The Valley

Evergreen Valley College is a community college located on 175 acres (71 ha) in the southeastern foothills of San José, California. As of Fall 2008, more than 8,000 students from more than 70 countries were enrolled.

Evergreen Valley College graduated its first class in 1975. Plans for a new college officially started nine years earlier in 1964, with the creation of the San José/Evergreen Community College District to govern the existing San José City College and what would become Evergreen Valley College. The site was purchased in 1967, the college named Evergreen Valley College in 1970, and the first two buildings completed in 1975.

Gavilan College is a community college located in Gilroy, California. The college was established in 1919 as the San Benito County Junior College. It operated as such until 1963, when a new community college district was drawn that included both San Benito County and southern Santa Clara County. The college moved to its present main campus in 1966.

Lincoln Law School of San Jose is a private, non-profit law school in San Jose, California. It is an independent institution, formerly a part of Lincoln University. The school traces its roots to 1919 when Dr. Benjamin Lickey and his wife Susan Lickey founded a law study program in San Francisco as a way to provide veterans and working-class students a part-time night school for law studies.

The school also has been instrumental in increasing the diversity of the legal profession in California; 1932 graduate Kenneth Fung, the first Chinese American to be admitted to practice law in the state.

The National Hispanic University (NHU) is a small, private university located in East San Jose, California. The university is nonsectarian and coeducational with 700 undergraduate students. Chartered by the state of California and accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, it is the foremost Hispanic-focused university in the United States.