Senate Standing Committee on Education

The joint hearing of the Senate Education Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Student Success. My apologies for beginning late. All of us had some obligations that unfortunately made us late to be here today with you, but we extend our apologies for that. I wanted to just kind of go through the agenda for today. I would have a few opening comments. I think my colleague, Chair Newman, is going to do the same.

We have some wonderful folks who are going to testify and exchange, have a conversation with us about the issue that we're here to talk about and then we have a public comment period. And I wanted to mention up front that there is a participant phone line for those who want to call in. And I'm going to read it now. It is 877-226-8216 and the access code is 5700096. That's 5700096.

And let me mention that in addition to the testimony today, that anyone's welcome to submit any written testimony or comments and we would welcome that and be sure to review it. Let me just start by saying that this issue of student success is I know why everybody who's here in this room lives every day, breathes every day. And I know it's the same for my colleagues on this panel, that we know how difficult it is to get into college.

We know how difficult it is to get the grades and get through the classes. We know how difficult it is to endure the cost of living and the cost of housing and food insecurities. And there's so many issues that go into play to having our young people, and some not so young, certainly young at heart, be successful at our four year university system.

And we also know that there's so much to celebrate about our great universities here in California, and in particular in this case, talking about the California State University. It is an incredible economic engine for our state. It is the rung up the success ladder for so many of our students and for all of us.

We take so much pride in talking about how many are graduating this year who are walking across the stage over, what, 120, 130,000 this past year, and what that means to them and their families. And we also celebrate the fact that so many, this is their first time, first person in their family, being able to go to college and achieve a college degree. And that is something that brings all of us great pride.

I know that when I was a trustee at the State University, one of the most enjoyable parts of my job was to go to those graduation ceremonies. Putting on the regalia seemed a little silly for those who had to wear the hat. But the whole ceremony was a special moment for so many families and people. And that's what motivates all of us. But in addition to talking about the great success and the great accomplishment of our university system, our job is to also look at where we can do better.

And that's been the place that the Select Committee on Student Success is focused on. I know it's the place that the Senate Education Committee focuses on. And that's why we have incredible leaders, incredible faculty and staff that make all this work that we've seen places in which we can do better.

And the good news is that the institution themselves and the campuses and the campus leadership recognizes that too, that we've done so well on access and we've done so well on affordability and we've done so well on quality. But this issue of student success, actually getting through and getting that degree is a place that has been a struggle. And the system was, in my opinion, slow to own up to that. Their work doesn't end when they've admitted that student, that it just doesn't end there.

And that a greater connection to their lifespan at the university is important so that they can be successful. And for many years, to be honest about it, tens of thousands of students were dropping out of our state university with debt and no degree. Debt and no degree. It's the worst that could ever happen. And so we applaud and are excited about the Systems Graduation 2025 Initiative that was generated internally by the trustees and the chancellor and the leadership.

They engaged in a thoughtful engagement with stakeholders about those goals that were set to make that 2025 initiative as we know it today in terms of moving that four-year graduation rate from 19% to 40%. And the success in that space has been tremendous. It has been tremendous. And the numbers don't lie. To go from 19% to 35% in the 2018 cohort that was reported last year is tremendous progress.

And in your materials for the Select Committee, it breaks it down, not just systemwide, but campus by campus. And that's part of the examination that we have been doing: looking at each campus. How are they doing? What are the things that they're doing right, and where are they falling short? And that's part of what we want this hearing to take a look at. And there's a second chart in there that is even more impactful for the purposes of this hearing.

And that's the equity gaps that were stubbornly in place eight years ago and continue to be stubbornly in place today. And it breaks it down by campus by campus to see who's doing well and who's not doing well. And I hope that in our conversations today, as uncomfortable as they may be, that we will focus on that most acutely. So with that, I want to also invite my co-chair, Senator Newman, to share any thoughts.

Thank you, Senator Glazer. I'll be brief. Good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure, as the chair of the Senate Education Committee, to join in welcoming everybody to today's joint legislative oversight hearing on Student Success, with particular reference to the California State University's recent Graduation Initiative 2025. I look forward to learning about the progress made, challenges faced, and efforts required to create a successful educational journey for all of the students at the California State University system.

I'm particularly interested to hear about and explore further continued efforts and strategies to close student equity gaps. I want to first thank committee staff for all their hard work in pulling this committee together. We are joined today by two other senators, Senator Allen, former chair of the Education Committee, so appreciate you being here, and Senator Laird, who is the current chair of the Budget Subcommittee, Education. So you've got the right people in this room.

So thank you to the Chair for convening this meeting and thank you to everybody who has committed to participating today. Look forward to hearing your testimony.

Thank you, Chair Newman. I want to invite either of my colleagues if there is anything they want to say to start. Senator Laird.

Just that we have been discussing this in the three cycles I've been chair and I've been goosed on it by Senator Glazer the entire time. And so I'm really glad that it's not passing through me that today I get to hear him ask the questions directly and deal with the responses. And I also should say that Senator Smallwood-Cuevas wanted to be here and she isn't. And she has given me a question or two to ask at the appropriate time.

Terrific. Thank you, Senator Laird. Senator Allen.

My only comment is to thank Chair Glazer for his dogged focus on this issue. It's something that he's cared a lot about ever since he first got into the Legislature. And we worked closely on this issue together when I was Education Chair. And I think he's onto something really important. We value and respect so much the incredible work of our Cal State system, and yet we also know that we got to improve these rates. It's such an important driver for social mobility, for access, and I just very much support these efforts.

Thank you, Senator Allen. So we'll begin now with our first panel. I want to invite up Dr. Jennifer Baszile, who's the Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Success and Inclusive Excellence, as well as Dr. Jeff Gold, who I know we've heard from before, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Success. Thank you both for coming. We welcome you to our hearing today.

First off, great to see you again and thank you to the senators for your attention. I think I speak for Jennifer when I say we were humbled and appreciative of the opening comments. Your praise for the work that's been done and your impatience with the work that lies ahead is exactly where we find ourselves. So thank you for this opportunity.

I'm going to spend the next just few minutes providing a high level overview of our outcomes and then I'm going to turn it to my colleague, Dr. Basil, who will talk about where we're headed in the future. So, as you know, Graduation Initiative 2025 continues to be at the heart of the CSU mission. It's who we are. It's what we do every day.

It's our ambitious plan to facilitate a path to a high quality degree for more and more students across our universities, to increase the numbers and to eliminate equity gaps in their graduation rates while meeting the workforce needs of the state of California. The guiding philosophy behind our work is really pretty simple, which is good things happen when you put a stake in the ground and you commit yourself to measuring progress towards bettering student success and equity. And that's exactly what we've done.

I will caution that in hearings like this in the past, one of the tendencies is to find a silver bullet and to find one thing that all campuses can do. And I'll say that really at the heart, this work is about changing culture. It's about working with our faculty, staff, and administrators, continually leveraging data in a disaggregated way to understand where we are supporting our students well and where we need to improve, and then infusing that behavior, that culture of change, that commitment to equity throughout everything we do.

Seven years into our graduation initiative, as you mentioned, Senator Glazer, we have some results that we're incredibly proud of. Starting with the four-year rate that you mentioned, we have almost doubled from the starting point of 19% in 2015 to 35% this last year, and almost doubling of that rate. For our six-year rate, for first time students, we have improved from 57% to 62%.

And for our transfer students, on the two-year rate, we've improved from 31% to 40%. And the four-year graduate, we've made an improvement from 73% to 80% graduating. So as you'll hear shortly, and as you alluded to in your comments, you will hear shortly from our colleagues at the Campaign for College Opportunity.

Since the onset of Graduation Initiative 2025, gaps in the graduation rates between our historically marginalized students and their peers have not decreased, and instead, they've remained flat, and in some cases, they've increased slightly. Let me be clear that our work will not be done until we eliminate equity gaps. We are as committed to this as we have ever been.

I will share in the question and answers examples of work that we're doing now and work that will continue into the future that we are confident will help us to meet those needs. We'll talk more about this work coming up, but before I turn it over to my colleague, Dr. Baszile, I thought I'd just provide a little context, because as someone who works frequently with numbers, it's easy for me to rattle off four or five or six percentages of numbers.

Talk about a two, three, four percent, sometimes ten percentage point improvement over time. But I think sometimes we lose sight of what that means. And so if we take, for example, into account the fact that the CSU was the largest four-year university system in the world with close to half a million students, when you break down those individual one point, two point, five point, ten point increases, they turn into real numbers, real students in real lives.

So for every percentage point of improvement that we talked about, we're talking about hundreds and in some cases, thousands of lives. And finally, to put that in perspective, if you take as a baseline the number of total graduates that we had at the beginning of the Graduation Initiative, and you sum up the additional cumulative total of additional graduates since the beginning of this initiative, you obviously add in enrollment growth, but certainly the improvements in student success.

You see that we're on track to have about 150,000 additional graduates. That's where we are right now. And to put that in context, 150,000 lives of our students, their families, their communities that are forever changed through their attainment of a life changing, quality CSU degree. So we remain committed to this work, as committed as we have ever been, and we look forward to re-engaging with this work in new and valuable ways into the future.

And for that, I'm going to turn to my colleague, Dr. Baszile, who will talk a little bit about that.

Thank you. Good afternoon. It's good to be with you all. I just want to provide a little bit of additional context about the work of Student Success, and particularly about the work of Graduation Initiative 2025 and what the future holds for all of us at the California State University system. The work of student success unfolds in an extremely dynamic environment. And I don't think that there have been a more dynamic ten years that we have all seen and that our students have experienced.

And this really informs our approach to Student Success. And when we think about what Graduation Initiative 2025 has achieved for the system, it has really catalyzed data-driven action on a scale that is really, truly unprecedented. I think that the other thing that's important is the bold curiosity and the public willingness of the system to commit to priorities, goals, targets, and concerted action.

And now is really the time to build on what has been working, to understand not only what's been working, but why it's been working, which can be particularly challenging as we've come to understand, to really take this bold and unprecedented scale and depth of inquiry and practice, and to chart an even bolder path forward in the next ten years.

There are several key insights that we have gleaned, and I think that this can help really inform the goal setting as we move through this final phase of Graduation Initiative 2025 and for what it portends for the future; let's say, what happens to 2035, for example. We learned in Graduation Initiative 2025 about the importance of collaborative, intentional, goal setting and a deeply consultative and engaged process. And we are committed to doing even more of that.

We've also learned a great deal about the importance of disaggregating data, addressing gaps, and gaps among underrepresented populations. There has been a lot of talk about the categories for analysis in this work. That is an important and ongoing conversation. But the thing that I would want to say is that the categories that were represented in Graduation in 2025 really to us represent a starting point, not the endpoint for analysis.

And there are lots of ways in which we can learn and grow from the measurement and the evaluation that we have done. There are a lot of factors that merit consideration, and our goal remains to provide access to the information through the dashboards and in other modalities in dynamic ways that improved data-driven and data-informed decision making and outcomes. That disaggregated data is currently available on our dashboards.

And I think that we also have the opportunity to expand that culture of data-informed decision making as we move forward. Now in a system as complex and as varied as ours, as Dr. Gold has said, data must guide our actions and our practice. But there is no one solution and there isn't a single answer. This is complex work. It unfolds in a dynamic environment, and as we all know, it's getting more complex every day.

So we are laser-focused on our mission and our top priority, which is the success of our students. We have previously identified successful tactics and strategies to improve graduation rates, to try and close those stubborn equity gaps, to continue to understand what makes those gaps and those differences in outcomes challenging, and to understand even what the pandemic has done to shape the environment in which we work and in which our students learn.

So we will continue to scale effective practices while we also try and identify new and innovative solutions to support our students. As Dr. Gold said, and I want to reiterate, we remain committed to a strong finish to Graduation Initiative 2025, and we can do that precisely because of what we've learned as we plan for the future in these next two years. And we're committed to applying even more of the insights that we have gained to the ongoing work of improving outcomes for our students.

There is a great need for continued work in Student Success, and we'll be talking about it a lot today, I'm sure, with regard to the equity gaps. We've already started to envision the work after 2025, and we've begun to start to try and answer the question: what will the next iteration of our ongoing commitment to this work look like in, say, 2035? There are lots of specifics to develop, but equity will be at the center of that work.

The California State University's new vision for Student Success will be grounded in the California State University cornerstones work that unfolded the Governor's compact and the Chancellor's strategic work groups, which resulted in strategic recommendations for many areas: Sustainable Funding Model, Strategic Enrollment Management, Black Student Success, and Reimagining Graduation Initiative 2025. And that will really serve as the foundation for the work that we develop in order to be a leader in comprehensive university education that provides a quality, affordable education to our students.

And as we emerge from the pandemic, we recognize the opportunity to reframe our efforts not only as a moral imperative to better serve students, but as a critical strategy for meeting California's civic and workforce needs. In short, our work will continue to be reflective, it will continue to be holistic, and we hope to integrate and practice more near time and real time insights and milestones to further refine and guide this work. We look forward to your questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you both very much. Dr. Gold, I appreciate your thoughts about culture change. And that's something that at a lot of institutions in our state, when you use that word culture, you realize that that is not a simple thing. It's not a number that you can say 'two plus two equals four,' that it requires leadership and it requires such a comprehensive embrace, that in many ways, it acknowledges the significance of the challenge.

And I appreciate that honesty about that, because part of the culture change that we talk about is having everything be student centered. We love our faculty, we love our administration, but everything should be about the student. And when we hear in some cases anecdotally, in some cases not, the stories of students who find the roadblocks at all different directions in their college experience, whether that's a requirement of a prerequisite that isn't offered and therefore that sets them back a semester or two or courses not being open to what they feel like is a proper, appropriate access, that culture change is a big deal. But it is all about being student centered. And I know we talk a lot about that, but I appreciate how challenging it is. And I also appreciated you mentioning the 150,000 graduates that wouldn't be there today if not for the leadership of the system and at every level in increasing the graduation rate. That's a huge number, and I'm glad you've codified it as such.

Dr. Baszile, you mentioned data-driven and data-informed, and that's something that we talk a lot about in policy-making, in terms of how we make good choices. But one of the things that has frustrated me, and maybe you have some enlightenment in this space, is that we always talk about what are the expectations that students have when they go to college? Are they on the six-year plan? Are they on the ten-year plan? Are they on the four-year plan?

And we've only been able to cite a UCLA study, I believe it was many, many years ago now that talks about what were the expectations of students coming in, in terms of getting through. Has there been any data-driven analysis, any research that you know of in the system or by campus that has asked the students what their expectations are when they come in?

I could answer that. So we do not, as a system, have a survey that reaches out to the students. And part of that, as you can imagine, with so many students and so many campuses, the campus's survey, you'll hear from both a president and a provost on a campus who will be able to give you answers to that. Some of them have been in the practice of conducting first-year student surveys for years, and I believe on those surveys are questions about intended degree path and how long it will take.

I look forward to hearing that testimony. It seems to be like a blind spot for the system because there was a narrative that has been shared with me since my time that I've ever been involved in the CSU, which goes back decades. And that is the narrative is that our students are different. Our students are not UC students. They come into our state university in a different circumstance with different pressures and demands on their life.

They have jobs that they have to take care of, they have family that they have to take care of. And this narrative that they're on a four-year track is not our kids. It's not our kids. And that narrative has been a frustrating point to me because my expectation or my belief is that they want to get through, that they know that the delay costs them money and in many cases may cost them the ability to get a degree.

And when you look at the unit count, and there's been some moderate growth in unit count of students at the CSU aggregated, we know 15 units is what it takes to get through in four years, a semester. Then you see that at the CSU, the unit counts approaching 14 units on average. So it seems like they're taking the units to try to get through, but it's not enough. It's not enough.

One last point on the data issue is that if you were a business today in California and you were losing 10,000 of your customers every year, you'd have a pretty good idea about why. Has the system ever done any kind of comprehensive survey of those students who stop their degree pursuits to understand what it is that made them basically drop out?

That's another great question, and it's a similar answer to the one I just provided, which is the system office. Again, I think you have to understand the local control and the local relationship with students. As you know very well, we sit in Long Beach without students in front of us. We do not typically survey students across the system, but the campuses do. They're in regular practices of that, and I've seen several analyses from the campuses that have both the proactive.

So before students, if students are on a path that may lead to them leaving the university, there's proactive conversations: how can we help what's going on? And then once students have left, there's results that have come back.

I will tell you what I have seen in those surveys anecdotally and it kind of breaks your heart, but the number one reason, obviously you filter through finances and life challenges, but in many cases it's that the students felt that on that campus there wasn't someone that cared about them, there wasn't that connection. And I see you shaking your head, you hear that a lot.

And I think really that's at the heart of what we've been trying to do every day with Graduation Initiative, and it goes back to that culture change, it goes back to that intentionality. It's something that I think is a lot more solvable, a lot more in our control.

And we have the moral imperative to continue to work on every day and that is fostering that sense of belonging for our students and that inclusivity so that they not only see themselves at the university today, but they see themselves graduating.

So one of the things that we take a look at is we've enhanced the budget of the system over the last five or six, seven years specifically to try to focus on this issue of Student Success and the equity gaps. And so when we look at the data, all we see is an aggregated data of how much each campus got but very little information about how that money was actually spent.

And I think it's in the materials that were provided, but we're talking about now hundreds of millions of dollars. And yet for us that wants to understand what's working and what's not and where's the money going, it seems like some data is provided, but really not enough for any of us to make an examination. Can you speak to that?

Sure, yeah, happy to. So as I think you'll recall, the philosophy that we have had with the allocations of the money is the campuses have developed plans. All of our universities have plans about how they're going to meet the goals established. And they have the free rein to leverage the funds to hire faculty, to open up new course sections, to hire additional advisors as needed based on their circumstance.

Now, what we do at the system office is we work with them continually on those plans and make sure that we're supporting their efforts and that the investments that they're making are in line with the goals that they've set.

But then when you look at the breakdown by campus, both in terms of the money they've received and the results that have been achieved, there's some stark differences, aren't there?

There are, and I'll tell you that it's a conversation we have every year in terms of how we allocate the funds most equitably to our campuses. And what you'll notice is the campuses that are at the top of the list in terms of the ones that have gotten, received the most funds are the ones typically with the highest percentages of underserved students. So we are not across the board giving campuses an equal allocation based on either enrollments or size or anything like that.

We're looking at the campuses that have the largest impact on closing equity gaps and we're asking them for plans that they have in place or that they will have in place to redouble their efforts. And that's where we're placing bets, especially in recent years.

I'm happy to talk a little bit shortly about our equity priorities, but we've looked at those areas where we believe those allocations can have-the data tell us-that those allocations can have the biggest impact on helping the most students of color, first-generation students and those from low socioeconomic health students improve their graduation rates.

And I appreciate that approach and in fact, that's similar to what we've done on the state level with the Local Control Funding Formula. But at some point you have to look at results and who is producing results and whether or not that funding should go to campuses that have a proven record of actually achieving something versus they have a problem and they still have a problem. And we've given them millions and that hasn't changed things.

At some point there needs to be accountability for why new money is justified going in those spaces. And I know this is the challenge on the system wide basis. You guys aren't the campuses we're going to hear from a couple of them. But it does leave us frustrated that there's so many campuses where there's been no movement now for years in the equity gap space and seemingly an entrenchment of not even trying things new.

One of the final question I'm going to ask, and I'll go to my colleagues for any follow up they'd like to ask is that in the materials that were provided for the hearing, one of them talks about one of the programs that you are implementing on your campus. We call it the California Promise Program.

And that's a program that if a student commits to taking the unit load required to graduate in four years, that they'd be provided with priority registration and academic advising, among other things, that it would be focused on the underrepresented community that we know is so difficult and important to us. And that chart that's provided, it talks about how easy it is to see about this four-year track on all of our campuses.

How is it for a student who goes and says, do I even know about this program and how do I access it? And you see on that chart the incredible divergence of even just the general view of the four-year track. There are some campuses like Long Beach, and we're going to hear from them, and they deserve a claim for this.

Only takes two clicks on their website to find that California Promise Program, and they happen to have the highest enrollment in the Promise Program of almost any other campus. Two clicks. And then you go to some other campuses that are struggling, and in some cases you can't even find it. And in some cases it takes six clicks on the website to actually find it. And they're some of the worst performing campuses. Students aren't even made aware.

I'll tell you, I visited San Jose State a couple months ago, and I did that because they've had almost a tripling of their four-year graduation rate. And it was to say thank you to the leadership on the campus. And I met with the student government leaders right afterwards, and it was about 15 to 20 student government leaders around the table, one of whom had come to the ceremony that we had presented a resolution and the rest.

And I asked the student leaders at San Jose State, how many of you are aware of this four-year track, this California Promise Program to get through in San Jose in four years, guaranteed. And only one student raised his hand, and he was the one who came to the ceremony earlier that morning. And I've gone to other campuses and asked that same question: are you even aware of this four-year track? And in almost every case blank faces. No. Had no idea.

And so this chart that identifies even the awareness level of that path is very stark and impactful to me. And I think it is an indication that we're not doing enough. Really. This program is focused on underrepresented and then students have no idea it even exists. Anything you want to say about that?

So, we've been doing these hearings for a while and I appreciate it. And I think we share the same goal, which is the public awareness of this. I would just maybe add that-and I know we have a student leader that can join us-in my conversations, I'm a guy who builds data websites, as you know, and informational websites, not for students. Most of our students are not accessing the campus websites for information. They're getting it another way.

So to the point about information, I'd be interested in your visit at San Jose State. How many of those students were not first or second-year students, because the reason I ask is because newer students see first thing in Cal State Apply when they apply to the CSU, a mention that comes up as a big pop up window about the California Promise Program.

And so they're likely students who are newer are much more likely to be aware than a student who might go to the website and look for it. That's not your point. Your point is one that we both agree on, that the CSU and you share, which is, I think together we can look for better ways to partner with our students to make sure that more of them are aware.

Let me go to my colleagues for questions. Chair Newman.

Thank you, Chair Glazer. I guess to frame this and appreciate your testimony so far, I'd ask, as kind of a base, what, in your views, is the system's most difficult current challenge when it comes to increasing graduation rates and closing equity gaps?

Thank you, I think for all the work that has been done, that continuing alignment around culture is the remaining work. Right? There is good work, excellent work that has been done to put data in the hands of faculty and administrators. But there's more that we can do there. But it's that synergistic culture work that is the next iteration of the work. Think.

And I do appreciate that you mentioned Ms. Baszile COVID, and obviously that was not anticipated by anybody, but especially in sort of the context of the 2025 Initiative. In what ways has COVID influenced progress or trajectory of the initiative?

Well, I think it hasn't. Well, there are two ways to answer the question, right? There are ways in which we understand disproportionate impacts on communities and on students work, family demands, all kinds of other challenges that forced some students to stop out. But we also learned that institutions had a tremendous capacity for innovation in the time as well. And so part of the challenge is how do we balance those changing needs? We always talk about mental health and well being. We talk about basic needs.

We even talk about sense of belonging as things that are especially important post pandemic. But I think that there are really two sides of this that we can continue to learn from and in this next iteration, really try and understand how we can take the speed and the velocity and the urgency of the work and continue to apply it well beyond 2025.

I appreciate that. One of the factors that I think clearly most influences student experience, student success, is housing. My own Cal State School, Cal State, Fullerton, in my district, the largest school in the system, relatively low share of students actually have access to campus housing, affordable housing. And clearly that has a big impact. Housing is expensive. Right. So you talked about maximizing the return on different investments. Does your data correlate? Does it show the correlation between housing and students access to it and success or lack of success so far around the initiative?

Sure. So similar to national data, our students oh, I'm sorry, of course. Oh, my apologies. Better. Certainly, students who live on campus typically are enrolled full time and have a more expeditious path to graduation. So that's true for our campuses as it is true nationally absolutely.

Right, but that's not true across all campuses. Right. So clearly we could quantify sort of the need on particular campuses and also, I think, the return. And I think it's important for the Legislature to reconsider this because if you think about the three tiers of schools, community colleges assumed to be community schools, you see generally residential immersive. Cal State system right now is stuck in between, and it's massive.

But clearly your prospects for a good experience and for a timely graduation are exponentially increased if you access to housing. So it'd be good to have data to figure out not only what that means, but also the most cost-effective strategies for addressing that. So I appreciate that. And I guess my last question, I'll yield to my colleagues in that vein. What resources do you believe are needed to either support or supplement the CSU's current efforts to achieve success along the.

Goals of the I mean, I think just piggybacking on what Dr. Baszile said, culture change, and Senator Glazer said it as well. We all know that's the name of the game here. And so I think what we're looking at as we look towards the future is how do we take the message and accelerate it? How do we make sure that we are infusing the idea that no matter where I sit on campus, no matter what my job is, I understand what my role is in promoting student success.

And I think that takes so that's at the fundamental level, in terms of supporting that professional development, supporting resources for people to do. Also, Senator Glazer mentioned in the beginning on some of our campuses, it is still a challenge to get the courses that students need right. And so we do need to hire more faculty. We need to be able to have the course sections available to students when they need them. And the last thing I think you mentioned as well is advising.

When you look at our student-to-advisor ratio and you look at it nationally, our workloads are far greater and they have gotten worse with the pandemic. That is one of the areas on campus that has seen the most attrition, and I know part of the California Promise is this enhanced advisement. We know study after study tells us how important advisement is, quality advisement, and especially for our students from the most underserved backgrounds. And so, off the top of my head, those are four areas where I think we could really benefit from as a system, from increased, sustained investment.

I would agree. I appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Laird.

Thank you very much. Senator Smallwood-Cuevas had a number of questions. I'm going to ask two or three of them and kind of lump them with things I was going to ask. But I assume that if I don't get to every one of hers, you will work with her to make sure that she gets answers to each.

And the first one is she asked that in the backup information, there was sort of non underrepresented students listed or percentages, but there was not a listing by ethnicity to tell if there was a disproportionate falling away in the years. And I heard you say a dashboard, but is there someplace that you can go to get that information?

Yes, there is. And we can send you that link. We'll make sure you get that.

But let's talk about what you have learned from it. Because I represent one of the I always say I have two and a half CSUS because all these people commute to San Jose State, even though it's in somebody else's district. But I have CSU, Monterey Bay and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo seems to keep setting the record for how low the number of African American students are. I think right now, it's seven-tenths of 1%. And so we do need to hire more faculty. We need to be able to have the course sections available to students when they need them. And the last thing I think you mentioned as well is advising.

And that seems directly related to people having the support to get through in the time. How do you address that equity gap in terms of this program? How does that help bring resources to try to address this equity?

Yeah, I mean, a great question. The graduation initiative is looking towards the end, right? It's looking towards graduation. And what your question is in terms of access, how are we ensuring equitable access across the CSU?

Well, equitable access and that they don't drop out so that they can get to four years.

Yeah, and I'll just say on the access side, those are conversations that we continue to have. If you are anywhere near San Luis Obispo, you're having those conversations every day.

Well, I can paraphrase Senator Smallwood-Cuevas. Having sat in a lot of hearings, she would basically say, at what point are you going past conversations and can you measure the outcome of where you're really getting for sure?

And I'd say, let's start to look at the admitting classes.

Well, you see, one of her other questions related to the background document talks about three years ago or four years ago, the campuses implemented a variety of support services. Have you measured where they've implemented support services? And if that has resulted in a change in the time people are taking?

Yeah, it's a great question. The answer from the campuses, yes. The system office, no. If I could take a minute, I'll give you an example of the approach that we take on this or one of the approaches that we're taking. And maybe you'll understand the nuance. Hopefully, I can explain the nuance of how it's a little bit different from a campus perspective from where we sit.

With hundreds of programs on every campus and 23 campuses, it would be really difficult for us to measure the impact year over year of those programs. What we've started to do instead, we talked about the data that we collect about outcomes is work backwards. And by that I mean recently we are in the process of piloting and setting up a prototype equitable practices dashboard or database. The idea is we've taken all the data about student outcomes and disaggregate it by race, gender, and ethnicity.

And, for example, asked ourselves which colleges on our 23 campuses are doing the best jobs of graduating African American students? And not just which of them are doing that great job today, but which of them have a statistically significant trend over a few years? Sometimes we get lost in one year or two years of data. The question is not who's done it once and then things kind of fell off the wayside, but who's done this in a sustained way.

And we have looked at 600, 700 different permutations and identified nine where that's the case. And so the data are pretty strong. We set up a lot of parameters to say we think something pretty special is going on here. The next step is for us to work with, partner with qualitative researchers across the CSU to start asking questions about how and to get to the replicability and the scalability of those practices. So our goal over the next few months is to have a specific answer to your question, to say, for example, who's doing the best job of graduating Latinx students across the CSU? Well, we can look to the college of this college.

Well, it sounds an awful lot like waiting for the peer review in a science study, which makes it go on forever when you're sitting there in the moment trying to address these issues. And if anecdotally you have started to identify things, you can share those in a way that people get what you're doing before you do the formal quantitative research. Right.

We can. I'll tell you where I hesitate and I share your impatience. I'm a very impatient guy. And we're not talking about extended peer review. We're talking about a month to two months of validation. And let me tell you what makes me nervous. What would make me nervous, for example, is if in the data, we are finding things that we can't pick up through a quantitative analysis. For example, let's say a campus decided to be incredibly selective with who they were admitting.

And the core reason the root cause of their impressive results was not due to some culture change that we want to spread throughout the system and help to scale, but rather towards some practices that we don't want to scale. And so, at the risk of not going out immediately with the data, we find it really prudent to spend the extra couple months to understand that secret sauce.

Just for the record, because I'm going to start to get shorted on time. I gather you feel our impatience and you can try to channel it into that process.

Then another question from Senator Cuevas was whether or not you'd identified courses that have equity gaps. Because if you have courses that have equity gaps, that is screening people out from being able to move in a timely fashion. Has that kind of work been done?

Absolutely.

It's been happening for years. And it's gotten a lot more intentional around gaps, in fact, and quickly, because I know we're pressed for time. We've done some research in the system office that found that students of color in particular were three and a half times less likely to graduate if they experienced multiple non passing grades in their first year. So that's compared to their peers. So this is an example of one of those differential impacts where we are placing a lot of energy.

We have a group of folks in the Chancellor's office that have convened the campuses together. All of our campuses have identified those classes at the first and second year level. So those high enrollment classes with the largest equity gaps, and we've invested some of that money that we talked about. What would you do with extra money? The money that we have invested this last year as part of the graduation initiative, a large part of it went to helping those campuses, redesign those courses, work with faculty to fix the and.

Then get to my one personal question. One of the interesting exchanges I had with Senator Glazer over the last three years is I would get questions from him out of our conversations. I would ask and one year I asked if you had enough resources to fully implement this program between now and 2025 for Impact. And the answer from the CSU representative was yes. And let's just say Senator Glazer was not satisfied with that answer when I reflected it to him.

And so given the discussion we've had thus far and we're going to have, are there certain places that you don't think that you have resources to be able to do what you need to do to sort of close gaps and make sure you hit your goals on the four year graduation?

Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. I think one of the struggles you will hear from us is not the ability in today's environment with our funding. It's not the ability to dream big. What would it take in terms of the budget needed, but rather, how do you leverage the dollars you have to get the best impact. And so if you're asking us to dream big about that number, I would love it and I would take it back to my colleagues and not rely on me. But yes, we are leveraging scarce resources. Going back to the housing, some of the conversations about housing is how I'm.

Going to take that as your answer on time. There's so much I could say to Senator Newman, but the one closing comment on that is that if I had made extended opening comments, I would have said at our three levels of higher education, the place that we have the biggest resources problem is in the CSU system. And you have labor contracts come up that you can't meet. You're talking about tuition. It's being adopted a different way, apparently, than UC. There's whole issues.

And if we're really going to look at the system overall, we have to make a significant investment. But I think that we need to know that there's progress on this to warrant a significant investment. So thank you for, Mr. Chair, for allowing me to go on.

Thank you, Senator Laird and Senator Smallwood-Cuevas and as her representative for sharing those questions. And I guess we never really have conversations in these hearings. So I want to at least now have a conversation in response to what Senator Laird has said, which is that that is a point that I would press Senator Laird on as our budget chair in education.

But I'll tell you something that my view is changing because my view over those course of those years were give them the 25 million, give them the 75 million, our goals are the same, let them do it, just give them the money. And my feelings today are, well, hold on a second. We have given you a lot of money and there's been some really significant progress so don't misunderstand this point. But the equity gap is still there, it's stubbornly there and even higher.

And so I start to say to myself now, Senator Laird that we need more specifics to know that the money is going to go to a place that makes a difference. And if you look and you're in the K-12 space, the local funding form that we put massive amounts of money there and we see some very stubborn gaps still and then the Governor this past year and the year before and you know this because you had a front row seat.

We did supplemental money to help with the problem as we saw it and the gaps are still there. But it goes back know, the blank check is helpful on so many other things but yet we're not seeing it. We're not seeing it and that's a point of frustration. Senator Cortese, thank you very much.

Thank you for what you're and yes, we are very proud of San Jose State University and the work that they've done, the work they've done with the Promise program and some other areas. I was in a lot of news conferences going back a couple of decades with La Raza, with the Latino community really just challenging the system for inequity issues right at the front end in enrollment in terms of student retention and so forth.

I just want to pick up on a very specific thing that you said and I just like to hear more about it in terms of the issue about it's not just enrollment, it's keeping them from dropping out and the statistics, the data you talked about with multiple failure grades contributing to that.

And it reminds me of being in an extremely large high school district down there in San Jose board years ago, where we thought we had to keep remaking our programs, our curriculum, and we felt like what we started to learn. And I think school board Members now in districts have picked up on this at that level through 12th grade that social-emotional impact is perhaps root cause. Oftentimes we have a thing called the Silicon Valley Pain index and they determine that across the board.

I don't know if it's exactly accurate, but about 11% of CSU students are unhoused by definition. They don't have a stable roof over their heads. 11% in San Jose is an example of that. That's tough if you're disproportionately represented amongst those numbers, amongst foster youth, amongst kids of color.

Well, of course, to me, I mean, I don't want to sound over simplistic here, but of course it's going to show up in failure rates at some point because they're trying to take a full load next to a kid that's got family support and resources or an adult person that's got to show up in a way.

And so my question is, besides retooling your approach to the classroom experience or curriculum, I don't want to paraphrase what you said, but what are you doing in terms of elevating the discussion around you got to deal with trauma. You got to deal with things that are going on in the lives of these students that have nothing to do with their capacity, maybe not even their work ethic, to deal with the subject matter.

It's a lot of life getting in the way, and I just like to hear more about that. And if you already talked about that before I walked in 15 minutes late, then please just say so and I'll go back and watch the tape.

No, it's a great question and I'm really glad you brought it up. So a couple of things, and there are discussions that we've been having and actions we've been taking for the last three or four years in particular before that, obviously, but they've been heightened because of the realities of the world over the last few years. Every one of our campuses has food banks, and our students know about them. They're heavily trafficked.

We're incredibly supportive from the system office in terms of sharing best practices in that area. We're very proud that some of our campuses were at the forefront of that. And the same thing with mental health you'll hear later today.

I hope you ask the same question from our colleagues at Long Beach State and Sac State, because in terms of mental health and the support transitioning from a web-based and online-based formula because of the pandemic to what we have now and again it goes back to triaging, in many cases doing the best we can with the resources we have. But I think what you said is so darn important. There are the issues that are really clearly under our control, our direct control.

Like, can we improve the teaching and learning process to be more inclusive and support more of our students, especially those from underserved backgrounds? And then there are the ones that our entire society is dealing with, not just the university. Can we feed people? Can we make sure that people don't come to school, to class hungry? Can we make sure that we take care of their whole being? And these are challenges that we're facing at the university and we're facing as a state and as a nation.

And I guess the invitation back to the funding issue is to let us know where we can address equity with funding. Augmentation whether it's exiting seniors coming out of high school that are going to enroll and getting them supported and up to speed or dealing with mental health issues, I mean, I think it's important we're here to try to figure out how we can apply resources to these situations. I think not to judge. Thank you. That's an invitation. Thank you.

Thank you.

Senator Cortese. Senator Ochoa Bogh.

Thank you. Good afternoon. So I just want to really commend my colleagues on the remarks that they've all made because I think many of them I've made both in budget with Senator Laird and in the Education Committee as well since I began my tenure in 2021 with my colleagues.

So thank you so much for bringing up the housing component, an issue on how it has a multiply effect as well as accountability, because we have strategically been investing in a lot of programs throughout this since 2013 when we had the local control funding formula changed and allocating funding, and yet we're not seeing the impact that we should be seeing. But I appreciate every single comment that they've made and I echo them.

My question and comment actually has to be with the name of the program and whether or not so I received this from a friend of mine from CSUSB, and I'm not sure I did not clarify this, but I believe, and correct me if I'm mistaken, but perhaps the language from the Change in language from California Promise to Finish in Four. Have you folks seen a difference? Have we seen a difference? Do some of our schools, do the California Promise to finish in four? Is there a difference there?

There is no difference, but each campus has used it differently. We're going to hear from Sac State in a few minutes and they've used the Finish in Four, I think from the beginning. Other campuses have used the California Promise. There is a piece of legislation that changes the name to finish in four through and two. But it's always been an option, I think, for how the system wants to use it.

Okay. Because that gives it a very concrete vision or understanding for anybody that's coming in you and sees that. Actually, in my opinion, I would probably think that that would probably be very helpful as well as ensuring that we have the funding. Of course we can expect those programs, but if they don't have the funding, then how can you implement those? Programs are needed to address the issues from our first generations to our low-income, but also the accountability.

I think this year we saw for the first time I saw for the first time these past three years, that in the budget and budget one, we saw a component where the governor's office was actually asking for an evaluation after three years on the investments to ensure that we were actually using the money and assessing whether or not the program was effective in the way that it was intended. So I was actually really happy to see that this year there was one more thing that I needed to address. You know what?

If it comes back, you'll be given that opportunity. Let me just say thank you to both of you for being a part of this conversation. I know that it's at times challenging. I hope that you come out of this, though, with our great appreciation for the progress that's been made. And I know you share the frustrations that we have. And then two final points. It's my understanding that a University President that's evaluated by the trustees every three and five years is the four year graduation rate continues to be one of those standards of evaluation?

It does.

And does the equity gap, is that also a part of that?

Yes.

Okay. And that also applies to the Chancellor as well. I know we're welcoming in a new Chancellor, Mildred Garcia, in a few months. We're excited about her. I had a chance to work with her when she was a university President, and I think she'll bring great leadership. And I'm glad to hear that evaluation standards continue. You made reference to a 2035 goal.

I know it caught all of our attention because we know that getting to 40% by 2025 is a good, important achievement, but that we have so much further to go, and I think we would all welcome any more details. You don't have to do it at this hearing that you can provide about the process that you're going forward to do that.

And finally, I want to just go back to this issue that I raised at the start about understanding what students really are and understanding when they can't make it, why. So we have that data that Dr. Baszile, you mentioned a number of times that's so important to evaluating our work. The last report we got from the system on the four year graduation rate was 2020, and we haven't mandated that previously. Beyond that time, we certainly would welcome more information about how things are going going forward. And with that, thank you both for your participation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. We want to invite now the campaign for College Opportunity leader President Michele Siqueiros, to come forward. As you come forward, I want to just compliment the campaign for their doggedness in evaluating so many elements of student success at every level of our college system. You guys have been amazing and brought a data-driven and a courageous stance to trying to push us and all of our educational leaders to do better. And I know you've looked at this issue, and we welcome your testimony.

Thank you, Senator Glazer. Thank you, Senators, for having me today. I hope to be as dogged as you have been as a trustee and as a Senator. So thank you for having me. As was shared. My name is Michele Siqueiros, I'm President of the Campaign for College Opportunity. For the past 19 years, the Campaign for College Opportunity has focused on ensuring greater access to our public universities, protecting financial aid, and just as importantly, ensuring completion of college and closing of the racial gaps.

We have been unapologetic in our focus on racial equity in college, preparation in college, access in college, success for Latinx, Black American Indian, Alaskan, Native, Asian American, Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander, and low-income students. At the campaign, our top priority is ensuring that access for all students. We conduct research. We advocate for public policy.

Many of you have been lead champions as we've pushed for the associate degree, for transfer, to streamline transfer pathways, as we've fought to eliminate remedial education course placement, as we've championed the student centered funding formula for community colleges. None of that would be possible without your leadership and partnership in the work that we get to do.

As you know, CSU relaunched the graduation initiative 2025 and 2016, which aims to raise the four and six year graduation rates and just as importantly, close the racial gaps by race and ethnicity. Earlier this month, the Campaign for College Opportunity released our own analysis and report on the graduation initiative to understand what the progress has been, and each of you should have received the copy of the full report, and I'll speak to some of the highlights, but look forward to answering questions that you might have.

The data paints a pretty complex picture, one with both successes and challenges. We've commended, just as you have, the huge increase in graduation rates, especially the four-year rate, which is already raised earlier today. The CSU is obviously a national model, and this initiative is particularly trailblazing in the fact that there have been very clearly articulated goals. As you know, the CSU has successfully increased graduation rates at each of its 23 campuses for first-time students, the four-year graduation rate almost doubled.

As was mentioned earlier, the two and four-year graduation rates for transfer students has also increased. But these CSU successes are coupled with pretty notable challenges and concerns that we are here to express today, especially with regards to closing racial equity gaps. There is slow and inconsistent progress across all campuses, and we are also critical of the use of underrepresented minority, or URM across the CSU. That URM category includes Black, Latinx American Indian, Alaska native students.

By combining these three distinct student populations under the umbrella of URM, the CSU really presents a skewed picture, one that hides the fact that Black students continue to lack the support they need to complete their degrees. I would also critique that the non-URM category actually includes Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander and Southeast Asians, which we know also face similar. Obstacles across CSU campuses, and it includes biracial and mixed-race students, so not a good use of data analysis.

On the bright side, the CSU has begun exploring solutions for improving how it serviced Black students. Earlier this year, the system office released recommendations from the CSU Black Student Success Task Force, which highlight the need for enrollment and retention plans tailored to Black students. Specifically, the CSU also incorporates Black student success metrics and performance evaluations, and into recruitment, tenure, and promotions processes for faculty and administrators.

Furthermore, campuses should be required to regularly report their progress in meeting the GI 2025 goals using disaggregated data and not the URM and non erm categories I've critiqued earlier. The data is pretty clear the CSU isn't on track to meet three of the four CSU graduation initiative goals by 2025. Regarding the goals themselves, campuses have differing graduation and equity goals, with some campuses setting considerably less ambitious goals in the system. With this in mind, our report evaluated all of these data points.

The results probably wouldn't surprise many of us. Senator Laird alluded to this earlier, better-resourced and selective campuses generally aimed for more ambitious goals and had an easier time meeting them. But all campuses struggled to meet and close equity gaps. We really urge the CSU to revisit each campus goal to ensure that all campuses are held to a high standard with adequate supports, so that as a system, the CSU will actually meet the graduation initiative goals more broadly.

I wanted to just highlight a few specifics from the lengthy report that we put together, and these data points speak to some of the ambitious and less ambitious goals. Only San Diego State, San Luis, Obispo, and Sonoma set all four goals above the system wide goals. So GI 2025 they've set goals for 2025, but only four of the 23 CSU campuses have set goals that are at or above.

Dominguez Hills, Fresno, Humboldt, LA, Maritime, Northridge, Sacramento, and San Marcos all had no goals that were at or above the system-wide goal in terms of performance for first-time and transfer students. San Jose, San Diego, Dominguez Hills, and Bakersfield all improved their rates for first-time students for both four and six year by at least ten percentage points. That's something to really celebrate. San Jose and San Diego in particular excelled, as they had rates of improvement that were in the top four across all campuses for both time spans.

Los Angeles and Monterey Bay were the top two performers in terms of raising graduation rates for transfer students for both the two and the four-year rate. Other campuses that raised their rates for transfer students by at least ten percentage points in both time spans included Stanislaus, San Jose, San Diego, and Northridge. I want to share with you some of the best and worst performers on equity gaps.

Campuses who closed equity gaps for first time students by at least five percentage points were Dominguez Hills, Fresno, Monterey Bay, San Marcos, and Sonoma. Campuses whose first-time equity gaps worsened by at least five percentage points were San Jose. Campuses who closed equity gaps for transfer students by at least five percentage points were East Bay and Maritime, although they had a tiny sample size. And Stanislaus campuses whose transfer equity gaps worsened by at least five percentage points were San Francisco and Chico State.

And I know we have an alum here from Chico State. Those are just a few of the examples of just the wide variety across every campus. While there are many takeaways from this report, at a basic level, our conclusion was this that depending on the campus, CSU students will begin their journey at uneven starting lines, experience inequitable levels of support, and are held to vastly different expectations.

Without targeted, intentional, informed, differentiated strategies that provide support for students who are Latinx, Black, American Indian, Alaska Natives students, the CSU will fall short again of three of its four stated goals in GI 2025 and will not close the equity gaps that it has set forth to close. In a state as diverse as California and in the CSU system, in which 53% of its undergrads are Latinx, Black American Indian, Alaska Native, there's simply no path for meeting the goals if we don't close gaps for students.

So how do we move forward? One of the core tools that you all have as policymakers is to monitor and provide oversight, which you're doing today. You can require annual progress reports, ensure that the data is disaggregated in appropriate ways. We can start to improve and actually see the equity gaps. But another tool, obviously, is financial via the multi-year state budget compact between the state and the CSU. The state is committed to providing an annual base of funding increases to the CSU, as we saw in this year's budget. And we're grateful to see know that agreement can be amended to urge the CSU to provide data disaggregated again retire the use of URM and non-URM categories on core metric issues.

Finally, also as a state, you can provide a coordinating role, various budget and legislative proposals, tackle student mental health, student housing, basic needs, advising, counseling all the things that have been mentioned by you today. How are those aligned with the goals of the graduation initiative and to provide support to close equity gaps?

Specifically, at a minimum policymakers, you can require that investments both via the compact and standalone are aligned with the GI 2025 or GI 2035, if that's where we go so that we can do better accomplishing. Of course, all of this is going to require all of us, not just the CSU and its Board of Trustees, administrators, stakeholders and policymakers. But we really do need to fundamentally reimagine what the typical CSU student is capable of.

I just wanted to go back to your comment, Senator Glacier, around culture change. And this work not being know, our report speaks to some of the maybe the easier things that can be done around the budget, around investments, around goal setting. But we heard Dr. Gold and Dr. Baszile talk about there isn't a silver bullet. I certainly agree with that. They talked about changing culture. I certainly agree with that.

One of the things our report doesn't go into, and I'm glad I'll be followed by incredible leaders of CSU campuses, is the reality that campus by campus, faculty by faculty, that is what's going to be required in order to actually produce different results. Just Sunday, I was having coffee with a former provost at one of the CSU campuses who shared with me how difficult it was to get data on course pass rates by each faculty member.

When that data was finally produced, what you could see was patterns of faculty who actually had really high pass rates across different racial ethnic groups and some who did not. This is an opportunity for really intentional professional development or to determine if the faculty that are there are equipped with the resources they need and the tools and support they need to actually support students. We don't talk about real bias against students.

We don't talk about real effects of racism that exist in the classroom just like they exist across our society. We're all skirting around the very real topic around culture. Change is also do we believe in students full capacity? Yes. Students are facing all kinds of financial challenges, all kinds of burdens. But if we never even believe that they can pass a class, why would we be surprised that they don't?

So I'm glad that you're asking the even tougher questions that our full report didn't get to address. I do invite you to look at the full report. You can see campus by campus in your district, what campuses are improving and closing the gap, which ones are not. And by you raising the questions, I think we're going to get to a much better place. So thank you.

Thank you very much for your sharp but poignant points and questions. And I'm sure that Senator Laird is taking notes on your budgetary, you know, a question that you may not know the answer to, but I'll ask it. Do you think the trustees are really paying attention? Do you have any sense of it? This stuff is not new. We've held hearings on this stuff before.

Do you think that on the whole transfer issue, I remember when I was a trustee, we were so outraged by the lack of cooperation between the faculty of the community colleges and the CSU that as a trustee, we said, we want to report every meeting we meet every two months, every meeting. We want an update as to what every community college is doing and the CSU is doing on the model transfer requirement. But do you think they're doing that today on this equity gap issue? Do you have any sense of know.

There's obviously been a lot of newer trustees appointed. Senator Glazer, there's not been a single trustee I have talked to that doesn't care about this issue. I think there's a huge opportunity with this new board of trustees, with the new incoming Chancellor, somebody who actually was really effective at closing gaps at Cal State Fullerton where she was President. I do think that there's an opportunity, and I do believe part of putting this report out there is. Yes, let's celebrate.

I think you mentioned it earlier that there was, I think, a bigger sense of defensiveness around some of the data that I think is thankfully not as strong today. I think there's more openness to moving the work forward, and I certainly have lots of hope in the new Chancellor.

Terrific. And by the way, she was President at Dominguez Hills as well, correct? So a diversity of connection to the system. Well, I hope that there's some trustees watching and listening because we need their leadership. We have wonderful leaders in the CSU and a fantastic incoming Chancellor and wonderful Presidents, one of whom recently appointed, we'll hear from in a moment, but we do need to encourage them to keep aiming higher and do better. Any other questions? Senator Laird.

Just a brief comment. The whole issue of articulation between community colleges and CSUs is so very much a present issue that I just did a Zoom with the community college not far from Cal Poly, and they want the four-year degree at community colleges because they think the articulation is failing. And I think I actually said to her, I suspect you're doing this because you really want to see if you can get people's attention to fix this problem. And if you can't, then this is a viable alternative. And in so many words, she said that's. Right. But just for the record, it's just very much present.

Thank you, Senator Laird. Senator Newman.

Thank you. Senator Glazer. I want to commend the campaign for not just your analysis, but kind of your vigilance and keeping us and others focused on the real goals. And I think you've done that immensely well as we look forward, I appreciate you're thinking on what factors the Legislature should be thinking when considering in the future how to support the GI 2025 initiative and other similar initiatives.

Well, I think first and foremost, you have to communicate that you support this level of goal setting. Right? We wouldn't want for us to get to 2025 and for the system to say we're not going to set a vision and aggressive goals moving forward. We're not going to address closing the gaps. I hope that we don't retrench. Right. And so I think one that's important and to communicate that you expect to see progress. Right. And to find all the ways that you can integrate all of the allocations to CSU with an expectation of support for GI 2025 or whatever the next initiative is.

And I guess I would ask, with that in mind, how should we as a Legislature think of and approach those campuses that fall short of their goals by way of our policy making?

I think that is probably the harder question, right? To figure out what are the ways that we can ensure that at every campus there's an equal commitment? I will tell you that behind the scenes, I've heard from folks that are very honest about saying at our campus, this doesn't matter.

Yeah, I guess to Senator Glazer's point earlier, it's one thing to have goals and these kinds of initiatives, another thing to hold people truly accountable and apply the lessons learned not just across the whole experiment, but specifically to those campuses that are most in need or don't respond well. And your point is well taken there. I just last thing, I want to point out that the incoming Chancellor was also President, Cal State Fullerton. So got that going for you. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Newman, thank you so much, Ms. Siqueiros for the great work that your organization has done and your leadership has provided. We appreciate your insight.

Thank you.

Thank you. Members, we're going to be joined now by a student leader, Samantha Alvarez Chavaria. She's the Vice President of Legislative Affairs at CSU. Dominguez Hills. And I know she's going to be presenting her testimony via remote. And Samantha, are you there?

Yes. Can you hear me?

We can. Thank you so much for joining us and please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, chairs and Members. My name is Samantha Alvarez Chavarria, and I am a student at Cal State Dominguez Hills. I am also the Vice President of Legislative Affairs for the.

That always happens. I don't know if you can hear us. We lost your connection. Can you hear us? We're going to give it another few seconds, then we'll go to the next panel. And if we can restore the link, we hope to have up are you back?

Yes. I'm so sorry. Can you hear me now?

We can we can try it one more time. We heard you to identify yourself and your responsibility, and then we lost you after that. So we'll give it another try.

Yes. I'm so sorry about that. Again. My name is Samantha. I am the Vice President of Legislative Affairs for the California State Student Association, and I'm just honored to be here today in order to talk about the student perspective of the CSU's graduation initiative. Am I still cutting out?

No, we can hear you fine now.

Okay, thank you. Just making sure. Just to continue. The CSU system has seen a steady increase in four year graduation rates over the past few years. Several campuses have shown remarkable progress due to their implemented innovative mentorship programs, resulting in the 10% improvement in four year graduation rates. Overall, it is encouraging to see the doubling of four year graduation rates since 2015 and the commendable rise in transfer graduation rates.

However, it is also made evident that there are still gaps amongst Black and Latinx students when it comes to timely graduation. Closing those gaps should remain a crucial mission of us as CSSA and of the CSU if we truly want to achieve equity in the goals of the GI 2025. At my campus, CSU Dominguez Hills. There has been progress.

In a report released by the Campaign for College Opportunity, they have found that the four year graduation rate for all of the first-time students has increased from 6% to 20%, and that the six-year graduation rate has increased from 35% to 46% since 2015. Still, it is extremely unlikely that my campus will reach the systemwide goals by 2025. Clearly, several campuses still face challenges, and the CSU should still be actively working on tailored solutions.

For those campuses, graduating on time is a complex issue and an important concern for CSU students. Influenced by various factors, many of our students experience financial constraints due to the cost of pursuing higher education, which requires them to work part-time and even full-time jobs. This leads them to prioritizing work for survival versus taking 15 units as recommended. Academic challenges and administrative barriers, such as course availability and major requirements can extend the graduation timeline.

Moreover, personal factors such as family commitments and mental health play a significant role. We have observed that students who lack adequate support systems are more likely to drop out or to take longer to graduate, emphasizing the need for more comprehensive support. I serve as an employee for the Office of Admissions and Recruitment as a student, and during my time I was able to interact with students who share unique backgrounds and circumstances.

There's still a story that has stuck with me, and it's about a student returning to campus after three years taking a break.

We've lost our connection with you. I guess we'll try to restore it again one last time. Let me do this. While we're waiting to see if we can restore our connection with Samantha, let me invite up our next panel and we'll give it a shot to see if we can reconnect to finish up her testimony. So let me invite Dr. Karyn Scissum Gunn, who was the provost at Cal State University, Long Beach. Welcome to you.

And let me also invite up Dr. Luke Wood, the new President at Sacramento State. Welcome to you, Dr. Wood. I'll tell you as you're coming up here that I had the privilege of serving as Chair of the Sacramento State Presidential Selection Committee that selected Robert Nelsen a number of years ago. And he heard from us in that process about our concern about the four-year graduation rate at Sacramento State. It was like the second lowest in the entire system.

And I can't tell you how thrilled I was to watch his leadership during those years that he served to just turn things around in a massive way. You heard the testimony about culture. He was like a one-man culture show. He came in there and he put signs up everywhere that said "Finish in Four". And it was really a big deal. And the campus is rising on his shoulders, and we're proud of him and proud of you for your new selection there.

Which of you are going to begin? Is there an order to this? So, Long Beach, let me just say compliments to Long Beach. I mean, you heard me earlier in the hearing how impressed I am with the progress that Long Beach has made. And also. when I talk about student awareness of a four-year track, I think that's where Long Beach has also shined along with Sacramento State.

But this issue of equity gaps is a big deal, as you've heard, and you guys are working on it very hard, and we love to hear some best practices that you can share with us. So we'll begin with Long Beach.

Thank you so much. I can't tell you how important it is for us to have been invited to this conversation and the different levels of engagement around the care of our students having been involved and invited to this conversation is really key. So we thank you for that. The interest in all of our students achieving and the recognition that this is a complex issue is not lost on you and your leadership and stewardship of the state. And so we appreciate that.

We are at the campus levels, Dr. Wood and myself, and so our vantage point is a little different. And I think the things that are top of mind for us may be a little different as well. Admittedly, there is a concern about our campuses and the students and faculty and other people who we are responsible for. So I'd like to share my points of engagement around that vantage point. So just for Cal State Long Beach, we have an ambitious strategic plan. We call it Beach 2030.

And it's a plan that was developed by the community of care for Long Beach over a period of time to examine where the benefits and possibilities for this campus to move forward lie. And I can tell you there are two actions that outline anchoring aims in that plan, and that is to build an equitable and empowering culture and to be a student-ready university. And those two are, as it relates to student success, inextricably linked.

These action items work to emphasize a reality that in order to be fully prepared to serve our increasingly diverse and complex student body, as we've declared will do, every staff member and faculty member and individual who has a stake in the wellness of the beach has to go through and embrace, I would say, a socialization process. That each of them is a part of the equation that makes our campus an equitable and empowering culture.

As provost, achieving this strategically envisioned beach culture that's memorialized in our strategic plan involves a myriad of considerations. The undeniable implications and actions and needs and intentions and dollars and all of those things that will move forward a culture toward embracing and serving students, all its students, in a better way is an evolution. The graduation initiative 2025 has been key to coalescing our efforts around student success. That is without question.

And there is, I think, we, at the beach, mimic proudly the outcomes that we're seeing around the four-year degree completion rates. In many regards, our outcomes mirror those at the system level, and this signals that we are having attained a graduation rate of 38% for our 2018 cohort. We are well on our way to meeting the quantitative GI 2025 goal for a four-year graduation rates. So that is much to celebrate.

This means that we have, coming from a baseline of 16%, made an impact on numerous families, students being able to realize their educational attainment goals, to be able to contribute to their communities and beyond. Even the California workforce is a recipient of this kind of achievement. But yet, we are sober about what lies ahead for 2025. And on our campus, we have a commitment to remain aggressive, to reaching our degree completion goals and close persistent equity gaps.

But that is, we've talked about from so many points of discussion. closing our equity gaps is a holistic consideration. And if we look at the kinds of interventions and the types of data that go along with showing that we are making progress on our degree goals, when we look at those formative goals like retention and other indicators, we see that if we unpack those indicators, there are masked trends that, without using these disaggregated data, we would never be able to identify, examine and determine ways of intervention.

So I really appreciate Ms. Chavarria's perspective as a student because she illustrates that goal. She talked about numerous impacts that ultimately roll up in a holistic way, I think, to being able to have some real impact on closing our equity gaps. On our campus, when we align our strategies with the equity priorities that came about in about 2021, that is when I think the system at large realized the power of utilization of disaggregated data and addressing equity gaps. So we've done numerous things, and I'd be happy to talk about some of the strategies that we've conducted.

We, at the beach, envision the educational process as a pipeline of sorts. And not only are there interventions that are appropriate for students, we know based on their educational levels of attainment and the other types of indicators that we can use to measure their success, but there's a pipeline. As students move through from their first year experience all the way through to a degree completion, successful degree completion, there are interventions that can be considered.

And so I'd be happy to talk about some of the things that we've done at the beach. But we again remain sober that the work lies ahead, that we have learned new ways of utilizing data, utilizing very granular information to give us an understanding, a better understanding of our students and how they're doing and illuminate opportunities for us to be able to provide some sense of support for students based on their identities and other elements of who they are as students.

So, I thank you so very much. I want to assure you that as provost at Cal State Long Beach, I parrot the intention that we are nonplussed, we know that we have progress to be made, but we are nonplussed, and we are here to continue moving forward for the sake of our campus.

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Scissum Gunn. But you mentioned there's some specifics, and I do want to put on the record some specifics. Certainly I want to hear Dr. Wood, but I want you to use this opportunity. Why would we think anything's going to change at Long Beach? Your equity gap was 8.2% in the 2011 Cohort. It's 7.8% almost no change in the last seven years.

So, with the money that you're getting, what are you doing to try to say that it's not going to be the same when we come back two years from now? Can you point to some specific things?

Yeah, I can. First of all, I think what's important is to go back to the way, I think, the system at large has recognized that looking at underrepresented data all rolled up together don't position us in the best places and give us the best opportunities to identify specific, what we think would be effective interventions for students based on their identities.

So you're collecting data better so that you can break it down and know that there are specific targets and therefore specific strategies for each target. So that's one thing you're doing differently.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

And is that the foundation for how you look at it going forward, a fundamental point that you think will mean a change?

I do think that centrally, as it relates to strategies that any campus could adopt toward trying to address equity gaps, that data are the key. This aggregated data are the absolute information and leverage that campuses will need to use in order to identify, most specifically, students and how they're performing and how they're being affected by going along in their college experience.

And do you know how many kids drop out of Long Beach every year without a degree completion? Do you know what those numbers are?

I do have retention data. And the interesting thing about our retention data, of course, the GI 2025 initiative began in 2015. But there are some interesting trends that demonstrate that along that time, almost aligned with the fact of using unaggregated data, we saw retention just using as a metric indicators, maybe static in some ways, maybe go down, but there wasn't real ways of looking at and associating those retention rates with something specific.

When you look at our retention data from fall 21, those data began to shift. And that's alongside the pandemic. And there are certain populations of students. For instance, if you look at our black student retention data, both first-time freshmen and transfer data, those data all between fall 2019 and beyond, began to take a decline, a decrease. And so that's an example of the use of disaggregating data and looking at trends that are happening among particular student populations.

Great. I think you're making a good point and you're speaking about admission data now, not about completion or failure to complete data. And that's the part that and I don't expect you to answer this now, but it is a point of surprise that at our universities, we have some of the best statistics departments in the world, professors, students who are engaged in lots of projects in their major to understand statistics and to do surveys.

And it has surprised me that in our great university system and wonderful campuses with great expertise, that this blind spot still remains about why students drop out. When you talk about data and being able to use that data, whether it's about housing or food insecurity, but let's actually know. It seems like we have that capability. Let me invite Dr. Wood, who has been very patient to join us. I'm so excited about your presidency and your leadership.

When you're President of Sacramento, you get all the extra assignments, by the way. I don't know if you know that yet. Have they warned you about that? That they have some issue and there's some pesky legislator, they're going to say, "Send Dr. Wood. He's the closest guy, and he doesn't have to pay per diem or anything." Anyway, we welcome you and we look forward to your testimony.

I appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the committee members. Thank you for having me here and to talk about obviously a critical topic as we think about graduation rates and student success. Before I begin, I want to thank you, Senator Glazer, for bringing attention to this matter and providing an important insight and perspective on a topic that is near and dear to my heart I know for many of us in the room.

I think that your support has been critical for us in terms of pushing forward harder and recognizing that, yes, we have accomplished much as a system, but we have to see those accomplishments as signs that we can do better and even more for our students. In terms of just who I am, my name is Luke, as is mentioned. He/him pronouns. I serve as the President of California State University of Sacramento. Sacramento State.

Before that, I was in another institution within our system for the last twelve years. And I also happen to be as a professor, a racial equity scholar focused specifically on student success and student retention efforts. And so I come to this perspective and this conversation as an administrator who is really a professor who has looked at these issues for my entire career. And I'm also very happy to be coming to Sacramento State, which is my alma mater.

It's where I went to school as a student, got my bachelor's degree at Sacramento State, got my master's degree, met my life partner at Sacramento State. So I owe a lot to the CSU system in many ways.

Stingers up.

Yes, stingers up.

Okay.

And so when I look at what's happened over the tenure of President Nelsen, I have to say that it's been a joy to see because as a person who attended Sacramento State along with a colleague here, that's not what the graduation rate used to look like back when I was a student. Under President Nelsen, went from eight and a half percent to 28 and a half percent, which is the four-year graduation rate. I should say that is an incredible increase.

And again, I think that we as a campus and as a community and as alumni, have really celebrated the fact that Sacramento State has done so well in increasing success rates. And so I wanted to first share with you some numbers as to what that looks like. These are our four-year graduation rates. And for many of our cohorts, their graduation rates have tripled. So for example, our Latinx graduation rate was 8.6%, it's now 27.8%.

For our API population it was 5.5%, it's now 27.1%, for our African American population, 4.3% to now 20.1%, and for our native population from 12.5% now to 33.3%. And despite this fact, when we look at this data, obviously the other side of it is the students who are not graduating within a four-year time frame or six-year time frame.

And I take that as a serious consideration because when a student does not graduate from one of our institutions, that is an impact on them personally. It's an impact on their family, on their community. I's an impact on how people within their circle perceive the value of pursuing a collegiate education in comparison to all the other things that they could be doing. And it's also impact on debt, right?

Because federal loan debt cannot be discharged and if you don't graduate, there's not the same kind of cost benefit analysis for that individual. I also look at the data and recognize that when we're talking about our men of color, that's where some of the most persistent equity gaps remain. And so we have, for example, I mentioned a 27.8% graduation rate for our Latinx community. But for our Latinx males, Latino males, it's only 17.1%. For our API population, I mentioned it was 27.1%.

But if we look at Southeast Asian males Hmong, Cambodian, Laotian, Vietnamese, it's only 15.3%. For African American population, again 20.1%, but for our males it's 14.2%. I could go further but I think that the point has been painted that these are areas that we have more work to be done. That being said, Sacramento State has been on an eight-year culture change and again, I'm very proud to see what that progress has looked like.

We've made considerable progress and a lot of this has been accomplished through our Finish in Four and Through and Two campaign, which is an effort to engage students in taking a full course load and to create a mindset of staying on track from the very first day that they enter campus. And there's a number of things that we do that help promote that, that is aligned with your work as well. First, we have them take a pledge to take a full load.

And that's important because we know that students having an awareness of what they should be taking in terms of progress towards degree is important. But it's also a public commitment that this is something that I'm committing to because I recognize the importance of it. So it's the combination of those two factors. And now 65% of our students take 15 units, that's up from 25%, so a pretty significant increase there. And with this most recent cohort, 80% of the students have taken the pledge.

And so again, we see that as part of our formula. The next part of our formula is course availability because it's important for students to be able to have the classes that they need to be able to be successful in college. And so we have to think about this in terms of our bottleneck classes, in terms of creating more sections, and we've created over 1600 more sections as part of this effort.

But connected to course availability is also then course staffing because you can't teach classes unless you had the faculty there to do that. And so that's been part of how we've looked at this. And in reality, when you think about just those two things, the course availability and course staffing, it helps to internalize the responsibility of student success rather than looking out the window, I should say, into a student's family, their life and their career and blaming them.

It's looking into the mirror to recognize that really we're talking about systems. And there's a quote from W. Edwards Deming and Paul Batalden I oftentimes use. It says that "every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results that it gets."

And so if we're thinking about this from the standpoint of a system, course availability had nothing to do with students, it had everything to do with us as a system, whether or not we were making the right plans and the right preparation for the students that we serve. And I'm proud that Sacramento State is leading the way there. The other thing that I would mention is our summer enrollment programs. We have two of them.

One is the Provost Grant program and then one is the Finish Line grants. And there's very small differences between them. But essentially what they do is they really make sure that students are taking a full course load. So let's say that you're taking twelve units in fall and twelve units in spring. Then we can complement that with six units in summer. So now we've had 15 total units across each relative semester from that perspective.

I think that's important, because when we're thinking about a student who often will attend some of our California state universities, they may be first generation, like myself. They may be a lower income student like myself. They may have struggled with food insecurity, housing insecurity, transportation concerns, employment barriers, and a lot of the other factors that we know directly impact student success.

So a program like this that creates an additional opportunity for students to get up to speed and take that full load is one that can help ensure that we have more students cross the finish line. And we provide them with $1,700 as part of being able to do that program that directly goes to their success. And we've awarded over $6 million in doing so.

And the last point that I would make for right now, before we open up for any questions or comments, of course, is our Hornet Launch, which is essentially we auto enroll students in their first semester. We know the classes that they need to take and we know that it's important that when they show up to orientation, that they have an idea of what their schedule is going to be so they can start making plans for work, plans for how they're going to spend their time, plans for their engagement on campus, which we know is the other side of the student's learning and development.

So we've hired three dedicated course schedulers who are helping to do this and our plan is to expand it beyond the first semester to go to not only the first year, but actually the first two years of school. And we've seen some significant impacts in terms of what that's had for our students and looking forward to seeing, as we expand that program, what it will do to ensure that all our students have the right classes at the right time with the right support that they need to succeed at Sacramento State.

Well, Dr. Wood, thank you for your testimony. And I'm going to be sure to get Senator Laird, who I know had to step out, to hear the specifics that you provided because that's exactly what I love to hear. $6 million. People said, we gave Sacramento State $6 million. You can say, "hey, we gave so many thousands of students $1,700 to actually get to their course load to stay on track." That's a very specific result of that money. And I love to hear that.

And it's money well spent. The 1600 course sections didn't happen for free. And I know President Nelsen was stressing because he was pulling money from this or that to do those things and wasn't going to get the reimbursement for it. But it showed real leadership and it shows up in your results.

And I love the breakdown that you provided as well in terms of Latinx and API and African American and not just looking at it broadly, but breaking it down because that's exactly what we want to hear and see. And I think that's why Sacramento State has really been a leader in this space.

And I'm not ashamed to say that if this legislation goes through and we change the Cal Promise to Finish in Four, that I'm thinking about the leadership of Sacramento State of leading with that, capturing that message to students right from the start. The fact that 80% do the pledge, 65% take 15 units or more, it's showing that there's no excuses about somehow our kids are different and can't do it. You're proving that's not the case and we're seeing the results and it's very impressive. Thank you.

Questions. Senator Newman?

Yeah. Let me ask you one quick question. And again, thank you to both for your participation and I will say that I like virtually every member here, the beneficiary of all the talent that comes from Sacramento State. I think I have multiple members of my staff and a current fellow always impressed at how well equipped they are when they come into this building. I want your, sort of, about decline in Enrollment, right? It's sort of an issue that, sort of, floats above all this.

And we're looking at demographic trends across the state around enrollment decline. How will decline in enrollment, either across the board or as it really affects your campuses, impact your approach to the GI 2025 goals?

Thank you so much, Senator Newman, for raising that question. That is an important question, particularly for the CSU. There are national considerations around enrollment changes. We have the demographic shifts that we know are coming. We have, even within the state of California, we have changes in the demographics and numbers of students who are in what we would call traditional college age pipeline, right? So that is a consideration that is going to persist with us for a while.

We're already seeing effects, many of them probably exacerbated by the pandemic, shifts in student behavior, decisions made for their families to go to work or to go to school. So, much of that rolls up in what we're seeing in terms of enrollment changes. In addition to those decisions that students are making about their enrollment, some of their challenges really spilled over into their academic performance as well.

We believe that we've seen a decline in some GPAs among students over that same fall 2019 to fall 2021 trajectory that go along with the changes that we see in retention. So there are shifts that have been exacerbated by changes in behavior brought about due to trying to navigate post COVID reality. We do think that there will be some issues.

One of the realities, as it relates to enrollment management, is retention. is a significant and important strategy in helping campuses maintain their enrollments and continue the promises that we make to our students. It's much more beneficial for students, their families, if we develop retention strategies and make sure we can keep students than trying to churn and recruit new students, replace students that may be lost through retention, and try to backfill those numbers with new students.

Because again, we're facing a shift, a time, where the pool of students just isn't going to be the same. So campuses, I think, are realizing a shift in the importance, even more so, in retention and utilizing strategies like we've talked about. And if you have questions about other specific strategies, I wanted to go through my introduction, but we've got information that we can share specifically as well, if you're interested.

But all of these things are rolling up to help campuses deploy strategies to make sure that our students are successful, that we can retain them. We know that we use information in strategic ways so that we know who's in the most need for certain types of surveillance, for lack of a better term, and be able to make sure that we can keep our students and help them continue their educational goals.

Appreciate that. Dr. Wood, if you wouldn't mind.

Yes. In terms of enrollment, it's certainly a pressing issue for the entire state and really the entire nation if you look at the demographics. In terms of what's taking place, we're fortunate. In Sacramento State, we're one of four institutions in the system that met our enrollment targets, and so we're proud of that. But we're also looking forward to the future.

And so we've recently had our enrollment management team and whole area become its own separate area and division, rather than being kind of a subset of another area, so we can focus primarily on how we are ensuring that we're serving every single individual that needs and deserves an opportunity for a Cal State education. So part of how I think about the formula for this is really from my own background and working extensively with community colleges.

Community colleges are some of the most important and effective institutions in serving our most minoritized students. And so I think that there's further ways that we can continue partnering with our community colleges because they are the primary pathway into postsecondary education for our most minoritized students. And so that's something that I know that we'll be doing as part of our effort, is continuing and expanding our partnerships to create seamless pathways for our students who are coming from community colleges.

I'm also attentive to the fact that our system released the Black Student Success Task Force report. I was proud to be a member of that team that worked on that report. And I think one of the things that we continued to hear from individuals as we spoke to different stakeholders is just the perception of both what it means to go into a CSU and what it means to be retained within a CSU from our black student community.

And so, as my colleague said, I think part of our enrollment calculus is also thinking about how you need to retain the students that you have. So if you have, as an example, a 14 and a half percent graduation rate in four years for your black male students, that sends a message to the community, but that also sends a message to that current student about or is indicative of message that is being sent to that current student about whether or not they're in an environment that cares about them, that supports them, that believes in them.

And I think that there's more work that we can continue to do around that. Michelle, from the campaign, and I should mention I'm a board member for the campaign, said that sometimes we have educators who never even believe that they can pass a class or that they won't.

I've always firmly believed in my work as an educator that no one has ever risen to low expectations. And so it's absolutely critical that we are better preparing our educators to be able to teach students, many of whom they were never trained to teach. If you think about your average faculty member in any institution across the country, let's say in biology. Bachelor's degree in biology, worked in industry for several years, master's degree, PhD, goes straight into the classroom with no training on how to teach.

So what do they do? They try to think of, okay, what was the good professor I had? What are some good examples that I can use? And then usually what they do is that they teach how they were taught. But how they were taught is typically not how our students learn, particularly our students of color. The examples that they're going to use, the curriculum they're going to use, their approach to teaching is one that is oftentimes not emblematic of the students that they serve.

And so I think part of the formulation of how we continue to retain students, which is part of this enrollment calculus, again, is by better preparing and better equipping the educators that we have within our institution, many of whom care about students, they care about their success, they're there for the right reasons. But some of them, we're asking them to do things that they've never been trained to do before.

And I think a lot of our institutions are leaning more into that and recognizing that, hey, that's how we serve our students. That's how we serve our quote unquote customer base, right? If you're thinking about that from the business metaphor earlier. The last thing I'd say is thinking about this from a perspective of adult learners. We have adult learners who have went to our institutions, who have not finished, have not graduated, but have credits that they've earned towards a degree.

We have a program called Hornet Attain started by one of our vice presidents that helps to bring those individuals back into our community and helps them to continue along that progress towards the degree. And I think it's those kind of things we have to do that send a message to the community that we're serious about education and we're serious about making sure that every single student has the opportunity to walk across the stage.

Let me ask one last question, in respecting everybody's time, got me to thinking. In addition to slowing social mobility, which is a real problem that we've observed over the last ten years in the US, we're also seeing declines in geographic mobility. So that intersects with your demographic challenges, right? If you're limited to recruiting simply from your area, you're going to wind up just recruiting from same community colleges that are facing the same demographic and enrollment challenges.

But it also becomes problematic if the 23 schools are competing with each other for students. So how are you thinking about recruiting, particularly outside of kind of that sort of local nexus, to make sure that you have both the best student body but also the most diverse?

That is an important observation because of our California master plan and the commitment that we make to the service of our citizens, right? Our planning for a very long time has focused on serving a particular tripartite population of individuals here in the state of California.

As the movement of business has extended beyond our state, beyond our nation, even, I think this is an opportunity to think about what does the student look like and is there a recipe or a formula that we are beholden to, or is there an opportunity for us to think about students and recruitment from a regional standpoint, right? Students who are maybe right across our border in surrounding states, where the proposition of moving across the country, moving into different geographic challenges and new types of environments.

What about students who are from Nevada, from Utah, from the Western states? Are there ways that we can engage in more regional recruitment? I think that is going to be a way that we can think about how to diversify our student body, how to open up the opportunities that we provide here in the CSU to educate more individuals, and really recruit and think about new ways of providing the kind of education that we provide to even more individuals beyond the state of California.

Yeah, I would say in addition to that, at least from our perspective at Sacramento State, part of the formulation in a student's mind is, is this the institution that I'm going to have the best possible experience at? So, yes, there's geographic areas that each of our institutions serve, but then, of course, no matter where you're at in the state, if there's an institution that serves as a magnet, people want to go to that place because of something they have there that's special.

And earlier you said something, Senator Newman, that was particularly important to me personally, and that was around student housing. And if we think about housing within our system, we have some campuses that house nearly 9000 students, and we have some campuses in our system that couldn't come even close to that. And if you're a first generation student, low income student, maybe you're a student who has dependence, doesn't have dependence. You struggle with food insecurity, housing insecurity.

Knowing that you have a place to lay your head at night and you have a meal that's coming to you is absolutely essential to being able to be in an environment. And so as students, I think that a lot of students look at factors like that to see, is this within all the options, within the geographic region, outside the geographic region, across the state, across the country, is that a place that I want to be?

And I bring that up because as a student who was at Sac State, it was a part of my experience there. I was a student, as a young student who struggled with food insecurity, struggled with housing insecurity. I lived in my car. I lived in my brother's garage. I have an identical twin brother who was Student Body President and living in his office because he was homeless, right?

And I look at Sacramento State, and certainly we built up more residence opportunities for students, but we can house about 2100 on our state side, some additional opportunities through a P3, but we're not coming anywhere close to where we need to be.

Yes.

And then I looked in at our data on this, and if we look at the cohorts that came before the pandemic, because after the pandemic or during the pandemic obviously everything changed, we have about 8% higher four-year graduation rate for those students. And we've done some data looking at this using propensity score matching where we also match our students based upon characteristics of backgrounds we want to control for and we still see sizable differences.

For our Asian population it's about 8.6% higher four-year graduation rate, black population 8% higher, latinx population 7.3% higher. Our multiethnic population about 12% higher. And when we talk about a multiethnic population, our campus is a heavy representation of both native and black students within that. And so for us that's absolutely key because we know that that has a direct impact on whether or not you can just be focused in the classroom.

If you don't know where you're going to sleep, if you're physically hungry, you're not in the best possible situation to be able to be successful. So for us, it's something that we plan to focus on for institution.

I really do appreciate it. One of the things I worry about the most for young people, especially relates to college and college achievement, is all of those students who don't pursue their dreams and it's rarely based on ability, it's based on their sense of the possible.

And that, to me, is one of the most important problems we need to solve is to make sure that any student in the system, as they work their way through any of the three levels, has the assurance that if they do the work, there will be the resources and the guidance and the support systems for them to make it.

And the prospect of not having that I think dissuades a lot of people, a lot of really talented people, especially from underrepresented communities and we as a state lose out on all of their contributions because of that. So really appreciate the answers and I appreciate the work you're doing.

Thank you.

Senator Newman. Senator Ochoa Bogh.

So, I have to share I was excited to hear your points today. So on point and so well within my scope of concern these past couple of years and what I've expressed in committee. So thank you for sharing that today.

Very excited to hear that perspective. Mine's going to come from, I'm going to add a different angle to the conversations and the points that you've made today with regards to retaining first of all having the recruitment and retaining our students, and it has to do with, came to my attention this year recently. So the State Board of Education just voted upon the new math curriculum in the state and you may or may not be prepared to speak on that, but I'm just kind of curious.

So in that final plan for the math curriculum for the state of California, on July 7, there was a letter submitted by thousands of both professors as well as parents concerned about, I would say, the content of the curriculum, the math curriculum. And I was just kind of curious as to whether or not you folks have any concerns or have you looked into how that might impact in preparing the incoming classes for STEM-oriented majors. And so I know that may have an impact.

I don't think may. I know it will have an impact on our incoming classes as to whether or not what majors, especially STEM, they will have. Because we all know that. I know I didn't pursue any STEM careers because I was very insecure about my math skills. I knew I didn't have the preparations and part of that came from my life experiences, just like yourself, in which I moved. I attended eleven schools growing up, and that gave me math gaps.

So when it came time to majors, although I loved architecture, although I love medicine, I would have never thought about going in that path because I knew.

No reason to be sorry.

Sorry. So, moving forward, I'm extremely concerned about whether or not our students in California will have that edge in having that confidence in math skills because of what we just voted in and how that might be a disservice for our talent in California, our student population, which is our future, having them pursue those careers and retaining them here and how that will impact our workforce, which in California, if you speak to any in any space, in any industry, we're not graduating.

The workforce needed to meet the demands in the state of California. So that is a huge concern for me as I am privy to all of these committees and hearing from different angles as to what we're doing in education, what we're doing in workforce, and how that has an impact in the economic overall well-being for a state and our students that were graduating the state of California.

So although some may think that it's not important, I think it will have a severe impact on our students. So just would love to hear your perspective on how that's going to impact our students coming in, in preparation, and be able to retain them in college and be able to actually pursue careers that are going to be at the top field of demand here in our state.

I'll go first. I feel your concern very heartfelt. I think this conversation is so acutely new, right, that higher education campuses are going to be trying to find ways to figure out. So in this pipeline of education how do we partner with our K-12, our geographic partners and determine, unpack what the implications are for these new standards and use various types of predictive data if they present themselves?

If that kind of information is available to best determine, how is that going to impact the way our students are ready through the pipeline for higher education, those types of relationships work. I can tell you last academic year as we emerged from the pandemic as an example, one of the conversations on our campus, and probably in other areas as well, was what are the effects to students in the K-12 system from this severe disruption that they have experienced?

All of our educational structures have experienced those disruptions. But what about our partners who are preparing students for us to receive? How do we find ways to partner to better understand, examine data together, hear from them, understand what their concerns are and align our efforts toward trying to figure out how we can best mitigate any kinds of effects that may be problematic and challenge our students.

So I would say it's going to be important for President Wood and myself and other individuals who are in leadership positions in the CSU to seek out our K-12 partners and figure out ways that they can educate us on what they foresee, the kinds of trends and shifts that this new curriculum is going to bring about. And how does that align with the way that we approach curriculum? General education curriculum, STEM based curriculum.

And if there are changes, right, if there are curricular modifications that our campuses can consider to make sure that we are providing the kind of educational experience that's seamless and responsive to these types of developments that take place. But we feel that and we want nothing to do but partner to make sure that our students in the middle of all of these changes are not harmed and not thwarted and not discouraged.

I think that was a beautiful response and very emblematic of what I would have said. The only thing I would add to that is just the thinking that I had the pleasure of learning from Bob Moses on, which is that mathematics is oftentimes used to include, but it's also used to exclude, and it is the civil rights indicator of our time.

That's a great summing up. And I'd love to have a hearing on this issue of math because I have a lot of strong feelings in that space, too, along the lines of what you just said. It's a challenge. But I want to thank both of you for participating, sharing your insights. Dr. Scissum Gunn, thank you for traveling here and for Long Beach's success and doubling your graduation rates. Please thank President Conoley for allowing us to have your presence here on, I'm sure, a busy and important day at the beach, but we appreciate that.

I will do so.

And Dr. Wood. Thank, congratulations to you. You stand on the shoulders of great leadership at Sac State, a tripling of the rate, but more importantly, really, the state leader and the equity gap closing issue. And you've been very articulated in explaining, even with that success, how when you break it down, there's still a lot of places that you're going to focus on. I know you'll be successful in that space as well. Thank you. Thank you both very much.

Thank you.

All right, we're going to come and conclude our hearing by going to public comment. I believe that Samantha Alvarez Chavarria may have been able to reconnect with us on our telephone line, and if she's there, I want to give her the first shot to sum up her testimony. We're so sorry technical problems got in the way, so just give me 1 second there. Samantha, are you there?

Yes, I'm here.

Samantha, I'm so sorry you had these difficulties. We're coming to the close of our hearing. I just wanted to give you a chance, though, to sum up your thoughts before we went to public comment here in the hearing.

You know, as a student, I've definitely experienced a lot of internet issues as well, but I've still continued to persevere. Just wanted to say everything really quickly. But again, third time's a charm. My name is Samantha Alvarez Chavarria and I am a student that not only goes to Cal State Dominguez Hills, but I serve as the Vice President of Legislative Affairs for the Cal State Student Association.

I'm just honored again to be here and have the opportunity to speak again and just going back to my thoughts. The CSU system has had a steady increase in four year graduation rates over the past few years. Several campuses have shown remarkable progress due to their implementation and their innovative mentorship programs, resulting in a 10% improvement in four year graduation rates. Overall, it is encouraging to see the doubling of a four year graduation rate since 2015 and the commendable rise in transfer graduation rates.

However, it was also made evident that there are still gaps amongst Black and Latino students when it comes to timely graduation. Closing those gaps should remain a crucial mission of us as a CSSA and of the CSU if we truly want to achieve equity and the goals of the GI 2025. At my campus, CSU Dominguez Hills, there have been progress.

In a report released by the Campaign for College Opportunity, they have found that the four year graduation rate for all first time students has increased from 6% to 20%, and the six year graduation rate has increased from 35% to 46% since 2015. Still, it is extremely unlikely that my campus will reach the system wide goals by 2025. Clearly, several campuses will still face challenges, and the CSU should still be actively working on tailored solutions for those campuses.

Graduating on time is a complex issue and an important concern for CSU students influenced by various factors. Many of our students experience financial constraints due to the cost of pursuing higher education, which requires them to work part-time, even full-time jobs. This leads them to prioritizing working for survival versus taking 15 units as recommended. Academic challenges and administrative barriers, such as course availability and major requirements can extend the graduation timeline.

Moreover, personal factors such as family commitments and mental health play a significant role. We have observed that students who lack adequate support systems are more likely to drop out or to take longer to graduate, emphasizing the need for more comprehensive support. I serve as an employee of the Office of Admissions and Recruitment, and during my time I was able to interact with students who share unique backgrounds and circumstances.

The story that will stick with me the most was from this summer, when I met a nontraditional student who was returning to campus after three years. He expressed his frustration with his decision to return back, especially because he works 40 hours to afford housing, to support his family, and to even affording gas to make his commute. His concern wasn't about returning to academia, but it was about being able to just afford six units alone. Improving the environment for on time graduation requires a multifaceted approach.

One critical issue that must be addressed is the disproportionate amount of debt borne by underrepresented minorities within the CSU system. The CSSA's Previous Debt Comes Due report highlighted this alarming trend, and our upcoming report findings further emphasize the urgency of this issue. Financial burdens often force students into part time or full time employment, which can slow academic process and lead to extended graduation timelines. This not only affects students' present academic lives, but can have long term impacts on their career opportunities and financial well being.

We have long been advocates for Cal grants reform, and we look forward to hopefully seeing it being implemented in the upcoming budget year. Additionally, CSSA is currently cosponsoring a bill by John Burton Advocates for Youth and other advocacy groups regarding satisfactory academic progress.

AB 789 by Assemblymember Berman would ensure that more California students are able to keep their financial aid and achieve their higher education goals. By expanding financial aid, resources and eligibility, as well as making sure that students are able to keep that aid, we believe that we will see more students attending the CSU, earning a degree, and actualizing social mobility. Currently, the CSU has plans at its September Board of Trustees meeting to vote to raise tuition 6% annually.

We are already seeing a concerning drop in enrollment across all higher education systems and an increase in tuition this high will inevitably prolong students graduation timelines and result in first generation students paying almost 40% more to graduate than when they started, or dropping out due to financial hardship. This is deeply concerning as the CSU system has long been known to be the most affordable and diverse public higher education university system in the nation.

Such an increase will make it less accessible and will pose as a barrier for students of historically marginalized communities. The CSU must come up with an alternative means to address revenue shortfalls for the system if it wants to reach its GI 2025 goals. Additionally, we believe that a holistic approach encompassing flexible learning options and improved student support services can create an environment conductive to four year graduation.

The CSSA remains committed to working closely with the CSU, leveraging our insight and advocacy to ensure that the paths to graduation are fair, manageable, and supportive of all students, regardless of their financial or ethnic background. Equity gaps are more than statistics. They represent real challenges that affect students daily lives and future opportunities. From the student perspective, these gaps can translate into exclusion, unequal access to resources, and challenges in academic achievement.

We urge CSU campuses to not just prioritize a culture of inclusivity, but a culture of equity as well. This starts with ensuring the hiring and retention of diverse faculty and staff at all levels of the university and ensuring that institutional investment of targeted student support services. Equality is ensuring that students have access to, sorry. Equality is ensuring access to all students. Equity is ensuring all students make it to their graduation day.

The CSSA is dedicated to working alongside the CSU to advocate for policies and that truly narrow these gaps and promote an equitable educational experience for all. While recognizing the efforts and successes of the CSU system, we, as the CSSA, believe there is more work to be done. Our focus remains on representing the student body, and we are committed to continuous collaboration with the CSU. Together, we can build a university system that not only educates, but empowers and supports all students, ensuring that each individual has the opportunity to succeed. Thank you.

Thank you, Samantha, and our apologies again for the technical difficulties, but we very much appreciate your testimony and your participation in our hearing today. So thank you very much. We're going to now go to the patient people here in our hearing room under public comment. We welcome your thoughts and keeping in mind that time, appreciate that.

Sure. Good afternoon, Chair Glazer, Senator Ochoa Bogh. My name is Ron Rapp, I'm the Legislative Director for the California Faculty Association. We represent 29,000 professors, lectures, coaches, librarians on all 23 CSU campuses, and I'm speaking on behalf of CFA. Thank you so much for convening this hearing. It was very informational. We appreciate that. We have very serious concerns regarding the transparency and accountability of the initiative. I think, as you do, based upon your comments today.

According to the CSU's 2023-24 operating budget request, the CSU has invested about a half a billion dollars in the graduation initiative since 2015-16. Our big questions are, where did the money go and what are the outcomes? I think we heard some of those outcomes today, but I think we need additional information, information on a consistent basis.

We do believe that the best way to increase graduation rates and close equity gaps is to invest in faculty and staff to provide fair and equitable compensation for faculty and staff at the CSU so that we retain the highest quality educators and support personnel. An increased investment in faculty and staff will increase the chances that the goals of the graduation initiative will be achieved. In addition, faculty want to be more involved in the planning and implementation of the graduation initiative.

One of the voices missing today was the voice of faculty members, unfortunately. So I'm here today to offer up that collaboration to come to the table and make sure that the graduation initiative is a success. But we need multiple voices at the table, including students, management, faculty, as well as community members, to come to consensus on what that looks like. So that's the way that we're successful with the graduation initiative. Once again, thank you so much for convening this hearing. It was very helpful. And thank you all for the work that you do.

Thank you. And I agree. I appreciate that we had all the time in the world. I think that would have been an important element to have included.

Thank you.

I am heartened to hear that there was a stakeholder process in the development of 2025. Maybe there's a conversation on the side about whether it was adequate or not, but I did hear that from the system and appreciate hearing that, but your point is very well taken.

Follow up, thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you. Next, please.

Good afternoon, Melissa Bardo on behalf of the Education Trust-West, a research and advocacy organization committed to closing achievement and opportunity gaps. First, just wanted to acknowledge Chairs Glaser and Newman as well as members of both of the committees for hosting this hearing to discuss the important milestones achieved by the initiative, but also provide the necessary oversight to ensure the system is working to address the stark equity gaps that remain.

The CSU deserves credit and celebration for impressive gains in graduation rates among first time and transfer students. We also applaud the CSU for the timely report on advancing Black student success. This is the hugely important move for prioritizing equity in our state. Throughout our budget advocacy, however, the Education Trust-West has continued to engage policymakers and stakeholders on the importance of establishing race conscious goals and metrics to ensure that the assets and needs of underrepresented students are not overlooked in system wide initiatives.

We remain concerned that CSU's progress report included in your agenda does not propose any new strategies tailored to address equity gaps among specific racial and ethnic groups. The efforts named on page two of the progress report, such as providing equitable access to the Digital Degree planner, expanding credit opportunities, et cetera, are no doubt important strategies to improve graduation rates overall. But it is not clear how these priorities will close specific racial equity gaps.

They are too broad and fail to set goals for and address the specific assets and needs of Native, Black, and Hispanic students. As we look forward to 2025 and beyond, we encourage the CSU to establish bold, race conscious goals, both system wide and campus specific, towards closing those equity gaps and identify race conscious strategies to meet those goals. We also echo the recommendations from our colleagues at the Campaign for College Opportunity to disaggregate the data beyond the use of URM and non URM categories.

Lastly, as you engage in future budget negotiations regarding either the multiyear compact or additional funding for the graduation initiative, we encourage the Legislature to establish more explicit metrics in closing racial equity gaps as a condition of funding to ensure that the systems make annual progress towards goals. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Afternoon, Mr. Chair and Senator. Alissa Yum on behalf of the CSU Employees Union representing 16,000 non faculty staff at the CSU. We really appreciate the efforts you're making to shed light on the CSU's graduation initiative 2025 and the existing equity gaps. It's imperative that we're reviewing these programs to ensure that they're achieving their goals and closing equity gaps for both students and employees at the CSU. One key element of that review is ensuring transparency in how CSU is expending funding for these purposes, as you discussed today.

Earlier this year, the legislative budget attempted to impose transparency and reporting requirements on the CSU regarding how they spent compact money. That language was ultimately replaced with less granular reporting. We believe more transparency is imperative to ensure that every dollar appropriated to the CSU is going towards student and employee success. We also continue to seek a path forward with the CSU on salary steps.

Implementing a fair and competitive wage structure for represented staff is another crucial component of student success as our members play critical roles in the student experience at the CSU. With this in mind, we would encourage more engagement with represented staff and faculty on these initiatives. Finally, we just encouraged the committee to continue its oversight of the CSU's initiatives and we look forward to working together to ensure that students and employees of the CSU can thrive. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Kimberly Rosenberger with SEIU. I just want to align my comments with CFA and CSUEU on the importance and of this committee and appreciative of the Senate and the Assembly for continuing to push for oversight for Sunshine, which we know is so important as we try to succeed at the intent of this goal. But I think one of the crucial things we keep hearing again and again is engagement.

Not only is the faculty pushed for so long for this consideration, but was just, even if it's considered in the stakeholders, it's brief, it's not ongoing engagement. And the same thing applies to our support staff who are now currently trying to organize the unrepresented student workers who look like the students were trying to help in this initiative. Which is why we really encourage the continued to push not just for transparency, but also for engagement of the workforce. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We're going to now go to the phone lines. I believe there may be one or two folks that are there to testify. Let me check with the moderator. Moderator, is there folks on the line that want to put their name on the record in this hearing?

Thank you for public comment, you may press one and then zero. And we will go to line eleven. Your line is open.

Oh, there's definitely people on the phone. This is Andrea and I represent people. It has been quite an interesting afternoon listening to this hearing that purports to be about equity and inclusivity. Frankly, I would like to hear the statistics on the graduation rate of unvaccinated students. Oh, wait, you kicked them out.

And in the case of my daughter, you refused to admit her at all, which is why she has decided to leave California, just like so many of her friends who are attending universities in many states except California. It is ironic to me because vaccine mandates do not reflect equity in any way, shape or form. Yet CSUs have denied education to students and potential students, as well as denied CSU employees their right to work due to vaccine mandates.

And just as another anecdotal story, I personally have a friend who left her job at Sac State and moved to Texas two years ago with her children due to the vaccine mandates at the university level and also the level of the public grade schools. In this very hearing, you talked about needing to attract students from other states because CSU enrollment goals are not being met.

And yet there was not any information given about how California is losing population, including losing a congressional seat, due to the mass exodus of people fleeing California over vaccine mandates. At this point in the story, I'm not even sure what to say to you people other than Senator Newman, it was great to see you in the coffee shop the other day.

Please, just speak to the subject at hand, okay? Giving you the flexibility to address the committee.

I'm speaking the subject at hand, and I'm allowed to address the Chair because you people have the discretion to handle this hearing the way you want to. And I as part of the citizenry who's involved in the dogged advocacy of the daily grind, you could benefit from listening to people like me and my insights while you all are just sitting down there waiting to build your glass palace with our tax dollars.

Anything else you want to conclude with? Anything else you want to conclude with, please.

Yeah, why the CSUS are losing enrollment? This is not a mystery. It's not a mystery in any way. So figure it out. Vaccine mandates don't work and stop shoving poison into the population of California.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much for participating. Moderator any further comments?

Yes, number nine, your line is open.

Thank you very much. My name is Debbie Raucher, and I'm with John Burton Advocates for Youth. Thank you so much for holding this important hearing. I wanted to echo what the student representative raised about the issue of students losing financial aid due to satisfactory academic progress requirements. The representatives from Sacramento and Long Beach mentioned that it is much more beneficial to help students to remain enrolled. Satisfactory academic progress requirements result in many students losing financial aid and disenrolling.

Research has found that Black students are disqualified from financial aid because of these outdated requirements at rates that are double that of white students. Addressing this inequity is vital to the effort to reduce disparities in graduation rates. As was noted, Assembly Bill 789, cosponsored by the CSU Student Association, would create a common set of student focused standards for determining ongoing eligibility for financial aid and is currently on suspense in Senate appropriations. Moving this bill forward would be a crucial tool to addressing the issue of equity and graduation rates. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Moderator next caller, please.

And we have no further public comment in queue, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Well, let me conclude the hearing by thanking my colleagues, the Co Chair, Senator Newman, Senator Ochoa Bogh, Senator Allen, Senator Laird, Senator Cortese, Senator Smallwood-Cuevas, for their engagement and questions. Let me thank the staff of the Education Committee and my staff, Shoshana thank you for your participation, and all the folks who came and participated either providing direct testimony or in the public comment period. We appreciate your engagement on such an important topic. And with that, the Committee on Education and the Select Committee on Student Success is adjourned.