College Education Assumes Higher Degree of Importance

Before World War II, the San Fernando Valley had no public colleges but plenty of fields and livestock.

“There was a real question whether the Valley would ever reach a population to merit a state college. That now seems, in retrospect, absurd,” said John Broesamle, a history professor at Cal State Northridge and author of “Suddenly a Giant: A History of California State University Northridge.”

Everything changed after the war, when veterans, the GI bill in hand, flooded America’s ivory towers and set the stage for a massive expansion of higher education across the nation.

The region’s economy shifted dramatically as Angelenos fled the inner city for the peace and quiet of Zelzah, now Northridge; Owensmouth, renamed Canoga Park; and Lankershim, today’s Woodland Hills.

As residential subdivisions ate into the Valley’s orange groves, and middle-class families moved into model homes, education became increasingly important.

By 1947, a local physician named Clarence Pierce--a descendant of President Franklin Pierce and a school board member--had talked skeptics into establishing an agricultural college on 392 acres in Woodland Hills.

“From 1943 to the actual start of school in 1947, there was a tremendous amount of arguing over whether a vocational school would ever work in the San Fernando Valley,” said Larry Kraus, Pierce College’s archivist and bookstore manager.

There were only 92 students the day the college opened. Eventually, enrollment increased and the college--once deemed the Los Angeles Community College District’s flagship campus--shifted its focus from vocational education to liberal arts.

Two years after Pierce opened, Valley College was established. The pioneer class had an unusually large number of women--185 out of an enrollment of 439.

By 1955, the Valley had become a wealthy suburb of nuclear families tired of sending their college-age children over the hill to UCLA and USC.

After operating out of San Fernando High School for three years, San Fernando Valley State College opened in earnest in 1958. Almost all the students were middle-class whites. But then, as now, the campus served working students, homemakers returning to school and older students.

Restrictive housing covenants prevented ethnic minorities from attending. As late as 1967, only 23 blacks and 11 Latinos were enrolled at the campus of 15,600 students.

Such disparities led minority students in November 1968 to take over the administration building and demand ethnic studies programs and better recruitment of minority students and professors.

As a result, Valley State established some of the first black and Chicano studies departments in the nation, opening its doors to a more diverse student body.

In 1972, Valley State became California State University, Northridge, eventually forming nationally renowned opera, geography and deaf studies programs. It also has a strong teacher training program, from which 60% of Los Angeles’ public school teachers have graduated.

In contrast to its lily-white origins, Cal State Northridge is currently one of the nation’s most diverse universities. Minorities make up 62% of the campus’ student population.

Valley higher education continued to reach out to increasingly diverse student bodies in 1975, when the Los Angeles Community College District formed Mission College in Sylmar.