California State University, Los Angeles and California State University, Northridge have jointly received a five-year, $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to prepare students for careers in financial technology, or fintech, which focuses on automating, accelerating, and improving how people and businesses manage, move, and invest money.
CSUN’s David Nazarian College of Business and Economics will receive $3 million from the grant, while the remaining $2 million will go to Cal State LA.
“Receiving this award is a statement to what the federal government thinks our students can do,” said Chandra Subramaniam, dean of the Nazarian College. “Fintech is where financial services are growing and where hiring is changing fast. We now have federal backing to make sure students who are the first in their families to attend college are the ones building that industry.”
Farshad Ghodoosi, an associate professor in the Department of Business Law and founding academic director of the Nazarian College’s Center for Fintech Innovation and Policy, noted that the grant was awarded soon after the center’s creation.
“We chartered the Fintech Center in May, submitted this complex application in June, and received the funding in September,” Ghodoosi said. “We did this on an accelerated timeline because the opportunity was obvious. Los Angeles is a fintech city, yet the students the industry most needs have had no clean way in. The students at CSUN and Cal State LA are exactly the workforce the industry says it needs.”
“This grant lets us build the pathway—the credentials, the venture lab, and the faculty—that turns into careers for students from the Valley to the Eastside,” he continued. “We intend to show the nation what the AI-powered fintech workforce of the future looks like, and that it starts here in Los Angeles.”
While CSUN anchors the San Fernando Valley, Cal State LA is located near downtown Los Angeles and draws students from East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley. Together, Ghodoosi said, the campuses can extend fintech education and career opportunities across the diverse communities they serve.
“Cal State LA students come from East LA and the communities around downtown, just a few miles from the city’s financial district,” said Monica Sharif, an associate professor in Cal State LA’s College of Business and Economics. “Through this partnership, students will learn to build with AI, form teams, and take a fintech product from idea to pitch, alongside their peers at CSUN. A fintech product needs more than code. It needs a team, a customer, and someone who can lead it to market, and that is what Cal State LA brings.”
The grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Strengthening Institutions Program. Both Cal State LA and CSUN are Hispanic-Serving Institutions where significant portions of their student bodies are first-generation college students and Pell Grant recipients.
During the course of the five-year grant, hundreds of students across the two campuses are expected to complete a fintech-applicable certificate and receive AI-enabled tutoring, advising, and career navigation.
As CSUN’s Fintech Center leadership team begins implementing programs funded by the grant, Nazarian College is preparing to host a grand opening for the center in 2027. The Fintech Center will provide a model for training students on how to use AI in fintech and serve as a hub where the Los Angeles fintech industry meets its next workforce.
Ghodoosi said that the grand opening will provide an opportunity for business leaders to “talk directly with our students about their firms and the skills they are looking for.”
“They will also get front-row access to student prototypes, capstone pitches, and policy work, and they can connect with faculty whose expertise spans finance, technology, management, AI, and the law,” he said.
