Going to college is traditionally considered a rite of passage for high school students. But navigating the admissions process — including the costs of standardized tests and applications — can create barriers, and prevent some seniors from thinking about attending a university.
But a new state law, Senate Bill 640, aims to make the process easier starting Jan. 1.
It establishes the CSU Direct Admissions Program, which builds off a pilot initiative implemented last year at CSU Riverside. Under this program, all graduating high school students who meet the university system’s requirements will automatically receive an admissions letter to 16 California State University campuses.
The program will initially roll out with 43 school districts, and later expand to include all districts in the state. It also comes at a time when some CSUs are seeing decreasing student enrollment, forcing officials to consider significant cuts to academic or athletics programs.
The law was authored by Democratic State Senator Christopher Cabaldon of Yolo County. He modeled the legislation after a program he launched as Mayor of West Sacramento called the Home Run Initiative, which provided tuition-free acceptance into Sacramento City College for every graduating high school senior.
Cabaldon spoke with Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez about the problems SB 640 aims to solve, and how he sees it as reimagining what it means to go to college.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Why was this law such a big priority of yours?
I come from the world of education. I was a professor at Sac State and a community college vice chancellor. But during the pandemic in my city, I thought I would try something different and we created an automatic admission program where every single graduating high school senior got a letter of admission to the community college, and it was the first in the country. In today's world, pretty much every American needs some form of education past the [high school] degree. It doesn’t have to be a university degree, but something past. But we still treat it like it's some big gap that only a select few should make it through. And so, we wanted to create a way in which students could make that transition from 12th grade to the next step just as easily as they did from 11th grade to 12th grade. And it turns out we have the data that we need to make it work.
You don't even have to apply, that’s the big deal here. You will just get your letter of admission which is a rite of passage in American culture. You'll get that in the mail with the stamp, it's not going to be an email or a postcard, congratulating you on your achievement and then all you have to do is enroll. And if you want to compete for one of the really competitive ones, you can still do that too. It takes the anxiety out of that process, it takes the work out of applying, and for a lot of students it dispels the idea that might have been put into their heads that they’re not university material, when we already know that they are.
How exactly does this work? Does every California high school student eventually get accepted to a CSU?
Almost. Every single high school graduating senior in California who is qualified for CSU admission. Then that basically means two things. Number one, that you've completed what we're called the A-G courses; the four years of English, three years of math, the lab science, all of that. And you've done it with at least a 2.0 GPA, that's the current admission requirements for CSU. If you’re one of those students — and there are more than a quarter-million of those high school graduating students — they will automatically, around September of each year, get a letter of admission in the mail saying, “congratulations, you’re in!” You can immediately enroll without having to apply.
There’s still tuition associated with it, right?
Correct, everything else is the same. You’ve got to buy your books, you’ve still got to find a place to live if you’re not going to stay at home. We’re not waiving a wand for everything. But for so many young people they don't know that they are eligible for the university at all, or their horizon is limited by where they live right now.
Higher impacted universities like San Diego State and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo are not included in this direct admissions program; it's 16 of the 22 Cal State campuses right now. If you qualify, do you get accepted to all 16 and then get to choose one?
Yeah, it's that good. And you know, somebody asked me, “well, isn’t this going to be really expensive?” And the answer is no, because most of those 16 campuses have capacity. They already have on their payroll the faculty, counselors, groundskeepers and everyone else, so it’s good for those campuses.
I represent a couple of them in the Senate like Sonoma State, which has been struggling with enrollment, so this solves two problems at once. It opens up admission for students who either haven't gone through the process, or weren't aware that they were ready for university. It also makes sure that we stabilize the campuses so the students who are already going to go there still have a campus to show up at, and that their programs are protected too. So it’s a win-win, and it's basically just the cost of postage.
Some universities, like Sonoma State, have been struggling with retaining their student population. How would you get students to choose a university like this to ensure there’s an even distribution across all campuses?
I think that remains to be seen exactly how that will play out… We’re already forecasting to go up by 10,000 students statewide, and even more once the bill is in full effect. Sonoma State is updating and modernizing their curriculum and offerings, and they're definitely going to be poised to compete for these students, but so is San Francisco State and Chico and everyone else too.
Now it's going to be on the campuses to compete for highly qualified young people in California who have opportunities that are before them.
What were some of the learning lessons of getting this law over the finish line?
The state budget is not great right now, and some of the threats from the federal government are really looming large. When I got sworn into the Senate I thought, “gee, we just finished 10 years of the biggest budget surpluses ever and now I'm here and there's no money left." But that causes you to approach problems differently. This is an area where we had two different problems… could we put those together, without spending money, to do something really creative?
The other thing that was really remarkable here is CSU… this is a breakthrough innovation. It's a fundamental change in the way that we think. How we define ourselves in higher education is like, “we’re great because it’s hard to get in.” Who is the most selective, who has the most barriers to get in? They must be the best. And CSU's position is, “no, that shouldn't be how we measure ourselves.” If you can succeed at CSU, we should welcome you with open arms.
Could this further expand other public universities like the UC system?
It’s a little more challenging at [the UC system] because there aren't too many UC campuses with enough capacity to guarantee in advance. We're going to be looking at additional ways to try to open up spaces and seats at UC, especially at the most competitive campuses that are really hard to get into.
But the vast majority of California's students that go on to the university are looking to go to CSU, so in terms of the broadest amount of access this is really going to help. I would also say students that want to go to Berkeley, or UCLA or UC Davis, they are typically already applying to many campuses. It’s much rarer that somebody accidentally discovers that they're Berkeley material, whereas we think there are a lot of students in California, both in high schools and community colleges, that just don't realize that Cal State is open to them. that just don't realize that Cal State is open to them.
