California State University – The Extended University

Opportunities to Shape the Future: Self-Support Strategies for the Next Decades

For many decades the California State University enjoyed a high level of state funding. In planning and strategizing, the CSU as a whole and its individual campuses focused mainly on state-funded programs and services. At the same time, each CSU campus relied on its own resources for a wide range of academic offerings.

While state funding was robust, this self-support capacity was generally considered secondary to a campus’s primary educational and service mission. Since the beginning of the 21st century, however, state funding has declined, even as educational demands have increased. Clearly, a new strategy is in order—one that embraces self-support as fully as state funding and that commits to significant growth in grants, contracts, and fundraising.

To maximize its self-support capacity, a campus must put self-support at the heart of its comprehensive strategy. While the constituencies served by a campus’s self-support programs may be different from those served by state funding, all programs share the same mission and educational goals. Commitment to academic quality, to student achievement, to service excellence, and to other core values of the campus should not depend on the funding source.

Each CSU campus—and each has its unique needs—must consider various options that will work for its strategic planning. To find and implement the best options requires sharing new ideas and effective practices with other CSU campuses. Together, all CSU campuses can help shape a viable future or, better, an exceptional future in a changing context.

This document explores some of the ways self-support works in the CSU today. By way of illustration, it closes with six models from CSU campuses that have employed their self-support capacity to complement their state-funded programs and services. Each of these campuses has thus promoted excellence, has better served its own region and the state, and has remained true to its mission.