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The California State University (CSU) is one of three public higher education systems in the state of California, the other two being the University of California system and the California Community College system. It is incorporated as The Trustees of the California State University.

The CSU system is composed of 23 campuses and has over 450,000 students supported by 47,000 faculty members and staff. It is the largest university system in the United States.

CSU prepares about 60 percent of the teachers in the state, 40 percent of the engineering graduates, and more graduates in business, agriculture, communications, health, education and public administration than all other California universities and colleges combined. Altogether, about half the bachelor's degrees and a third of the master's degrees awarded annually in California are from the CSU.

Since 1961 nearly 2.5 million alumni have received a bachelor's, master's or doctoral degree from the university system. CSU offers more than 1,800 degree programs in some 240-subject areas.

History

Today's California State University system is the direct descendant of the California State Normal School (now San José State University), a normal school established by the California Legislature on May 2, 1862. The California State Normal School was itself derived from the City of San Francisco's Minns Evening Normal School (founded in 1857) a normal school that educated San Francisco teachers in association with that city's high school system. The system now considers its founding date to be that of the Minns School. A second California State Normal School campus was created in Los Angeles in 1882.

In 1887, the California legislature dropped the word "California" from the name of the San Jose and Los Angeles schools, renaming them "State Normal Schools." Later Chico (1887), San Diego (1897), and other schools became part of the State Normal School system. In 1919, the State Normal School at Los Angeles became the Southern Branch of the University of California (now the University of California, Los Angeles). In 1921, the State Normal Schools became the State Teachers Colleges. By this time most of the campuses started to become identified by their city names plus the word "state" (e.g, "San Jose State," "San Diego State," "San Francisco State").

In 1935, the State Teachers Colleges became the California State Colleges and were administered by the California State Department of Education in Sacramento. The Donahoe Higher Education Act of 1960 gave the system greater autonomy from the State of California.

The postwar period brought a great expansion in the number of colleges in the system. Campuses in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Long Beach were added between 1947 and 1949. Then seven more were authorized to be built between 1957 and 1960. Six more campuses joined the system after the establishment of the Donohoe Higher Education Act in 1960 bringing the total number to 23.