Early in 2025 the CSU Office of the Chancellor (CO) entered into a contract with OpenAI to provideChatGPT Edu for all of the CSU's 500,000+ students, staff, and faculty, and in July 2026 renewed that contract through July 2029. ChatGPT is an advanced generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution that can help summarize documents, assist with text composition, conduct data analytics, and perform various other tasks.
According to the CO, the CSU acquired ChatGPT Edu because the CSU is committed to closing equity and accessibility gaps by providing access to high-quality AI tools to support academic achievement for its students and employee communities.
About ChatGPT
- ChatGPT Edu is available to all CSUSB students, faculty, and staff via the MyCoyote page, behind single sign-on.
- ChatGPT can assist with writing, brainstorming, coding, research, data analysis, translation, image analysis, creating presentations and spreadsheets, internet search, and many other academic and office-related functions. Capabilities continue to expand as the LLM is periodically updated as new models. For more on its capabilities, visit OpenAI - ChatGPT.
- Conversations, prompts, and uploaded files remain private within the CSUSB ChatGPT Edu workspace and are not used to train OpenAI models. Robust privacy, security, and administrative controls help protect university data.
- Please see other pages on the CSUSB "Teaching with Generative AI" website for information and support resources.
- The CO's AI Commons website and the OpenAI Training site also offer useful resources.
FAQs
All users access ChatGPT Edu through MyCoyote using single sign-on.
- Access to the latest GPT model
- Capabilities such as data analytics, image creation, document summarization, and text and image composition
- The ability to build GPTs, custom versions of ChatGPT, and share them within university workspaces
- Improved language capabilities across quality and speed, with over 50 languages supported
- Robust security, data privacy, and administrative controls such as group permissions, SSO, SCIM, and GPT management
- Conversations and data are not used to train OpenAI models
ChatGPT Edu is provided at no cost to students and faculty and all other employees; the app is full funded by the Office of the Chancellor.
The current CSU-OpenAI contract is through July 2029.
- CSUSB’s ChatGPT Edu environment and its encompassing data will remain private to CSUSB.
- No CSUSB conversations or data will be shared with OpenAI or other universities, for training purposes or AI models. ChatGPT Edu has robust data privacy, security and administrative controls such as group permissions, etc.
The CSU ChatGPT Edu plan includes enterprise commercial data protection features like SAML Single Sign-On (SSO), domain verification, custom data retention windows, SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, and data encryption at rest and in transit.
Yes. ChatGPT Edu allows users to create custom GPTs for specific tasks and workflows. For step-by-step instructions and best practices, visit the ChatGPT Resources page.
Usage limits may apply to certain advanced models and features during periods of high demand. If a usage limit is reached, ChatGPT will automatically provide access to an alternative model until limits reset.
Yes. ChatGPT Edu can be accessed using the official ChatGPT app for iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS.
To sign in:
- Open the ChatGPT app and enter your CSUSB email address.
- When prompted, allow ChatGPT to use auth.openai.com for authentication.
- You will be redirected to the CSUSB Single Sign-On (SSO) page. Sign in using your CSUSB account and complete Duo multi-factor authentication to finish the authentication process. If you receive an error message during sign-in, try again. In most cases, the second attempt completes successfully and you will be signed in to your CSUSB ChatGPT Edu account.
Yes, ChatGPT Edu includes web search, allowing users to access and retrieve up-to-date information from the internet to enhance their queries and research.
Any existing content on a free or plus/enterprise plan will need to be migrated to ChatGPT Edu. Once the campus ChatGPT environment has a registered domain space (e.g. calstate.edu) associated with it, people will be prompted to move their data the next time they login. Anyone part way through the billing cycle on a person plan will automatically receive a prorated credit.
Alumni and emeritus faculty are not currently eligible to access ChatGPT Edu under the CSU agreement.
FERP participants and retired annuitants who have continued active status are eligible to access ChatGPT Edu.
Not at this time, however research is underway to determine if Auxiliary employees can be granted access in the future, and if so at what cost.
- Upload only information that complies with CSU data classification and privacy requirements. Do not upload copyrighted content unless you have obtained written permission from the copyright holder or publisher. Additionally, do not upload confidential, restricted, or protected university data.
- From OpenAI:
- Infrastructure: Our data centers impact the environment through energy and water use. Our main partner, Azure, aims to be carbon negative by 2030, use 100% renewable energy by 2025, and achieve water positivity, zero waste, and net-zero deforestation by 2030.
- Organization Initiatives: We're working on industry scorecards (ISO 14001, 26000, and OHSAS 18001/ISO 45001), related disclosures (CSRD, SFDR, SECR, TCFD), and researching ways to reduce the carbon footprint of ML training.
ChatGPT-specific, self-paced learning resources are available below:
- OpenAI, LLMs & ChatGPT (05:34)
- Multimodality Explained (10:24)
- Introduction to Prompt Engineering (05:52)
- Introduction to GPTs (06:40)
- ChatGPT Search (05:43)
- Advanced Prompt Engineering (08:50)
- ChatGPT for Data Analysis (04:48)
Please see other GenAI learning resources on our Teaching with GenAI website. For general support questions, contact the CSUSB Technology Support Center, support@csusb.edu.