{"id":175695,"date":"2026-02-12T23:34:29","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T23:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/175695\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T23:34:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T23:34:29","slug":"this-downtown-sf-university-gave-up-its-campus-heres-how-it-plans-to-rebuild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/175695\/","title":{"rendered":"This downtown SF university gave up its campus. Here\u2019s how it plans to rebuild\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, White \u2014 who served as GGU\u2019s provost before working for several years the as chief global officer at the University of Hawaii \u2014 announced eight new members (opens in new tab)<\/a> to the university\u2019s board of trustees, including former UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, China\u2019s Sias University founder Shawn Chen, and investor Max Raskin<\/a>, who has been buying up properties in Union Square.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The announcement comes in the wake of another shakeup to higher education in San Francisco, with Vanderbilt set to take over California College of the Arts<\/a> in 2027.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Standard spoke with White about GGU\u2019s ambitions, its plans for maintaining its downtown presence, and the role of AI in higher education.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You describe GGU as turning in a \u201cnew direction.\u201d What does that mean?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Our core mission for 125 years has been to power economic mobility. We primarily serve working adults, many from nontraditional backgrounds, who are first in their families to attend college. Many are immigrants. It\u2019s very typical of our students to be working and learning at the same time \u2014\u00a0many are building their own businesses while they get their degrees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now we\u2019re growing globally and expanding our multilingual offerings. We\u2019re investing more effort and resources into growing our purely online degree model to be accessible globally, in multiple languages, anytime, anywhere.<\/p>\n

We already have over 2,000 students in China who earn 10 different GGU degrees in Mandarin. We\u2019ve just signed an agreement to launch in Indonesia, where we\u2019ll deliver multiple degrees in Bahasa Indonesia, and we\u2019ll expand beyond that to Vietnamese, Spanish, and Arabic. It will be the same degrees, but it\u2019s delivered in the language that the student needs and the place that they need it, and the price they can afford.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And so that is the vision for where we\u2019re going and where we\u2019re already headed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Given those ambitions, what does the school\u2019s future look like in SF?<\/p>\n

One thing I can tell you is that we\u2019re not going to leave San Francisco. We\u2019re going to be connected to downtown. We\u2019ve been here for 125 years, and we\u2019re going to keep being here \u2014\u00a0we\u2019re committed.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re also trying to align our space with our mode of teaching and the needs of our students: We\u2019re hybrid, and we\u2019re working-adult friendly. In the fall, we\u2019ll be moving from hosting intensive campus weeks to campus weekends, which will happen twice a semester. During the rest of the time, most of our students are working, raising families, and finding time to study \u2014\u00a0they\u2019re not hanging out on campus. We don\u2019t need 220,000 square feet of space. But we will have a physical place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Will the next place be our forever home? Maybe not. I have nothing to announce at the moment, but I can tell you that we\u2019re looking for a space where students can come and gather, whether to work on a project or for those campus weekends. It\u2019s important to have a sense of connection to a place, to a city, to fellow students.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And everything that\u2019s going on in San Francisco right now with the AI revolution is what we also try to bring to our students. Part of the global attractiveness of Golden Gate University is that we\u2019re in San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ABrent White took over as Golden Gate University\u2019s president in October. | Source: Courtesy of Golden Gate University<\/p>\n

How is the school doing financially?\u00a0<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve turned the corner, I would say. It\u2019s not a secret that Golden Gate has had some financial challenges, but we are now, as of January, on not only a balanced budget but a budget generating a bit of surplus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We had to make some difficult choices and make some changes, but we\u2019re growing. We were 140% over target for new students this spring, and our overall student population is 120% of what we thought it might be. So I\u2019m very optimistic and bullish about the future. We\u2019re on the rise, we\u2019re growing, and we\u2019ve turned the financial corner.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s enrollment like? What\u2019s the student makeup?\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2022, we had zero students who were [international]. Now, that global program has grown to almost 5,000 students across 25 countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Our total annual headcount is approaching 6,500 students, about 1,600 of whom are located in the United States. The remaining students are earning their degrees online, with immersion opportunities in places like Mumbai, Beijing, Ho Chi Minh City, and the UAE.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What do you think about Vanderbilt buying CCA? Would GGU consider a sale to the right buyer?\u00a0<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not for sale, I guess would be the answer. But we\u2019d be open to collaborations and partnerships. For example, I just had a conversation with an East Coast university that offers programs that are distinctly different from ours to talk about what would happen if we formed an alliance. Could you offer those programs here in San Francisco?\u00a0<\/p>\n

We are very much open to partnering and thinking about how we can share space and share the infrastructure of a university to lower the cost for students. We\u2019re also thinking about how we can partner with other international universities.<\/p>\n

You brought up AI earlier. How is GGU thinking about AI in the classroom?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Our mission is to help students be career-ready, and right now that means AI-ready. You should be able to utilize the tools of artificial intelligence to be better at your job. We want every student who graduates from GGU to be ready to use AI in their career, because students who aren\u2019t will be left behind immediately.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We have a large number of practitioner faculty who are launching AI companies. We have a [Doctor of Business Administration] degree in emerging technology, which focuses on AI, and we\u2019re about to launch a school of emerging technology. We also already have an applied artificial intelligence master\u2019s program (opens in new tab)<\/a>, so a student can graduate with actionable knowledge and competency for the workforce. A great reshaping of employment is coming, so you really think about how to prepare your students.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At Golden Gate University, we don\u2019t punish you for using AI \u2014\u00a0we expect you to use AI, we train you to use AI, and we grade you on how well you do it. It\u2019s a very different conception.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, White \u2014 who served as GGU\u2019s provost before working for several years the as chief global…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2007,67820,3010,83746,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-175695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-california-college-of-the-arts","10":"tag-commercial-real-estate","11":"tag-golden-gate-university","12":"tag-san-francisco","13":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","14":"tag-san-francisco-news","15":"tag-sf","16":"tag-sf-headlines","17":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}