Ep. 191: Sonya Christian on the Big Budget and Big Dreams of California Community Colleges

The Key with Inside Higher Ed · Mar 19, 2026 · 50m

Sonya Christian is chancellor of California Community Colleges, the largest higher ed system in the country with 116 institutions and 2.2 million students. The sheer size of the system makes every initiative an exercise in scale. In this episode of The Key, Sonya speaks with Inside Higher Ed’s editor in chief Sara Custer about the governor’s proposed $15 billion investment in the system as well as her team’s efforts to use AI to create a credit for prior learning framework for all 116 colleges and why she thinks the institutions in her system should be creating more four-year degrees.