All California State University students graduating 2024-2025 and beyond will be required to take one ethnic studies course after the CSU Board of Trustees amended its general education (GE) requirements in July, according to a CSU press release.
“Our goal is for CSU students, from every major and in every workplace, to be leaders in creating a more just and equitable society,” CSU Chancellor Timothy P. White said in the press release.
The adjustment is rooted in the California legislature passing Assembly Bill 1460, which made it a requirement for students to take a course in Asian American, African American, Latin American or Native American ethnic studies, in June.
California Assemblymember Shirley Weber drafted the bill with ethnic studies faculty after complaints from the CSU Task Force that the Chancellor’s Office wasn’t taking their recommendations into account, despite being created for that purpose, according to the California Faculty Association (CFA).
Marcos Pizarro, CSU Task Force member and SJSU Chicanx studies professor, said it seemed as if the Chancellor’s Office didn’t understand the underlying premise of their report calling for an ethnic studies course requirement.
“What the task force has made clear is that we need to have students that graduate from a CSU with a certain base line of racial literacy,” Pizarro said. “Without that we’re doing a disservice to those students and to the communities that they will serve after they graduate.”
More than 70 new tenure-track faculty have been hired across the CSU ethnic studies departments since 2018, consistent with increased student enrollment in such courses by 9%, according to past minutes from the Committee on Educational Policy.
The intent of the federal requirement is to get students to, “acquire the knowledge and skills that will help them comprehend the diversity and social justice history… of the society in which they live to enable them to contribute to that society as responsible and constructive citizens.”
The chancellor believes this action will broaden student perspectives, which will only enhance the CSU degree. However, he and the Academic Senate CSU (ASCSU) originally opposed AB 1460 because they felt campuses should have autonomy in picking what courses can satisfy the requirement, according to past minutes.
The Chancellor’s Office argued for humanities, arts and social science courses to fulfill the requirement as long it covered a social justice component.
“The problem is when you expand beyond ethnic studies then you’re including other disciplines with a different focus,” Pizarro said.
Joanne Rondilla, Asian American studies professor, added that ethnic studies are different from such courses because it isn’t just trying to theorize how an ethnic group functions in society.
CSU estimates new courses and administrative costs for implementing the requirement will cost $16.5 million versus only about $4 million if students were allowed to fulfill the requirement with existing courses.
An estimated one-third of CSU campuses have “robust” ethnic studies programs, which is equal to the amount of campuses that have fewer ethnic studies courses, including CSU Maritime Academy, which has zero, according to an Aug. 12 EdSource article.
“I think what’s going to be more costly is not arming students with this knowledge,” Rondilla said in a phone interview with the Spartan Daily.
Rondilla said universities should remember their true purpose of creating knowledgeable change makers who are interdisciplinary, which requires a financial investment to build and maintain.
“If you have the money to pay executive level people you know whatever it is that they get paid, then you have the money to really educate your students,” Rondilla said.
Ethnic studies was founded on people’s desire to want to make sense of their life and can provide a sense of belonging, she said.
Students taking an ethnic studies course show improved academic performance and attendance, according to the Stanford Graduate School of Education.
Furthermore, just one class comes with the increased benefit of graduating college at a higher rate than those that didn’t take any course in the discipline, according to an evaluation by College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University.
“Unfortunately a lot of academics, especially ‘traditional’ academics, don’t understand the importance of needing to experience that heart-and-soul feeling in a classroom where like you read someone's words and it reverberates in your soul,” Rondilla said.
She said ethnic studies courses are key in order to avoid what Ronald Takaki called the “master narrative” that leads to the erasure of what European colonization did to Native Americans for example.
“This is why it’s important to take ethnic studies all throughout [your education] because you want to understand the fullness of American history,” Rondilla said. “Not just the European perspective.”
Like Rondilla, students usually don’t experience an ethnic studies course until they reach college she said.
Rondilla, a UC Santa Barbara alumna, said she was "so shell shocked" after learning Asian American history because she was once told by her high school teacher that it didn't exist.
“I still ask myself why wasn’t this part of standard learning? You know from kindergarten on up,” she said.
AB 133, which currently awaits governor approval, would address the lack of ethnic studies in K-12 education by making it a requirement to take a course in it prior to graduating high school after 2024.
“[The ethnic studies] discipline is something that we understand as necessary and integral to being just a fully rounded person in the world,” Pizarro said. “That happens in our college classes, but it also happens in work that we’re doing.”
Pizarro and other education members partnered with high schools within Santa Clara County to develop ethnic studies curriculum and guidance for juniors and seniors.
“[Ethnic studies education] should start when a kid starts school,” Pizarro said.
In an ideal world he said ethnic studies education wouldn’t be needed because it would be intertwined into our history books in complex ways.
“But that’s not the world that we live in,” Pizarro said, adding that all educators should work from an ethnic studies approach to further challenge and engage students.
He said educators should question the biases that are built into their field that allow limitations for ethnic people.
Moreover, “[an] ethnic studies approach is usually one that is more deeply engaging to students and… provides a more thorough preparation for being out in the world whether they’re working for an accounting firm or working in their communities in some way,” Pizarro said.
He said he can also see people calling for social justice change through protests and social media.
“[It’s] really exciting, and now it’s the responsibility of all of us that are involved in education to make that change,” Pizarro said.
