By MIKHAIL ZINSHTEYN, MICHAELLA HUCK AND JULIE WATTS - CalMatters
“A lot of people would tell you to get to college,” said Cal State Northridge senior Christopher Carter, “but the hardest part is staying in college.”
Carter speaks from experience: He arrived at Cal State as a business major, and discovered he was one of only a few Black students in his classes. Math had never been his strong suit, and he failed his introductory statistics class twice. Quarantining during the pandemic added more stress.
He sought help from academic advisors but felt they couldn’t understand his background and experiences. Whenever he tried to see one of Northridge’s three Black mental health counselors, he said, they didn’t have available appointments.
“I feel like I’m alone on campus,” Carter said. “You know, I don’t see those counselors who look like me, to where I’m like, okay, I’m comfortable here, you know?”
Carter found his niche when he joined Alpha Phi Alpha, a Black fraternity, and is now on track to graduate in May. But he and other Black students and scholars told CalMatters the country’s largest public university needs to do more to support them at a time when the system’s six-year Black graduation rate is just 50%, compared with 63% overall.
As CalMatters previously reported, the university’s Graduation 2025 campaign compares the graduation rates of two groups. One is “underrepresented minorities” — a group comprising Black, Latino and Native American students. The other group includes everyone else, such as Asian and white students, which Cal State calls “non-underrepresented minority” students. But that formula obscures even wider gaps between Black students specifically and their “non-underrepresented” peers.
While the system has seen graduation rates improve for all student groups under the graduation initiative, backed by more than $400 million in ongoing state support, the achievement gap between Black students and non-underrepresented students has remained unchanged for more than a decade, a 20-point difference.
A key consequence of that formula is that it makes the struggles of Black students — a historically marginalized group who make up only 4% of the Cal State student body — invisible in the accountability data. Under the system’s official formula, equity gaps could almost completely close even if the grad rates of Black students continue to dramatically trail that of their peers.
Students and experts identified a lack of tenured Black faculty role models and inconsistent support for campus Black resource centers that offer a sense of community and belonging as barriers to success. In some cases, financial woes and other life responsibilities can make the path to graduation harder, they said. Also in short supply: mental health and other professionals who understand the unique psychological struggles of Black students, who often are attending universities far from home and in communities that have few Black people. Six campuses had no Black employees in therapist roles last year, according to the faculty union that also represents mental health counselors. And though the share of Black professors is similar to the share of Black students, some scholars say that’s not enough.
Feeling out of place
“The CSUs just really have not done a proper job of providing the educational supports that Black students need,” said Lesa Johnson, a Black sociology professor who has chronicled reported instances of anti-Blackness at Chico State.
Universities also send a message to Black students and faculty with the kind of programming and research they choose to support — or not, Johnson said.
“Many Black people come into academia wanting to ‘be the change we want to see in the world,’ and so we direct our studies and our research and our service toward that change,” Johnson said. “When the university does not support research and services that involve that change, then the university is basically saying they will not support us, they only want our Black skin color, they only want to show us in the pictures, but they want us quiet.”
Johnson is working on a paper detailing other microaggressions Black students report experiencing at Chico State, such as a white professor who made a hurtful joke that a Black student not shoot a weapon when they raised their hand in class. But she’ll be finishing that paper from afar. Despite an offer of a raise and tenure, Johnson left Chico State to start a tenured position in Illinois this fall. “It was definitely the anti-Blackness,” she said. “I had had enough.”
At some Cal State campuses, there is simply not a critical mass of Black students to create a sense of community. That tiny population is one reason CSU Channel Islands has the widest gap between Black students and their non-underrepresented peers, said campus provost Mitch Avila. CSU Channel Islands enrolls just 121 undergraduate and graduate Black students — second lowest in the system. The campus is also one of 11 at which graduation rates for Black students who started as freshmen have fallen in the past four years. The others: Chico State, Dominguez Hills, Fresno State, Humboldt, Pomona, San Bernardino, San Francisco State, San Luis Obispo, San Marcos and Sonoma State.
Proposition 209
One way to boost graduation would be to specifically target Black students with extra tutoring, counseling and other approaches that research suggests improves graduation rates.
But California voters — twice — said colleges can’t do that. In 1996, voters passed Proposition 209 and in 2020 they struck down a measure to overturn the proposition.
While the state constitutional amendment ended the use of race as a factor in public college admissions in California, it also made it illegal to use state or federal funds exclusively for any single racial or ethnic group.
In theory, the federal government could require the Cal State system to spend more money specifically on resources for Black students given the wide gaps in graduation rates, but such federal action rarely happens, said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a civil rights legal group that has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Scholars of racism who spoke with CalMatters are frustrated that Proposition 209 requires a race-neutral answer to a race-specific problem. But they also say there are other ways around the amendment. A public college or university in California can target a racial or ethnic group for a program, as long as other groups aren’t excluded, Saenz said. If campus data show that Black students are not getting access to counseling, "you can fix that, that's a race-neutral fix," he said, even if that means hiring more culturally competent counselors.
UCLA education professor Tyrone Howard, who is Black, holds some meetings with students at his campus’ new Black student resource center rather than at his office. Doing that or hosting workshops at the center “becomes a draw” to Black students in search of resources they may not find elsewhere on campus, he said. It’s a script he thinks more campuses should follow, including the Cal States. Once he comes back from sabbatical next fall, he’ll hold all his office hours at the center, he said.
But Howard added that the centers have to be “Black in name” — which is permitted under Proposition 209, as long as it’s not exclusive to any student based on race or ethnicity. Doing this signals that “aiding, assisting Black students is the primary goal,” he said. These centers can also be a way to bring academic and mental health services directly to Black students, which can be a benefit to students who feel alienated by more traditional campus spaces.
What Cal State is doing
About two thirds of Cal State campuses have physical locations dedicated by name to Black students, such as a Black resource center. Those that do not are Bakersfield, Channel Islands, Chico State, Fresno State, Maritime Academy, Monterey Bay, Sonoma State and Stanislaus State.
Every campus should have these centers, said Bob Rucker, the former director of San Jose State’s journalism school.
“African Americans are coming to you because they value what they've read and learned about your program,” Rucker said. “Now meet them halfway. Do the extra homework — chairs, directors, and deans — and find a way.”
Among the campuses with such centers, there is wide variation in their size and services. Some, such as those at Fullerton, Sacramento State and San Diego State, offer academic or mental health counseling at those Black campus centers. Cal State Dominguez Hills has one professor who hosts some office hours at the center.
Whether simply having a Black resource center leads to lower equity gaps is unclear. For example, Northridge, the campus with the largest center, has among the deepest equity gaps between Black students and non-underrepresented groups — a difference of 22 percentage points in 2021.