The California State University (CSU) announced progress on the work underway to reimagine student success, through the largest and most comprehensive engagement effort in the history of the CSU. The CSU continues to collect and disaggregate systemwide data that will provide a more granular view across the 23-university system and help get to the root of persistent equity gaps and other barriers keeping students from earning a college degree. The data will also be used to inform the creation of a new student success framework that will go beyond traditional higher education success metrics.
The announcement was made at the CSU’s annual Graduation Initiative 2025 Symposium, where leaders from the CSU reflected on how the system is progressing toward meeting its ambitious goals, and previewed the work being done to develop a new framework for student success and how it will evolve to best help students reach their academic and career goals.
“As we lean in to finish strong, the CSU’s Graduation Initiative is simply not about boosting our numbers. We are here to transform lives—nearly 127,000 students each year and counting,” said Chancellor Mildred García. “We have made some good progress toward some of our goals, but we have some very important work ahead of us to get to where we want to be as a system.”
According to preliminary data, while four-year graduate rates for the first-time student cohorts beginning in 2018 (35.1%) and 2019 (35.5%) were among the highest in the CSU system’s history, the most recent cohort (2020-2024) only saw a slight increase (36.2%) and remain 4 percentage points from its 2025 goal of 40%. But the CSU is only 1 percentage point away from its two-year transfer goal of 45%, and CSU undergraduates are earning their degrees at faster rates than ever before—an average one semester sooner.
The data also revealed that the CSU’s student demographics have significantly changed since 2009, requiring the system to reframe its approach to student success work. From 2009 to 2019, the CSU’s first-time, first-year student population increased by 31%. At that same time, the first-year first-generation, Pell-recipient, and/or historically underserved student population increased by 50%. The rapidly changing student demographics has forced the CSU to change the way it serves and engages with its students.
The CSU responded by committing itself to better understanding the diversity of its students and their academic journeys, the barriers that exist and solutions to remove them. By disaggregating comprehensive data sets, the CSU is now able to pinpoint some early indicators that can lead to effective interventions. Some preliminary data shows that the second school year is a critical transition point for students where the highest rates of stop outs occur. The CSU will now start to track student progress during their first two years to retain more students and put them back on a pathway toward completion.
“As we serve the new American majority of learners, our institutions must change the way that we serve and engage our students, and we have laid the groundwork for institutional transformation to reimagine student success into the future,” Chancellor García said.
In early 2024, the CSU launched a year-long, comprehensive engagement process that will shape the creation of a new student success framework and set new goals for the system in 2025. While still in development, part of the new framework will look beyond degree completion and emphasize placing students on a clear path to a professional career or graduate school. Disaggregating the data will help the CSU track student progress during their first two years to retain more students.
“We are at an inflection point, but we have a real opportunity before us,” said CSU Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic and Student Success Dilcie Perez. “We are undertaking the most comprehensive year of engagement our system has ever seen to determine how we define student success, how we create equitable universities and how we move forward into this next iteration and boldly reimagine who we are as a system.”
Systemwide rates at the time of the initiative’s launch, preliminary rates for 2024 groups and 2025 goals are as follows:
Final data and further analysis will be released in November.
About the California State University
The California State University is the nation's largest four-year public university system, providing transformational opportunities for upward mobility to more than 450,000 students from all socioeconomic backgrounds. More than half of CSU students are from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, and more than one-quarter of undergraduates are first-generation college students. Because the CSU's 23 universities provide a high-quality education at an incredible value, they are rated among the best in the nation for promoting social mobility in national college rankings from U.S. News & World Report, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Monthly. The CSU powers California and the nation, sending nearly 127,000 career-ready graduates into the workforce each year. In fact, one in every 20 Americans holding a college degree earned it at the CSU. Connect with and learn more about the CSU in the CSU newsroom.