Golden Years Lie Ahead for CSUN

Few look forward to middle age, but those who finally get there often report it to be the most rewarding time of their lives. Cal State Northridge enters middle age this year as it celebrates 40 years of providing low-cost, high-quality educations to thousands of students. Age brings increasing prestige to CSUN, but it also brings a new set of challenges--from how to keep financially strapped programs afloat and how to handle students unprepared for the academic demands of college to the ongoing recovery from the Northridge earthquake.

News out of CSUN in recent weeks hardly has been what administrators would hope. The school, for instance, drew national rhetoric from politicians and activists for inviting former Ku Klux Klan member David Duke to debate affirmative action. And a football coach caught heat for lying about a player being shot at a party. But those tempests will blow over. And while CSUN’s administrators, faculty and students must deal with them, they should not lose sight of the more important and more rewarding challenges facing the campus.

Already, CSUN has much to be proud of. Planted amid the squash fields and orange groves that once dominated the San Fernando Valley, the school has grown from a jumble of temporary buildings to a major regional university that expects to enroll as many as 26,000 students this year. Temporary buildings remain, though. The Northridge earthquake devastated the campus, but the slow recovery has been steady as renovated buildings reopen.

It’s quite a feat, really: The university makes do with less in almost every area. Budgets grow more slowly than enrollment--if they grow at all. More incoming students are unprepared academically and classes often are crowded. Yet despite its problems and its shortcomings, CSUN at 40 remains one of the area’s most prominent and important institutions. It grew up with the Valley and educated many of its children. Like the Valley, CSUN faces tough going--but the years ahead have the potential to be the most rewarding yet.