California Senate approves bill to automatically admit grads to CSUs
The California State Senate Wednesday unanimously passed SB 640, a bill by Senator Christopher Cabaldon (D-Yolo) to automatically offer CSU admission to every qualifying high school senior in the state.
Students who meet the requirements for California State University would no longer need to submit an application. They instead would receive congratulatory letter in the mail from CSU informing them they are admitted to a list of campuses with enrollment capacity.
Education experts say receiving an acceptance letter is a powerful psychological prompt for a student to consider a four-year college, even if they didn’t think it was possible. Cabaldon pioneered the practice of automatic admission as mayor of West Sacramento with the city’s Home Run program, the first city-run initiative in the country to automatically admit students to community college and waive their tuition.
“SB 640 is motivated by the idea that it should be as easy and seamless to go from 12th grade to the next step as it is to go from 10th grade to 11th grade,” Cabaldon said in a news release.
The legislation also extends statewide a CSU pilot program that this year sent all qualified high school seniors in Riverside County an offer of admission to 10 campuses, most of which are under-enrolled. Of the 17,000 students who received offers of admission for the fall 2025 semester, 13,200 completed the required paperwork – an increase of 3,000 over the previous year.
By encouraging more students to enroll in a CSU, Cabaldon not only seeks to provide more opportunity for Californians, but also to reverse enrollment declines that have affected many campuses. Two of the campuses that have seen the greatest enrollment declines are located in Cabaldon’s district: the CSU Maritime Academy in Vallejo – which is in the process of combining operations with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo — and Sonoma State, which has announced drastic cuts for the coming year.
SB 640 is co-authored by Senate Education Committee Chair Sasha Renée Pérez, and the entire Sonoma County legislative delegation, including Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, Assembly Majority Leader Celia Aguiar-Curry, Assemblymember Damon Connolly and Assemblymember Chris Rogers.