Colegio César Chávez was a college in Mount Angel, Oregon, and the first four-year accredited Chicano-run college in the United States. Its origins began with efforts by the preceding academic institution, Mt. Angel College, to recruit and support more students of color. In 1972, members of the college's administration, including Chicano activist and Ethnic Affairs Director Sonny Montes, championed the increased recruitment of Mexican American students and the introduction of a College Without Walls program, which granted credits for community work and operated under a system of student-directed learning with non-letter grading. In December 1973, Dean Ernesto Lopez announced that the college would be renamed after labor and civil rights activist César Chávez. Chávez himself visited the college twice, in 1974 and 1977.

During the college's operation, twenty-one students graduated with bachelor's degrees or certificates of competency; fifteen of them were Mexican American. The highest level of enrollment was about 70 students in 1974, while the lowest was 10 in the early 1980s. Throughout its existence, the college faced difficulty in repaying a $1 million loan that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development had granted Mt. Angel College in the 1960s. The college received accreditation in 1975 from the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges. However, in 1981, the college's application for reaccreditation was denied on account of financial instability, low enrollment, and institutional infighting. The college ceased operations in 1983. In 1986, the property was returned to the order of Benedictine sisters who had founded Mt. Angel College in 1888.

Source: "Colegio César Chávez," by Ana Knutson and Tania Hyatt-Evenson, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/colegio_cesar_chavez/#.WcPosmSPIxc

On April 25, 1975, about 200 people gathered at the Oregon State Capitol in Salem, Oregon, for a demonstration in solidarity with Colegio César Chávez. The demonstration was organized in response to plans by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to foreclose on the college due to its inability to repay a $1 million loan. Ken Fobes, the press aide to Oregon Governor Robert Straub, told the demonstrators that Straub pledged wholehearted support for the college, and read a letter that Straub had written to HUD Secretary Carla Anderson Hills two weeks earlier, asking that the foreclosure be halted and the debt forgiven. Three days after the demonstration, negotiations led to postponement of the foreclosure.

Source: Articles in the Oregonian: "Colegio Chavez promised support by Straub office," April 26, 1975, page D5; "Chavez college foreclosure delayed," April 29, 1975, page 1.