CSU School President: Reforms To Improve Black Student Success Need To Start Fall Semester

It’s been two months since a group of California State University administrators issued a report describing how the massive public university system is falling short in educating its Black students.

“While there is a greater awareness and sensitivity to the reality of Black life in America, this acute attention has also shone a spotlight on the gap between our aspirational and actual selves in the CSU,” the report’s authors said in the document’s conclusion.

They suggested the report should be a guide for change, not another data point:

The report was produced to inform new CSU Chancellor Mildred García on a top issue as she takes over in October, but the report’s co-author says there’s an important step the 23 campuses can take before then.

“Campuses will have to do an audit,” Thomas Parham, co-chair of the Black Student Success Workgroup, told LAist in an interview.

“They’ll look at the 13 recommendations and figure out which of these things we already do,” and which they don’t, he said. Parham is also president of California State University, Dominguez Hills.

That audit, he said, should ask a lot of questions, including whether a campus can do more to get more applications from Black high school and transfer students, start and fund Black student resource centers on campuses, and hire more Black faculty.

Parham’s comments come as the system welcomes back hundreds of thousands of students for the fall semester. According to data for Fall 2022, the Black student population was 18,308 systemwide out of a total of 457,992 students. That’s 4%. California’s Black population is about 6.5%, according to Census estimates.

How well is CSU educating Black students?

Educators often use the word “pipeline” to describe the process that guides students from youth to college and a degree. However, the width of most pipes doesn’t change through the length of the pipe.

CSU data for Black students makes the process look more like a funnel, an opening that becomes narrower, through which fewer and fewer Black students pass.

In 2017:

• There were 23,191 Black graduates from California high schools, of which ...
• only 9,174 graduated with the classes universities require for admission ...
• CSU campuses enrolled 2,681 Black freshmen in Fall 2017 but ...
• nearly 1 out of 4 of them did not come back for their sophomore year, and ...
• out of that Black freshman class, only 1,074 had earned a degree five years later.

CSU is working to improve Black student graduation rates.

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Matt Brown/Courtesy California State University

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Parham says the goal is to have more Black students enroll and reach graduation day.

“It's definitely a challenge,” said Yesenia Fernandez, a professor and interim director of the office of first- and second-year experiences at CSU Dominguez Hills.

“We don't necessarily have all the resources that we need to truly make that happen and I think this report is the beginning of really examining what those resources are,” Fernandez said.

For instance, she said, high cost of living is leading some students to set aside their studies so the university should step in to help.

Black students don’t feel campuses are safe

Fernandez, and the report, identify something less tangible than finances but also harmful to Black students’ chances to staying enrolled and earning a CSU degree: explicit and implicit anti-Blackness by people on campus that makes Black students feel like they are not wanted and don’t belong at the university.

“Any sort of microaggression or difficulty in navigating the policies and procedures that are part of academia can kind of reinforce that for you and push you out of higher education,” she said.

Black students have talked about how their campus’ Black student center is the only safe space on campus, a place where they can be their authentic selves.

The report says “microaggressions, microassaults, microinvalidations and systemic and individual racism” against Black students are alive and well at CSU campuses.

“What does it look like?” Parham said. “It looks like a staff person who might have been less than courteous. It looks like a faculty member who was perceived to create a toxic environment in their classroom so that Black students either a) didn't feel included b) felt… discriminated against."

Parham says all campus employees need to be on board.

“Black student success should be included in presidential performance reviews and could result in increases in university funding allocations when they achieve each of the recommendations,” according to the report.

“I made sure that was in there … so that the performance of people like me as a president will now be judged on how much success you've had in this endeavor,” he said.

The details of how that accountability will look like are yet to be determined but Parham said holding campus presidents accountable will mean those presidents will expect lower-level administrators — as well as faculty and staff — to do what they can to improve things, like low Black student enrollment, underfunded or non-existent Black student spaces and few mental health services to that population.

What's happened this summer?

LAist reached out to the CSU campuses in Northridge, Long Beach, Los Angeles and Fullerton to find out their progress.

“We have indeed begun a review of Black student success at CSUN,” said spokeswoman Carmen Chandler via email.

She added the university is creating a website to keep students and employees up to date on progress.

“By the start of the fall term, university officials will announce to the campus how they intend to proceed with a study of CSUN Black student success, including recommendations for how to improve outcomes and experiences,” she said.

CSU Long Beach said it’s in the planning stages, which will include an audit. CSU Los Angeles said via email that this fall, “the University will use the report’s success markers to assess campus progress and develop a plan of action."

A Cal State Fullerton spokeswoman received the request but did not reply with details.

Graduates from CSU Humboldt.

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Courtesy CSU

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Next steps

Parham said he expects the new CSU chancellor to create an “implementation committee” made up of himself and others who worked on the report as well as representatives from all CSU campuses.

The report recommends the immediate implementation of a professional development session for all CSU employees to identify anti-Blackness.

“What's at stake is the future of California,” said Sikivu Hutchinson, founder of The Women’s Leadership Project. She’s mentored Black youth in her organization who’ve gone on to enroll in and graduate from CSU campuses and read the report.

“African American youth are disproportionately saddled with debt, are disproportionately being pipelined into prisons, into mass incarceration, into sex trafficking, into underemployment and unemployment, and that our generational wealth is essentially going down the drain,” so yes, she said, increasing Black college graduation rates is good for the state and good for the student.