CCSF, the only community college in San Francisco, offers tuition-free education for all residents of the city.

[4] The Ocean Avenue campus, bordering the Sunnyside, Westwood Park and Ingleside neighborhoods, is the college's largest location.

Free non-credit courses in subjects such as ESL and citizenship as well as adult education classes are also provided.

Cloud's presentation of fiscal studies in 1934 convinced the Board of the availability of Federal and State funding for a junior college.

[3] Since the 1990s, the college has significantly renovated and expanded its locations and developed new buildings and facilities throughout San Francisco.

[9][10][11] As summarized by the San Francisco Chronicle in 2015, "the commission has never found wrongdoing or substandard instruction, but has said the college should lose accreditation because of tangled governance structures, poor fiscal controls and insufficient self-evaluation and reporting.

[13] A report issued by California's Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance team in September 2012 found the institution to be in a "perilous financial position" caused largely by "poor decisions and a lack of accountability.

[14] In July 2013, the ACCJC elected to take action to terminate the college's accreditation, subject to a one-year review and appeal period.

Nearly two months later, San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera filed two legal challenges to stop the ACCJC from revoking City College of San Francisco's accreditation alleging conflicts of interest, a faulty evaluation process, and a politically motivated decision-making process.

[12] In January 2015, with the legal conflict still ongoing, ACCJC said that CCSF remained out of compliance with standards in 32 areas but granted the college a two-year extension for resolving these issues and avoiding a shutdown.

Unique to California Community Colleges, CCSF support staff are pooled in the County of San Francisco's Civil Service system, so they may transfer between the community college and other City/County of San Francisco departments and participate in the City and County's benefit programs.

Although it allows for benefit and seniority portability, CCSF classified staff are not paid at the same rate as their equivalent in other cities/county departments, so transfer to the college is effectively a demotion.

[26] While the CSU doesn't offer a guaranteed admission program,[27] 35–40% of CCSF's transfer students enroll in San Francisco State University.

[6] Pflueger was on a committee of well-known Beaux-Arts architects organizing and designing the Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE).

Diego Rivera's work Pan American Unity, originally created for the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1940, has been displayed at the theater at the Ocean Campus of San Francisco City College since 1961.

The mural was entitled by Rivera, “Unión de la Expresión Artistica del Norte y Sur de este Continente” (The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and South of this Continent) but now commonly called Pan American Unity.

[42] This is two 12′ x 8′ tempera fresco murals and depicts a range of careers in the sciences, featuring men, women and people of color doing things such as viewing bacteria through a microscope, conducting field research, and excavating dinosaur remains.

[42] Olmsted also created two large, limestone sculptures of Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison heads that are on display in the Ocean Campus middle courtyard.

[43] The giant Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison heads were created in 1940 as part of the Golden Gate International Exposition's Art in Action exhibition and later given to CCSF for care and display.

Bufano's sculpture Saint Francis of the Guns of 1968 stands at San Francisco City College in front of the Science Building.

It is a statue of Saint Francis of Assisi—San Francisco's namesake—made from melted-down guns mixed with bronze to prevent rust from the city's dampness; this work was inspired by that year's assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

On his robe, Bufano created a mosaic tile mural showing the glowing heads of four of America's assassinated leaders: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy and John F.

Dudley had donated The Ram because he knew it was the school mascot and it had been part of the Golden Gate International Exposition's Arts in Action exhibition.

By 1980 The Ram had many layers of paint and damage and in Spring of 1983 it was restored by Carter with use of a pick axe and its original, natural redwood.

[45] In 2004, the then-Governor of Veracruz, Mexico, Miguel Alemán Velazco, presented CCSF with a reproduction of an Olmec colossal head in honor of the new Pan-American Center.

[47] The artist who carved the replica was Ignacio Perez Solano, also known as “il Maestro.”[46] This is only one of five Olmec head reproductions in the United States.

The imagery of the mosaics represent fields such as physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics with text accompanying the mural that reads ‘Give me a base and I move the world.’ These murals were originally part of the Golden Gate International Exposition’s Art in Action show in 1940 on Treasure Island before they were moved to the college.

The two mosaics took two years to install with a staff of eight workmen, Juan Breda served as assistant mosaicist for the project.

For example, the Women's Resource Center and Library (Smith Hall, 103–104) offers women on campus an opportunity to network with academic support services and resources, and Project Survive is a campus peer education group working to promote healthy relationships and end abuse and sexual violence.

Intercollegiate sports include baseball, basketball, cross-country, football, soccer, softball, tennis, track, badminton, volleyball, and judo.