Expanding the Creative Range within the Academic Standards and Practices of the CSU

A campus’s programs and services that are self-supported, just like those that are state-supported, must work within the academic culture of the campus.

• Academic oversight: faculty members from the relevant departments have full curriculum control over all self-support degree programs, credit certificate programs, and credit courses.
• Academic policies: self-support credit programs are subject to the same campus policies as state-supported programs. Such policies include admissions criteria and processes, grading and grade appeals, assessment, periodic formal program review, and required academic performance and disqualification standards.
• Accreditation and approvals: program-specific accreditation, WASC requirements, and all CSU and campus required program approvals and reviews are applied for at the department, college, University, and state levels.
• Academic records: whether funded by self-support or state support, a campus’s degrees, certificates, or credentials are issued by the campus through the authority of the president and based on the recommendation of the faculty and/or department responsible for the program in question.

Thus, the self-support programs offered by CSU campuses are firmly rooted in CSU’s academic quality and standards and in the academic strengths of a particular campus’s departments and faculty. Reflecting, as they do, the high academic standards and practices of each CSU campus, the CSU’s self-support programs provide a major resource for the state of California as it seeks to rebuild its economy in a global context.