The Campaign For College Opportunity Careers in Sacramento, CA

The year was 2002. California was dealing with the aftermath of an energy crisis and dot-com bust that created budget constraints and new challenges to its higher education system. California’s public colleges and universities were seeing unprecedented demand given the growing young adult population, and the Governor’s budget did not include enough money to finance higher education in a way that was consistent with the Master Plan for Higher Education, a pillar of California’s public education infrastructure that guarantees a spot for all eligible California students at one of its public institutions of higher education. In response, retired higher education leaders, David Wolf and Steve Weiner, both of whom credited the Master Plan for Higher Education with opening the doors to educational opportunity in their own lives, sounded the alarm after meeting with leaders across the state who confirmed that colleges did not have the resources to provide the space to serve the influx of prospective students, and things were only expected to get worse. David and Steve understood that a new vision was needed to keep the dream of a college opportunity available to Californians. And so was born the idea for a broad-based organization that would bring together a coalition representing business, labor, civil rights, religious groups and civic organizations all working together to ensure that our state would keep the promise of college opportunity to California’s next generation of students. This coalition would focus on three core beliefs: 1) California needs to invest more money into public higher education; 2) students and families need to be willing to spend more to finance their own education; and, 3) colleges and universities have to operate in a more efficient way with state resources. To bring this movement to life, David and Steve recruited organizational co-founders, starting with Antonia Hernandez, then-President of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), given the significance of California’s growing Latino population. With Antonia on board, David and Steve next lined up support from Bill Hauck, then-President of the California Business Roundtable (CBRT), and David Viar, who led the Community College League of California (CCLC), bringing new energy to the coalition and rounding out its broad-base of support. With the backing of prominent California and national foundations in 2003, the organization became known as The Camp