San José State University , commonly shortened to San José State and SJSU , is the founding campus of what became the California State University system. The urban campus in San Jose, California has an enrollment of about 32,000 students and claims to have more graduates working in Silicon Valley than any other college or university.
San José State was founded as the California State Normal School by the California Legislature on May 2, 1862, and is the oldest public university in California. The California State Normal School was itself derived from the Minn's Evening Normal School, which was also known as the San Francisco Normal School. The San Francisco normal school, led by principal George W. Minns trained elementary teachers as part of that city's high school system from 1857 to 1862. Thus, the school now called "San José State" is even older than the University of California, Berkeley (the Organic Act, which established the University of California, was signed into law on March 23, 1868), but not quite as old as the College of California established in 1855, which was the predecessor of the University of California.