Chancellor: CSU Will Work To Raise Graduation Rates

The California State University system is launching a renewed effort to raise the graduation rates of freshmen and transfer students. That’s a top priority of Governor Jerry Brown, who’s resisting calls to increase the CSU’s state funding.

The governor has said the CSU – and the UC – are inefficient. That’s why he’s reluctant to give them more state funding. One of Brown’s biggest complaints is that they take too long to graduate students.

CSU Chancellor Timothy White appears to be responding to that complaint with his new initiative to raise graduation rates – but he’s coupling that with a call for more money.

“The CSU is lean, it is effective and it is efficient. We have, indeed, bent the cost curve significantly,” White said as he announced the new graduation initiative in his “State of the CSU” address at Tuesday's Board of Trustees meeting in Long Beach. “But we are now setting a bold goal for our university, and we need the state to do its part to help resource it.”

The initiative calls for raising the number of freshmen and transfer student graduates by 100-thousand over the next decade.