The California State University (Cal State or CSU) is a public university system in California. With 23 campuses and eight off-campus centers enrolling 485,550 students with 55,909 faculty and staff, CSU is the largest public university system in the United States. It is one of three public higher education systems in the state, with the other two being the University of California system and the California Community Colleges. The CSU system is incorporated as The Trustees of the California State University. The CSU system headquarters is located in Long Beach, California.
The CSU system was created in 1960 under the California Master Plan for Higher Education and it is a direct descendant of the California State Normal Schools chartered in 1857. With over 110,000 graduates annually, the CSU is the country's greatest producer of bachelor's degrees. The university system collectively sustains more than 209,000 jobs within the state.
In the 2015–16 academic year, CSU awarded 52 percent of newly issued California teaching credentials, 33 percent of the state's information technology bachelor's degrees, and it had more graduates in business (50 percent), criminal justice (50 percent), engineering (51 percent), criminal justice (53 percent), public administration (60 percent), and agriculture (75 percent) than all other universities and colleges in California combined. Altogether, about half of the bachelor's degrees, one-fourth of the master's degrees, and three percent of the doctoral degrees awarded annually in California are from the CSU. Additionally, 62 percent of all bachelor's degrees granted to Hispanic students in California and over half of bachelor's degrees earned by California’s Latino, African American and Native American students combined are conferred by the CSU.
The CSU system is one of the top U.S. producers of graduates who move on to earn their PhD degrees in a related field. Since 1961, over four million alumni have received their bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degrees from the CSU system. CSU offers more than 1,800 degree programs in some 240 subject areas. In fall of 2015, 9,282 (or 39 percent) of CSU's 24,405 faculty were tenured or on the tenure track.