California State University - History

History

Today's California State University system is the direct descendant of the California State Normal School (now San José State University), a normal school established by the California Legislature on May 2, 1862. The California State Normal School was itself derived from the City of San Francisco's Minns Evening Normal School (founded in 1857) a normal school that educated San Francisco teachers in association with that city's high school system. The system now considers its founding date to be that of the Minns School. A second California State Normal School campus was created in Los Angeles in 1882.

In 1887, the California legislature dropped the word "California" from the name of the San Jose and Los Angeles schools, renaming them "State Normal Schools." Later Chico (1887), San Diego (1897), and other schools became part of the State Normal School system. In 1919, the State Normal School at Los Angeles became the Southern Branch of the University of California (now the University of California, Los Angeles). In 1921, the State Normal Schools became the State Teachers Colleges. By this time most of the campuses started to become identified by their city names plus the word "state" (e.g., "San Jose State," "San Diego State," "San Francisco State").

In 1935, the State Teachers Colleges became the California State Colleges and were administered by the California State Department of Education in Sacramento. The Donahoe Higher Education Act of 1960 gave the system greater autonomy from the State of California.

The postwar period brought a great expansion in the number of colleges in the system. Campuses in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Long Beach were added between 1947 and 1949. Then seven more were authorized to be built between 1957 and 1960. Six more campuses joined the system after the establishment of the Donohoe Higher Education Act in 1960 bringing the total number to 23.

In 1972 the system became The California State University and Colleges, and all of the campuses were renamed with the words "California State University" in their names. Former San Diego State University student body president Calvin Robinson wrote the bill, signed into law by Ronald Reagan, that allowed every California State University the option to revert the schools back to their pre-1972 names: San Jose State, San Diego State, San Francisco State, etc. In 1982, the CSU system dropped the word "colleges" from its name.

Today the campuses of the CSU include comprehensive and polytechnic universities and the only Maritime Academy in the western United States that receives aid from the federal Maritime Administration.