the restriction, or allows a one time conversion, if there was a serious movement to convert CPSLO to a UC. But then CSU may be reluctant to lose its “flagship” campus.
There’s CSU Channel Islands in Camarillo to cover the Santa Barbara / Ventura County Area.
CSUCV makes sense because if you’ve ever lived there and commute for morning classes to SDSU, UCSD, CSUSM you’d know the commute is horrendous. Chula Vista alone has many high schools that would easily feed into a local CSU plus it would offer residents of South San Diego, San Ysidro and Imperial Beach a closer option. There is a proposal to build ‘SDSU West’ in the Mission Valley area to accommodate growing demand.
Another option for a good location would be a CSU Campus off the 15 corridor between Temecula and Lake Elsinore. I can see a CSU here being able to serve at least 7 cities. Many kids from this area commute to CSUSM which is 45-60 min on a good day with no traffic on the 15. Temecula and Murrieta alone have a population of over 200,000 with six large high schools between them (at least 3,200 students at each high school. There is a SM satellite campus in Temecula but only offers nursing, business admin and criminology for bachelors degrees and the campus is a converted old elementary school.
Not quite. CSUCI’s service area only includes southern Santa Barbara County. This does include the best-known parts of the County, including cities like Santa Barbara and Goleta.
However, many people don’t realize that the biggest city in Santa Barbara County is actually Santa Maria, which is located over the mountains at the opposite end of the County. According to Google Maps, Santa Maria is 111 miles and 2 hours by car from the CSUCI campus in Camarillo, vs. 33 miles and 35 minutes from the Cal Poly campus in San Luis Obispo.
So northern Santa Barbara County has always been Cal Poly’s territory – not CSUCI’s.