Cal State Schools: Not Glamorous, Just Invaluable

It isn’t that Salma Khan lacked options. Coming out of Cleveland High School in Reseda, she had the kind of academic record that earned her acceptance to UC Santa Barbara and UC Riverside. But her parents didn’t want her to leave home, and Salma wasn’t sure she wanted to either.

So Khan went straight from her neighborhood high school to her neighborhood university, never suspecting that her senior year would be threatened by an earthquake.

Khan and thousands of other students who returned to Cal State Northridge this week find themselves and their campus engaged in a spunky, gallant struggle. At every turn there is evidence of destruction: the crumbling ruins of a parking garage, cracked facades, cyclone fences forbidding entry into danger zones. Students trudge into dusty fields, searching for classes relocated to the rows of portable classrooms that resemble barracks for oil roughnecks.

Khan, a 21-year-old health administration major, couldn’t find one of her classes. But if she is typical, students are reacting with the proper pioneer spirit. There is even a sporting tolerance about the school’s new motto: “Not Just Back . . . Better!”

“Well,” Khan says with a grin, “I don’t know about that.”

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It’s understood that this slogan, conceived by university President Blenda Wilson, is an exercise in bravado. Cal State Northridge, jury-rigged to compensate for $350 million in earthquake damage, is practicing educational triage. There are computer classes that lack computers. University officials talk gamely of getting the “bugs” out, but these are big, ugly tomato worms.

Yet to see Cal State Northridge this way, to witness its resilience, is to be reminded just how important and valuable the Cal State system is.

In normal times, we Californians tend to take our neighborhood universities for granted. Imagine the Angst that would be inspired, the odes that would be written, if $350 million in damage hit USC or UCLA. Unlike private colleges or storied public research institutions, the Cal States don’t inspire sentimental attachments.

One reason is the nature of their students. Cal State students are a rich mix. Many, such as Salma Khan, are fairly traditional. But Khan knows several people in her major who are in their late 20s and early 30s and have returned to enhance their career options. Northridge is fairly typical of the Cal State system at large, which has more than 325,000 students enrolled at 20 campuses. The average age is 27. Two-thirds work more than 30 hours per week.

For high school students applying to college, the Cal States are often the relatively inexpensive Plan B for those rejected by more exclusive institutions. And so, as Khan attests, some people looked down on them as kind of glorified, bargain-basement community colleges that resemble hospitals and yet offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

“If I’m with friends who go to UCs, it’s like ‘Oh, well, you’re going to Cal State,’ ” Khan says, imitating their patronizing tone. “But I guess we do that to the students at Pierce.”

Alas, it isn’t just snobs who look down on the Cal States. Too often, so do their own students and alumni. As a graduate of Cal State Fullerton--my own Plan B--I am guiltily qualified to say so.

Barry Munitz, chancellor of the Cal State system, understands that the middle-brow, pragmatic nature of these campuses.

“Historically, big urban commuter campuses with older students don’t generate that kind of emotion,” Munitz says. “Most of our people don’t get teary-eyed when they hear the alma mater. Most don’t know the alma mater.”

He’s right. I can’t hum Fullerton’s.

Hell, I didn’t even attend my own graduation--something I now regret. My parents would have enjoyed it. They didn’t attend college, but they are proud that three children all graduated from Cal State Fullerton, and that their daughter earned a master’s as well.

This fits another role of the Cal States: very often, their students are the first in their families to attend college.

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The UCs may be admirable monuments to pure research, to learning for its own sake. Yet it is the Cal States that produce three of four teachers in California.

It was Joni Mitchell who sang: “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” The specter of almost losing Cal State Northridge calls to mind the value of these universities that lack ivy-covered walls and ivory towers.

Cal State Northridge is planning to send fund-raising letters to 130,000 alumni worldwide, hoping that an earthquake will make us Cal State grads a little less hard-hearted for a change.

It’s more than just a good cause. We owe them.

Today, a full-time student pays $1,440 per year in tuition. In my day, it was $144.