The Brief

California State University is the nation’s largest public four-year system, with nearly half a million students. So it’s a big deal that starting this year, CSU will make OpenAI’s ChatGPT available to all those students and its faculty.

It’s also controversial.

The effort will cost the CSU nearly $17 million — even as the system faces a $2.3 billion budget gap. That gap persists despite a tuition increase and spending cuts that have meant fewer course offerings for students.

University officials say providing access to quality AI tools is an issue of equity. Across the system’s 23 campuses, some students were paying for their own ChatGPT subscriptions. CSU spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith said the goal is for all students to have “the same access to the tools and learning opportunities that will prepare them for the future,” regardless of which campus they attend.

The creep of AI is undeniable. On college campuses, it has transformed how students and professors approach tests and assignments. Students have filed lawsuits for being accused of using AI and sued college professors for using the tools many of them use regularly. AI has also diminished the earning potential of recently lucrative majors, leaving colleges in the position of trying to keep up.

Those efforts point to why, in recent years, OpenAI has established business deals with universities across the country, including multiple public institutions.

At what cost? For the most part, the company and colleges involved have not made the price of these services publicly available.

Public records obtained by LAist for universities across the country show CSU’s massive scale appears to have helped it land a deal on ChatGPT subscriptions, and that CSU has invested far more aggressively in generative AI tools than other public universities, both in dollars spent and in the number of students served.

In an email earlier this year, CSU’s Bentley-Smith said the system leveraged economies of scale “to ensure that the CSU paid the lowest price possible.”

What is ChatGPT Edu? And how are students and faculty using it?

OpenAI is a leading generative artificial intelligence company valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, despite currently operating at a loss. On its website, the company touts business deals with at least a dozen public and private colleges worldwide, ranging from Arizona State University to Oxford.

University officials say they want students at each Cal State campus to have access to the same learning tools.

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Julie Leopo

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LAist

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OpenAI provides these schools with a product called ChatGPT Edu, a chatbot specifically designed for college settings.

ChatGPT Edu is tailored to each campus. And with it, universities provide access to a mix of OpenAI products. This can include the company’s flagship model, ChatGPT‑5, along with other tools. ChatGPT Edu also enables students and faculty to make custom AI models. At Columbia University in New York City, for instance, faculty researchers built a prediction tool to help reduce overdose fatalities⁠. The model analyzes and synthesizes large datasets to inform interventions and, according to OpenAI, it enables the team to reduce “weeks of research work into seconds.”

ChatGPT Edu can also help with more run-of-the-mill work. Some of the tasks the company suggests include: personalized tutoring for students, helping researchers write grant applications and assisting faculty with grading.

A version of ChatGPT is available at no cost, but ChatGPT Edu allows for higher message limits than the free version. OpenAI also says student and faculty data are kept private and aren’t used to train its models.

(LAist requested an interview with Leah Belsky, OpenAI’s vice president of education, but a spokesperson said she was not available by the time of publication.)

Earlier this year, CSU launched a new AI initiative — a public-private partnership between the university system; the California governor’s office; and 10 tech giants, including Microsoft, NVIDIA and OpenAI.

The university system also put out a call for proposals, asking faculty to come up with strategies “that prepare students to thrive in a rapidly evolving digital world while promoting critical thinking, ethical AI use and integrating AI literacy into curricula.” In May, the CSU announced that it received more than 400 proposals from over 750 faculty members. Ultimately, 63 of those proposals were awarded $30,000 to $60,000 grants.

Leslie Kennedy, assistant vice chancellor of academic technology services, told LAist the $3 million in grants came from the division of academic and student affairs, which provides funding for special projects.

How CSU’s OpenAI contract compares to other public U.S. universities

The basic, free version of ChatGPT provides limited access to the chatbot’s core functions. For access to more advanced features, the average user can subscribe to ChatGPT Plus for $20 a month. (The highest level of access costs $200 a month.)

Public records show that, during the first six months of this year, CSU paid roughly $1.9 million dollars to make ChatGPT Edu available to 40,000 users. From July 2025 to June 2026, the university system will pay another $15 million to make the product available to 500,000 users. This, said spokesperson Bentley-Smith in an email, “represents a significant savings.”

It’s also clear CSU secured a far lower cost–per-student than other universities, in contracts reviewed by LAist:

Money flows the other direction, too. Redacted documents obtained from Texas A&M indicate that, in February 2025, OpenAI made a one-time gift of $50,000 to the Texas A&M Foundation, a nonprofit that operates independently from the university and manages private donations. The gift was earmarked for the development of generative AI literacy at the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station.

LAist asked other universities with OpenAI deals if they have plans to make ChatGPT available to everyone on campus; ASU, for example, enrolls nearly 200,000 students. At UMass Lowell, with more than 17,000 students, spokesperson David Joyner told LAist via email that “the university is evaluating generative AI options we may be able to offer broadly. However, we do not have current plans to license community-wide ChatGPT access." Other universities had not responded as of publication.

LAist is still waiting on public records for other public universities in the U.S. We will update this story as we obtain that information.

Friction between CSU leaders and educators

Despite CSU’s sizable discount, some educators have criticized the system’s gambit.

“For me, it's frightening,” said Kevin Wehr, a sociology professor at Sacramento State and chair of the California Faculty Association’s bargaining team. “I already have all sorts of problems with students engaging in plagiarism. This feels like it takes a shot of steroids and injects it in the arm of that particular beast.”

But Wehr said AI buy-in among faculty runs the gamut.

“I know faculty who are embracing [AI] with open arms. [They’re] building it into their curriculum, building it into their assignments, teaching students how to use these tools and how not to use these tools and what to be aware of and what the pitfalls and problems are,” he said. “And I want them to feel completely supported in their work.”

Wehr told LAist that faculty members' foremost concern is the technology's capacity to reshape the workforce. Faculty are also worried about harm to the environment, given the massive power needs to run AI, which include the increased use of fresh water to cool data centers.

Wehr also noted that chatbots sometimes generate inaccurate information, known as “hallucinations.” He also expressed concern over language learning models with built-in racial and gender biases.

Above all, Wehr expressed distaste for the expense at a time when the CSU is struggling financially. In his view, it speaks to misplaced priorities.

“We are cutting programs. We are merging campuses. We are laying off faculty. We are making it harder for students to graduate,” Wehr said. And instead of using that money to ameliorate those issues, he added, “we're giving it to the richest technology companies in the world."

Bentley-Smith, the CSU spokesperson, said the money for ChatGPT Edu “came from one-time funds from the Chancellor's Office, not from university budgets.”

The university’s vision for the future

LAist brought the faculty’s concerns to assistant vice chancellor Kennedy and the CSU’s chief information officer Ed Clark, who oversees IT strategy across CSU. Clark said the move was necessary from a system perspective.

“We were seeing certain universities that had more resources saying: ‘We're going to go sign a deal with X vendor or Y vendor,’” he said. “That was already happening in the CSU. For us at the system office, that's not OK, because then … you're a faculty member or a student at the wrong campus, you don't have access. So we wanted to make sure everybody had access.”

Clark added that the deal is important for individuals, too.

“Many people had already signed up for individual licenses for ChatGPT, whether they were faculty, staff, or students, but only the people that could afford that were doing that,” he said. “That was also leaving our community behind. So, we wanted to think about it system-wide in terms of access, equity, outcomes for all, and that is why we went system-wide.”

His words for critics? “Join us,” he said. “ Help us shape the future.”

Kennedy also responded to complaints from faculty who aren’t pleased with the pivot to AI.

“We still have a half a million students, even though we're being challenged with funding in general. And we still want to prepare them for the future,” she said. “That's why we moved ahead.”

The systemwide initiative was developed with recommendations from a CSU Generative AI committee. Members included CSU faculty senate appointees, a Cal State Student Association appointee and representatives from other CSU stakeholder groups. Three of about two dozen members were part of the faculty.

What happens when the deal expires?

Clark said the system has hired a firm to assess CSU’s return on its OpenAI investment. The success of the deal will be determined by taking a host of factors into account, including how ChatGPT is used in the classroom; student learning outcomes; administrative productivity; and environmental impact.

CSU’s contract with OpenAI is for 18 months total. It’s unclear how expensive a renewal would be, or how the system might use its leverage to negotiate with other companies.

“We knew things could change so rapidly that maybe something else would emerge and we said ‘maybe this is better now,” Clark said. “We did want to have that flexibility, but we are also very very happy with our partnership with OpenAI and the ChatGPT rollout at this moment.”

After California lawmakers passed a state housing law that allows taller apartment buildings near train lines, Los Angeles leaders are facing a tradeoff: If they want to delay full implementation of the law, they’ll have to choose some parts of the city to upzone.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 79 into law last year. Starting July 1, the law is set to allow apartment buildings up to nine stories tall to be built next to subway stations and smaller buildings within a half-mile of light rail and rapid bus stops.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and a slim majority of the L.A. City Council had expressed opposition to SB 79, in keeping with the long-standing preference of many city leaders to leave untouched the three-quarters of L.A.’s residential land zoned for single-family homes.

Now, some L.A. leaders are scrambling to pull a delay lever that was built into SB 79. The provision allows cities to put off the law’s broadest effects until 2030, as long as they agree to allow more housing development in certain neighborhoods in the interim.

“If we don't do this, what happens is SB 79 goes into effect full-on,” said Bob Blumenfield, chair of the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, during a meeting on Tuesday. “I really want to avoid that happening.”

Options for delay

The state law lets cities delay implementation in neighborhoods deemed to be “low resource,” in areas at high risk of fires or sea level rise or are designated as historically significant. Even with those carve-outs, some higher-income neighborhoods near train stops will still be subject to upzoning.

The city’s Planning Department produced a report last week laying out three different approaches for the City Council to delay SB 79. All of them involve local incentive programs that would allow developers to build apartment buildings in neighborhoods currently zoned for single-family homes.

The first option would allow buildings up to four stories tall, while the second and third options would permit buildings up to eight stories.

During the committee meeting Tuesday, homeowners spoke against the changes the new law would bring and the city’s upzoning plans.

“Single-family neighborhoods are where families put down roots — they are the beating heart of Los Angeles and SB 79 runs a stake right through that heart,” said Shelley Wagers with the Beverly Grove Neighborhood Association. “We must use every tool to prevent irreversible harm and buy time.”

Advocates for increased housing development said they favored the report’s third option, which would allow mid-sized apartment buildings within a half-mile of existing train stops, as well as planned stations and rapid bus stops.

Scott Epstein, policy director for Abundant Housing L.A., said that approach “offers the best opportunity to meet our housing targets and ensure that neighborhoods rich in transit services and high-quality schools are doing their part.”

What happens next

The Planning and Land Use Committee could not get a three-person majority to agree on the best path forward, so the decision will now go to the full City Council for further debate.

Blumenfield said his recommendation as committee chair was to allow mid-rise apartment buildings in many neighborhoods, but only near existing train stops, not planned stations or rapid bus stops. He also recommended more exemptions for certain historic preservation zones.

Nithya Raman, a committee member who is also running for L.A. Mayor, said she found the report’s recommendations difficult to follow. Passing a delayed implementation plan could stave off changes in some neighborhoods, but only for a while, she said.

“Eventually we will have to do something,” Raman said. “So the question is just what do we do now and what do we do later.”

But council members have little time to figure out which approach they prefer. City planners told the committee that in order to have a delay ordinance in place by July 1, the council would need to decide what direction to take by early March.

This story was originally published by The LA Local on Feb. 25, 2026.

As federal immigration enforcement raids continue across Los Angeles, a broader demographic of people is stepping up to volunteer their time to monitor and document immigration raids in their neighborhoods, according to Ron Gochez, organizer with the rapid‑response network Unión del Barrio.

“We have senior citizen retirees showing up saying, ‘I’m an old white woman — how can I help?’ We have students from community colleges and universities. We have people who look like longtime activists and people who look like they’ve never done this before,” he said. “It’s solidarity being shown by Angelenos of all shapes, sizes, colors and ages.”

While longtime Latino organizers have led the patrols, their numbers are growing thanks to the new volunteers who aren’t necessarily Latino.

Unión del Barrio has outgrown their usual meeting space at the United Teachers union building in Koreatown, which used to draw a few dozen people.

Along with their patrols, the group supports families impacted by immigration raids and issues real-time alerts over social media.

In late January, the day after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, about 400 people showed up for a training session, Unión del Barrio organizer Ron Gochez said.

“The very next day, we had 1,000 people on a Zoom training for educators — and we couldn’t have more because the Zoom limit was 1,000,” Gochez said.

Organizers in Pasadena expected a few dozen volunteers at All Saints Episcopal Church and were surprised when nearly 800 showed up for the training session, according to Pasadena Now.

For the first time, the majority of volunteers at a recent training session were white, Gochez said.

“I think the administration and ICE thought that by killing Alex (Pretti), that people would be scared and intimidated and would stop participating,” he said.

Instead, it has had the opposite effect.

Other immigrant advocacy groups say they’re seeing a similar surge in support. Representatives at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and the Immigrant Defenders Law Center report a spike in volunteers, donations, and attendance at “Know Your Rights” workshops.

The legal advocacy group says they’re going to continue sustaining deportation defense, managed information hotlines, and expect that engagement to remain strong as federal immigration enforcement intensifies.

Ron Gochez, a member of Unión del Barrio, speaks to volunteers in South Los Angeles in February 2025.

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Andrew Lopez

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Boyle Heights Beat

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Residents living near Koreatown and Pico Union have seen a sharp increase in immigration raids in recent months. Unión del Barrio volunteer, Oscar, who provided only his first name out of concerns over retaliation from the federal government, has seen firsthand the effects of the raids.

“This part of Los Angeles — Pico Union, K-town, MacArthur Park, Westlake — has been hit incredibly hard throughout the last year,” Oscar said, pointing to raids along the El Salvador Community Corridor in Pico Union. “They’ve gone up and down Pico multiple times.”

Westlake, a dense immigrant neighborhood predominantly made up of renters and noncitizen workers, has also been identified as one of the most vulnerable areas in L.A. to ICE raids, according to a county-sponsored study.

Oscar leads patrol training sessions, but before joining Union del Barrio, he patrolled his neighborhood with a friend to report on immigration enforcement. “It just didn’t feel like enough,” he said. “I wanted to be part of a space of dedicated organizers.”

Overall, he’s seen more people working together across racial and gender lines, with a common goal of protecting their communities, helping deliver groceries to impacted famlies, monitor their neighborhoods and feel like they have something to do in the face of the ongoing immigration raids.

Immigration agents detain a man selling flowers in Boyle Heights on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026.

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Centro CSO

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“People are coming in angry, determined,” he said. “but ultimately I think people feel empowered during the training.”

Unión del Barrio has expanded beyond its usual territory in South Los Angeles and the group now patrols in Boyle Heights, Long Beach, the San Fernando Valley, Beverly Hills and Brentwood, Gochez said.

“We have eyes and ears everywhere,” Gochez said. “I’m very comfortable saying there are thousands of people patrolling in the greater L.A. area.”

Although the group rarely solicits donations, Gochez said they have seen an uptick in funding, which helps cover costs from patrolling and printing “Know Your Rights” flyers and other materials.

Despite the heightened attention, Unión del Barrio has not altered its training curriculum, making sure that volunteers are following the law, but also aware that their safety is not guaranteed when they head out to monitor the immigration raids.

Organizers strongly discourage undocumented individuals or those on probation or parole from participating in community patrols, instead encouraging them to contribute in other ways.

“We’re not trying to become martyrs,” Gochez said. “We don’t want to be arrested, beaten or killed. But there is risk involved.”

The L.A. City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to make permanent a city pilot program that diverts police away from some mental health crisis calls.

Since launching in 2024, clinicians with the city’s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response have handled more than 17,000 calls for service, ranging from mental health crises to wellbeing checks. According to city reports, about 96% of those calls were resolved without police.

“We can’t keep deploying armed officers to handle mental health crisis calls because the outcome is Angelenos paying with loss of life and millions of their tax dollars for legal settlements,” Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who co-authored the motion to enshrine the program, said at Tuesday’s meeting.

According to Hernandez, in 2023, more than a third of LAPD shootings involved someone experiencing a mental health crisis.

Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson said the data from city reports was "incontrovertible and unassailable," showing the program’s success at diverting police and fire first responders away from mental health crisis situations.

Council members said the move to make the unarmed model permanent was also a matter of fiscal responsibility. According to a news release from the offices of Hernandez and Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, on average it costs the city roughly $85 per hour to dispatch LAPD officers, while a response from a UMCR team costs roughly $35 per hour.

Last fall, progressive policy advocacy group LA Forward, convened a summit of local and state officials with the goal of making UMCR permanent and expanding it.

Godfrey Plata, deputy director of LA Forward, told LAist his group was “incredibly excited” to see the city make the pilot program permanent.

Plata said he sees enshrining the program as a first step in expanding the program citywide, which his group hopes to do by the 2028 Olympics.

How the program works

In 2024, the city partnered with three nonprofit organizations — Exodus Recovery, Alcott Center and Penny Lane Centers — to provide teams of trained clinicians in service areas spread across L.A. The teams are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week within the Police Department’s Devonshire, Wilshire, Southeast, West LA, Olympic and West Valley divisions.

Crisis response workers are trained in de-escalation techniques, mental health, substance use, conflict resolution and more, according to a report on the program from the Office of City Administrative Officer. The teams don’t have the authority to order psychiatric holds for people in crisis, but they can work with them to find help locally, and spend more time on follow up than law enforcement can.

In its first year, Los Angeles’s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response sent teams of unarmed clinicians to  more than 6,700 calls for service, ranging from mental health crises to wellbeing checks. Only about 4% were redirected to the LAPD. Average response times have been under 30 minutes.

Examples of these interactions include members of the teams taking food to a woman who was crying and hungry, working with a business owner to engage with someone sleeping in a parking lot and sitting with a family for nearly three hours to help resolve a conflict involving a relative.

What’s next

The motion approved Tuesday also directs city officials to form a working group made up of the LAPD, the L.A. Fire Department and other agencies to address inefficiencies in the dispatch system. The goal of the working group will be to centralize unarmed crisis response dispatch and improve response times.