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The University of California (UC) is a
public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...
land-grant
research Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...
university system in the U.S. state of
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley,
Davis Davis may refer to: Places Antarctica * Mount Davis (Antarctica) * Davis Island (Palmer Archipelago) * Davis Valley, Queen Elizabeth Land Canada * Davis, Saskatchewan, an unincorporated community * Davis Strait, between Nunavut and Gre ...
, Irvine,
Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...
,
Merced Merced (; Spanish for "Mercy") is a city in, and the county seat of, Merced County, California, United States, in the San Joaquin Valley. As of the 2020 Census, the city had a population of 86,333, up from 78,958 in 2010. Incorporated on Apri ...
, Riverside,
San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
,
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...
, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz, along with numerous research centers and academic abroad centers. The system is the state's
land-grant university A land-grant university (also called land-grant college or land-grant institution) is an institution of higher education in the United States designated by a state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890. Signed by Abraha ...
. Major publications generally rank most UC campuses as being among the best universities in the world. Six of the campuses, Berkeley,
Davis Davis may refer to: Places Antarctica * Mount Davis (Antarctica) * Davis Island (Palmer Archipelago) * Davis Valley, Queen Elizabeth Land Canada * Davis, Saskatchewan, an unincorporated community * Davis Strait, between Nunavut and Gre ...
, Irvine,
Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...
, Santa Barbara, and
San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
are considered
Public Ivies "Public Ivy" is a term that refers to prestigious public colleges and universities in the United States that provide a collegiate experience similar to those in the Ivy League.Richard Moll in his book ''Public Ivys: A Guide to America's best pub ...
, making California the state with the most universities in the nation to hold the title. UC campuses have large numbers of distinguished
faculty Faculty may refer to: * Faculty (academic staff), the academic staff of a university (North American usage) * Faculty (division) A faculty is a division within a university or college comprising one subject area or a group of related subject ...
in almost every
academic discipline An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...
, with UC faculty and researchers having won 71 Nobel Prizes as of 2021. The University of California currently has 10 campuses, a combined student body of 285,862 students, 24,400 faculty members, 143,200 staff members and over 2.0 million living
alumni Alumni (singular: alumnus (masculine) or alumna (feminine)) are former students of a school, college, or university who have either attended or graduated in some fashion from the institution. The feminine plural alumnae is sometimes used for grou ...
. Its newest campus in
Merced Merced (; Spanish for "Mercy") is a city in, and the county seat of, Merced County, California, United States, in the San Joaquin Valley. As of the 2020 Census, the city had a population of 86,333, up from 78,958 in 2010. Incorporated on Apri ...
opened in fall 2005. Nine campuses enroll both
undergraduate Undergraduate education is education conducted after secondary education and before postgraduate education. It typically includes all postsecondary programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree. For example, in the United States, an entry-le ...
and graduate students; one campus, UC San Francisco, enrolls only graduate and professional students in the
medical Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practic ...
and health sciences. In addition, the UC Hastings College of the Law, located in San Francisco, is legally affiliated with UC, but other than sharing its name is entirely autonomous from the rest of the system. Under the
California Master Plan for Higher Education The California Master Plan for Higher Education of 1960 was developed by a survey team appointed by the Regents of the University of California and the California State Board of Education during the administration of Governor Pat Brown. UC Preside ...
, the University of California is a part of the state's three-system public
higher education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after compl ...
plan, which also includes the
California State University The California State University (Cal State or CSU) is a public university system in California. With 23 campuses and eight off-campus centers enrolling 485,550 students with 55,909 faculty and staff, CSU is the largest four-year public univers ...
system and the California Community Colleges system. UC is governed by a Board of Regents whose autonomy from the rest of the state government is protected by the state constitution. The University of California also manages or co-manages three national laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, the United States Department of Energy. Located in ...
(LBNL),
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...
(LLNL), and
Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...
(LANL). The University of California was founded on March 23, 1868, and operated in
Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay ...
before moving to Berkeley in 1873. Over time, several branch locations and satellite programs were established. In March 1951, the University of California began to reorganize itself into something distinct from its campus in Berkeley, with UC President Robert Gordon Sproul staying in place as chief executive of the UC system, while
Clark Kerr Clark Kerr (May 17, 1911 – December 1, 2003) was an American professor of economics and academic administrator. He was the first chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, and twelfth president of the University of California. Bi ...
became the first chancellor of UC Berkeley and
Raymond B. Allen Raymond B. Allen (1902-1986) was an American educator. He served as the President of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington from 1946 to 1951, and as the first Chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles from 1951 to 1959 ...
became the first chancellor of
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
. However, the 1951 reorganization was stalled by resistance from Sproul and his allies, and it was not until Kerr succeeded Sproul as UC president that UC was able to evolve into a university system from 1957 to 1960. At that time, chancellors were appointed for additional campuses and each was granted some degree of greater autonomy.


History


Early history

In 1849, the state of California ratified its first constitution, which contained the express objective of creating a complete educational system including a state
university A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...
. Taking advantage of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts, the
California State Legislature The California State Legislature is a bicameral state legislature consisting of a lower house, the California State Assembly, with 80 members; and an upper house, the California State Senate, with 40 members. Both houses of the Legislatu ...
established an Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College in 1866. Page 138 of this source incorrectly states that the date of the final negotiations in which Governor Low participated was October 8, 1869, but it is clear from the context and the endnotes to that page (which cite documents from 1867) that the reference to 1869 is a typo. However, it existed only on paper, as a placeholder to secure federal land-grant funds. Meanwhile,
Congregational Congregational churches (also Congregationalist churches or Congregationalism) are Protestant churches in the Calvinist tradition practising congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its ...
minister
Henry Durant Henry Durant (June 18, 1802 in Acton, Massachusetts – January 22, 1875 in Oakland, California) was the founding president of the University of California.SF Chronicle, July 25, 2010. "Where to Find Celebrities' Resting Places" by Charlie Well ...
, an alumnus of
Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
, had established the private Contra Costa Academy, on June 20, 1853, in
Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay ...
, California. The initial site was bounded by Twelfth and Fourteenth Streets and Harrison and Franklin Streets in downtown Oakland (and is marked today by State Historical Plaque No. 45 at the northeast corner of Thirteenth and Franklin). In turn, the academy's trustees were granted a charter in 1855 for a
College of California The College of California was a private college in Oakland, California. It is a predecessor of the public University of California system. It was established in 1853 as the Contra Costa Academy. In 1868, it merged with the nascent Agricultural ...
, though the college continued to operate as a
college preparatory school A college-preparatory school (usually shortened to preparatory school or prep school) is a type of secondary school. The term refers to public, private independent or parochial schools primarily designed to prepare students for higher educat ...
until it added college-level courses in 1860. The college's trustees, educators, and supporters believed in the importance of a
liberal arts education Liberal arts education (from Latin "free" and "art or principled practice") is the traditional academic course in Western higher education. ''Liberal arts'' takes the term '' art'' in the sense of a learned skill rather than specifically th ...
(especially the study of the Greek and Roman
classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...
), but ran into a lack of interest in
liberal arts college A liberal arts college or liberal arts institution of higher education is a college with an emphasis on undergraduate study in liberal arts and sciences. Such colleges aim to impart a broad general knowledge and develop general intellectual ca ...
s on the
American frontier The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial ...
(as a true college, the college was graduating only three or four students per year). In November 1857, the college's trustees began to acquire various parcels of land facing the
Golden Gate The Golden Gate is a strait on the west coast of North America that connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. It is defined by the headlands of the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula, and, since 1937, has been spanned by t ...
in what is now Berkeley for a future planned campus outside of Oakland. But first, they needed to secure the college's water rights by buying a large farm to the east. In 1864, they organized the College Homestead Association, which borrowed $35,000 to purchase the land, plus another $33,000 to purchase 160 acres (650,000 m2) of land to the south of the future campus. The association subdivided the latter parcel and started selling lots with the hope it could raise enough money to repay its lenders and also create a new
college town A college town or university town is a community (often a separate town or city, but in some cases a town/city neighborhood or a district) that is dominated by its university population. The university may be large, or there may be several sma ...
. But sales of new homesteads fell short. Governor
Frederick Low Frederick Ferdinand Low (June 30, 1828July 21, 1894) was an American politician and diplomat who served as the 9th Governor of California and a member of the United States House of Representatives. Early life and education Born in Frankfort ...
favored the establishment of a state university based upon the
University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
plan, and thus in one sense may be regarded as the founder of the University of California. At the College of California's 1867 commencement exercises, where Low was present,
Benjamin Silliman Jr. Benjamin Silliman Jr. (December 4, 1816 – January 14, 1885) was a professor of chemistry at Yale University and instrumental in developing the oil industry. His father Benjamin Silliman Sr., also a famous Yale chemist, developed the process o ...
criticized Californians for creating a state polytechnic school instead of a real university. That same day, Low reportedly first suggested a merger of the already-functional College of California (which had land, buildings, faculty, and students, but not enough money) with the nonfunctional state college (which had money and nothing else), and went on to participate in the ensuing negotiations. On October 9, 1867, the college's trustees reluctantly agreed to join forces with the state college to their mutual advantage, but under one condition—that there not be simply an "Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College", but a complete university, within which the assets of the College of California would be used to create a College of Letters (now known as the College of Letters and Science). Accordingly, the Organic Act, establishing the University of California, was introduced as a bill by Assemblyman
John W. Dwinelle John Whipple Dwinelle (September 9, 1816 – January 28, 1881) was an American lawyer and politician. He served in a number of political posts in California and played important roles in both the legal history of San Francisco and the establishm ...
on March 5, 1868, and after it was duly passed by both houses of the state legislature, it was signed into
state law State law refers to the law of a federated state, as distinguished from the law of the federation A federation (also known as a federal state) is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, o ...
by Governor
Henry H. Haight Henry Huntly Haight (May 20, 1825 – September 2, 1878) was an American lawyer and politician. He was elected the tenth governor of California from December 5, 1867, to December 8, 1871. Early life Childhood and education Haight was of Eng ...
(Low's successor) on March 23, 1868. However, as legally constituted, the new university was ''not'' an actual merger of the two colleges, but was an entirely new institution which merely inherited certain objectives and assets from each of them. The University of California's second president, Daniel Coit Gilman, opened its new campus in Berkeley in September 1873.


UC affiliates

Section 8 of the Organic Act authorized the Board of Regents to affiliate the University of California with independent self-sustaining professional colleges. "Affiliation" meant UC and its affiliates would "share the risk in launching new endeavors in education." The affiliates shared the prestige of the state university's
brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...
, and UC agreed to award degrees in its own name to their graduates on the recommendation of their respective faculties, but the affiliates were otherwise managed independently by their own boards of trustees, charged their own tuition and fees, and maintained their own budgets separate from the UC budget. It was through the process of affiliation that UC was able to claim it had medical and law schools in San Francisco within a decade of its founding. In 1879, California adopted its second and current constitution, which included unusually strong language to ensure UC's independence from the rest of the
state government A state government is the government that controls a subdivision of a country in a federal form of government, which shares political power with the federal or national government. A state government may have some level of political autonom ...
.Cal. Const. Art. IX, § 9
This had lasting consequences for the
Hastings College of the Law The University of California, Hastings College of the Law (UC Hastings) is a public law school in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1878 by Serranus Clinton Hastings, UC Hastings was the first law school of the University of California a ...
, which had been separately chartered and affiliated in 1878 by an act of the state legislature at the behest of founder
Serranus Clinton Hastings Serranus Clinton Hastings (November 22, 1814 – February 18, 1893) was an American politician, rancher and lawyer in California. He studied law as a young man and moved to the Iowa District in 1837 to open a law office. Iowa became a territory ...
. After a falling out with his own handpicked board of directors, the founder persuaded the state legislature in 1883 and 1885 to pass new laws to place his law school under the direct control of the Board of Regents. In 1886, the
Supreme Court of California The Supreme Court of California is the Supreme court, highest and final court of appeals in the judiciary of California, courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly h ...
declared those newer acts to be unconstitutional because the clause protecting UC's independence in the 1879 state constitution had stripped the state legislature of the ability to amend the 1878 act. To this day, the Hastings College of the Law remains an affiliate of UC, maintains its own board of directors, and is not governed by the regents. In contrast, Toland Medical College (founded in 1864 and affiliated in 1873) and later, the dental, pharmacy, and nursing schools in San Francisco were affiliated with UC through written agreements, and not statutes invested with constitutional importance by court decisions. In the early 20th century, the Affiliated Colleges (as they came to be called) began to agree to submit to the regents' governance during the term of President
Benjamin Ide Wheeler Benjamin Ide Wheeler (July 15, 1854– May 2, 1927) was a professor of Greek and comparative philology at Cornell University, writer, and President of the University of California from 1899 to 1919. Life and career Early years Benjamin ...
, as the Board of Regents had come to recognize the problems inherent in the existence of independent entities that shared the UC brand but over which UC had no real control. While Hastings remained independent, the Affiliated Colleges were able to increasingly coordinate their operations with one another under the supervision of the UC president and regents, and evolved into the health sciences campus known today as the University of California, San Francisco.


North-south tensions and decentralization

In August 1882, the California State Normal School (whose original
normal school A normal school or normal college is an institution created to train teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy and curriculum. In the 19th century in the United States, instruction in normal schools was at the high school level, turni ...
in San Jose is now
San Jose State University San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a public university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the oldest public university on the West Coast and the founding campus of the California State University (CSU) ...
) opened a second school in Los Angeles to train teachers for the growing population of Southern California. In 1887, the Los Angeles school was granted its own board of trustees independent of the San Jose school, and in 1919, the state legislature transferred it to UC control and renamed it the Southern Branch of the University of California. In 1927, it became the
University of California at Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
; the "at" would be replaced with a comma in 1958. Los Angeles surpassed San Francisco in the 1920 census to become the most populous metropolis in California. Because Los Angeles had become the state government's single largest source of both tax revenue and votes, its residents felt entitled to demand more prestige and autonomy for their campus. Their efforts bore fruit in March 1951, when UCLA became the first UC site outside of Berkeley to achieve ''de jure'' coequal status with the Berkeley campus. That month, the regents approved a reorganization plan under which both the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses would be supervised by chancellors reporting to the UC president.Bylaw 31, Chancellors
Bylaws of the Regents of the University of California.
However, the 1951 plan was severely flawed; it was overly vague about how the chancellors were to become the "executive heads" of their campuses. Due to stubborn resistance from President Sproul and several vice presidents and deans—who simply carried on as before—the chancellors ended up as glorified provosts with limited control over academic affairs and long-range planning while the president and the regents retained ''de facto'' control over everything else. Upon becoming president in October 1957, Clark Kerr supervised UC's rapid transformation into a true public university system through a series of proposals adopted unanimously by the regents from 1957 to 1960. Available through
ProQuest ProQuest LLC is an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based global information-content and technology company, founded in 1938 as University Microfilms by Eugene B. Power. ProQuest is known for its applications and information services for libraries, provid ...
Historical Newspapers.
Kerr's reforms included expressly granting all campus chancellors the full range of executive powers, privileges, and responsibilities which Sproul had denied to Kerr himself, as well as the radical decentralization of a tightly knit bureaucracy in which all lines of authority had always run directly to the president at Berkeley or to the regents themselves. In 1965, UCLA Chancellor
Franklin D. Murphy Franklin David Murphy (January 29, 1916 – June 16, 1994) was an American administrator, educator, and medical doctor. During his life, he served as Chancellor of the University of Kansas (KU) and Chancellor of the University of California, Los ...
tried to push this to what he saw as its logical conclusion: he advocated for authorizing all chancellors to report directly to the Board of Regents, thereby rendering the UC president redundant. Murphy wanted to transform UC from one federated university into a confederation of independent universities, similar to the situation in Kansas (from where he was recruited). Murphy was unable to develop any support for his proposal, Kerr quickly put down what he thought of as "Murphy's rebellion", and therefore Kerr's vision of UC as a university system prevailed: "one university with pluralistic decision-making". During the 20th century, UC acquired additional satellite locations which, like Los Angeles, were all subordinate to administrators at the Berkeley campus. California farmers lobbied for UC to perform
applied research Applied science is the use of the scientific method and knowledge obtained via conclusions from the method to attain practical goals. It includes a broad range of disciplines such as engineering and medicine. Applied science is often contrasted ...
responsive to their immediate needs; in 1905, the Legislature established a "University Farm School" at
Davis Davis may refer to: Places Antarctica * Mount Davis (Antarctica) * Davis Island (Palmer Archipelago) * Davis Valley, Queen Elizabeth Land Canada * Davis, Saskatchewan, an unincorporated community * Davis Strait, between Nunavut and Gre ...
and in 1907 a "Citrus Experiment Station" at Riverside as adjuncts to the College of Agriculture at Berkeley. In 1912, UC acquired a private oceanography laboratory in San Diego, which had been founded nine years earlier by local business promoters working with a Berkeley professor. In 1944, UC acquired Santa Barbara State College from the California State Colleges, the descendants of the State Normal Schools. In 1958, the regents began promoting these locations to general campuses, thereby creating UCSB (1958),
UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institu ...
(1959), UC Riverside (1959), UC San Diego (1960), and
UCSF The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It con ...
(1964). Each campus was also granted the right to have its own chancellor upon promotion. In response to California's continued population growth, UC opened two additional general campuses in 1965, with
UC Irvine UC may refer to: Arts and entertainment * '' University Challenge'', a popular British quiz programme airing on BBC Two ** ''University Challenge (New Zealand)'', the New Zealand version of the British programme * Universal Century, one of the t ...
opening in Irvine and UC Santa Cruz opening in Santa Cruz. The youngest campus, UC Merced opened in fall 2005 to serve the
San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven ...
. After losing campuses in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara to the University of California system, supporters of the California State College system arranged for the state constitution to be amended in 1946 to prevent similar losses from happening again in the future. With decentralization complete, it was decided in 1986 that the UC president should no longer be based at the Berkeley campus, and the UC Office of the President moved to Kaiser Center in Oakland in 1988. That lakefront location was subject to widespread criticism as "too elegant and too corporate for a public university". In 1998, the Office of the President moved again, to a newly constructed but much more modest building near the former site of the College of California.


Modern history

The
California Master Plan for Higher Education The California Master Plan for Higher Education of 1960 was developed by a survey team appointed by the Regents of the University of California and the California State Board of Education during the administration of Governor Pat Brown. UC Preside ...
of 1960 established that UC must admit undergraduates from the top 12.5% (one-eighth) of graduating high school seniors in California. Prior to the promulgation of the Master Plan, UC was to admit undergraduates from the top 15%. UC does not currently adhere to all tenets of the original Master Plan, such as the directives that no campus was to exceed total enrollment of 27,500 students (in order to ensure quality) and that public higher education should be tuition-free for California residents. Five campuses, Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, and San Diego each have current total enrollment at over 30,000. After the state electorate severely limited long-term
property tax A property tax or millage rate is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.In the OECD classification scheme, tax on property includes "taxes on immovable property or net wealth, taxes on the change of ownership of property through inher ...
revenue by enacting Proposition 13 in 1978, UC was forced to make up for the resulting collapse in state financial support by imposing a variety of fees which were tuition in all but name. On November 18, 2010, the regents finally gave up on the longstanding
legal fiction A legal fiction is a fact assumed or created by courts, which is then used in order to help reach a decision or to apply a legal rule. The concept is used almost exclusively in common law jurisdictions, particularly in England and Wales. Deve ...
that UC does not charge tuition by renaming the Educational Fee to "Tuition." As part of its search for funds during the 2000s and 2010s, UC quietly began to admit higher percentages of highly accomplished (and more lucrative) students from other states and countries, but was forced to reverse course in 2015 in response to the inevitable public outcry and start admitting more California residents. On November 14, 2022, about 48,000 academic workers at all regent-governed UC campuses, as well as the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, the United States Department of Energy. Located in ...
, went on strike for higher pay and benefits as authorized by the
United Auto Workers The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers (UAW), is an American Labor unions in the United States, labor union that represents workers in the Un ...
(UAW) union. UAW has cited more than 20 unfair labor practice charges performed by UC, including unilateral changes in policy and obstructing worker negotiation.


Governance

All University of California campuses except
Hastings College of the Law The University of California, Hastings College of the Law (UC Hastings) is a public law school in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1878 by Serranus Clinton Hastings, UC Hastings was the first law school of the University of California a ...
are governed by the
Regents of the University of California The Regents of the University of California (also referred to as the Board of Regents to distinguish the board from the corporation it governs of the same name) is the governing board of the University of California (UC), a state university sy ...
as required by the
Constitution of the State of California A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these pr ...
. Eighteen regents are appointed by the
governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
for 12-year terms. One member is a student appointed for a one-year term. There are also seven ''
ex officio An ''ex officio'' member is a member of a body (notably a board, committee, council) who is part of it by virtue of holding another office. The term '' ex officio'' is Latin, meaning literally 'from the office', and the sense intended is 'by right ...
'' members—the
governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
,
lieutenant governor A lieutenant governor, lieutenant-governor, or vice governor is a high officer of state, whose precise role and rank vary by jurisdiction. Often a lieutenant governor is the deputy, or lieutenant, to or ranked under a governor — a "second-in-comm ...
, speaker of the
State Assembly State Assembly is the name given to various legislatures, especially lower houses or full legislatures in states in federal systems of government. Channel Islands States Assembly is the name of the legislature of the Bailiwick of Jersey. The Bail ...
, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, president and vice president of the alumni associations of UC, and the UC president. The Academic Senate, made up of faculty members, is empowered by the regents to set academic policies. In addition, the system-wide faculty chair and vice-chair sit on the Board of Regents as non-voting members.


President of the University of California

Originally, the president was the chief executive of the first campus, Berkeley. In turn, other UC locations (with the exception of Hastings College of the Law) were treated as off-site departments of the Berkeley campus, and were headed by provosts who were subordinate to the president. In March 1951, the regents reorganized the university's governing structure. Starting with the 1952–53 academic year, day-to-day "
chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...
" functions for the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses were transferred to chancellors who were vested with a high degree of autonomy, and reported as equals to UC's president. As noted above, the regents promoted five additional UC locations to campuses and allowed them to have chancellors of their own in a series of decisions from 1958 to 1964, and the three campuses added since then have also been run by chancellors. In turn, all chancellors (again, with the exception of Hastings) report as equals to the University of California President. Today, the UC Office of the President (UCOP) and the Office of the Secretary and Chief of Staff to the Regents of the University of California share an office building in downtown Oakland that serves as the UC system's
headquarters Headquarters (commonly referred to as HQ) denotes the location where most, if not all, of the important functions of an organization are coordinated. In the United States, the corporate headquarters represents the entity at the center or the to ...
. Kerr's vision for UC governance was "one university with pluralistic decision-making." In other words, the internal delegation of operational authority to chancellors at the campus level and allowing nine other campuses to become separate centers of academic life independent of Berkeley did not change the fact that all campuses remain part of one legal entity. As a 1968 UC centennial
coffee table book A coffee table book, also known as a cocktail table book, is an oversized, usually hard-covered book whose purpose is for display on a table intended for use in an area in which one entertains guests and from which it can serve to inspire convers ...
explained: "Yet for all its campuses, colleges, schools, institutes, and research stations, it remains one University, under one Board of Regents and one president—the University of California." UC continues to take a "united approach" as one university in matters in which it inures to UC's advantage to do so, such as when negotiating with the legislature and governor in Sacramento. The University of California continues to manage certain matters at the systemwide level in order to maintain common standards across all campuses, such as student admissions, appointment and promotion of faculty, and approval of academic programs. ;List of presidents All UC presidents had been white men until 2013, when former
Homeland Security Homeland security is an American national security term for "the national effort to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards where American interests, aspirations, and ways of life can thrive" t ...
Secretary A secretary, administrative professional, administrative assistant, executive assistant, administrative officer, administrative support specialist, clerk, military assistant, management assistant, office secretary, or personal assistant is a ...
and
Governor of Arizona A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
Janet Napolitano Janet Ann Napolitano (; born November 29, 1957) is an American politician, lawyer, and university administrator who served as the 21st governor of Arizona from 2003 to 2009 and third United States secretary of homeland security from 2009 to 20 ...
became the first woman to hold the office of UC President. On July 7, 2020, Dr. Michael V. Drake was selected as the 21st president of the University of California system, making him the first black president to hold the office in UC's 152-year history. He took office on August 1, 2020. ;Official residences Besides substantial six-figure incomes, the UC president and all UC chancellors enjoy controversial perks such as free housing in the form of university-maintained mansions. In 1962, Anson Blake's will donated his estate ( Blake Garden) and mansion (Blake House) in
Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up by Kensington Garden ...
to the University of California's Department of Landscape Architecture. In 1968, the regents decided to make Blake House the official residence of the UC president. As of 2005, it cost around $300,000 per year to maintain Blake Garden and Blake House; the latter, built in 1926, is a mansion with a view of San Francisco Bay. Blake House has sat vacant since President Dynes departed in 2008, due to the high cost of needed seismic strengthening and renovating its dilapidated interior (estimated at $3.5 million in 2013). From 2008 to 2022, all three UC presidents during that timeframe (i.e., Yudof, Napolitano, and Drake) lived in rented homes. In 2022, UC finally purchased the
Selden Williams House The Seldon Williams House is the official residence of the President of the University of California, located in the Claremont neighborhood of Berkeley, in the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was designed by noted architect J ...
, a house in Berkeley, for $6.5 million to serve as the UC president's official residence. UC had previously owned the same home from 1971 to 1991, when it served as the official residence of the UC vice president. (UC no longer has a single "vice president"; the president's direct reports now have titles like "executive vice president", "senior vice president", or "vice president".) All UC chancellors traditionally live for free in a mansion on or near campus that is usually known as ''University House'', where they host social functions attended by guests and donors. UC Berkeley's University House formerly served as the official residence of the UC president, but is now the official residence of the chancellor of UC Berkeley. UC San Diego's University House was closed from 2004 to 2014 for $10.5 million in renovations paid for by private donors, which were so expensive because the 12,000-square-foot structure sits on top of a sacred Native American cemetery and next to an unstable coastal bluff.


Finances

The
State of California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...
currently (2021–2022) spends $3.467 billion on the UC system, out of total UC operating revenues of $41.6 billion. The "UC Budget for Current Operations" lists the medical centers as the largest revenue source, contributing 39% of the budget, the federal government 11%, Core Funds (State General Funds, UC General Funds, student tuition) 21%, private support (gifts, grants, endowments) 7% ,and Sales and Services at 21%. In 1980, the state funded 86.8% of the UC budget. While state funding has somewhat recovered, as of 2019 state support still lags behind even recent historic levels (e.g. 2001) when adjusted for inflation. According to the California Public Policy Institute, California spends 12% of its General Fund on higher education, but that percentage is divided between the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges. Over the past forty years, state funding of higher education has dropped from 18% to 12%, resulting in a drop in UC's per student funding from $23,000 in 2016 to a current $8,000 per year per student. In May 2004, UC President
Robert C. Dynes Robert Carr Dynes (born November 8, 1942) is a Canadian-American physicist, researcher, and academic administrator, and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and the former president of the University of California syste ...
and CSU Chancellor
Charles B. Reed Charles Bass Reed (September 29, 1941 – December 6, 2016) served as chancellor of the State University System of Florida from 1985 to 1998 and chancellor of the California State University (CSU) system from 1998 to 2012. Early life Born in ...
struck a private deal, called the "Higher Education Compact", with Governor Schwarzenegger. They agreed to slash spending by about a billion dollars (about a third of the university's core budget for academic operations) in exchange for a funding formula lasting until 2011. The agreement calls for modest annual increases in state funds (but not enough to replace the loss in state funds Dynes and Schwarzenegger agreed to), private fundraising to help pay for basic programs, and large student fee hikes, especially for graduate and professional students. A detailed analysis of the Compact by the Academic Senate "Futures Report" indicated, despite the large fee increases, the university core budget did not recover to 2000 levels. Undergraduate student fees have risen 90% from 2003 to 2007. In 2011, for the first time in UC's history, student fees exceeded contributions from the State of California. The First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco ruled in 2007 that the University of California owed nearly $40 million in refunds to about 40,000 students who were promised that their tuition fees would remain steady, but were hit with increases when the state ran short of money in 2003. In September 2019, the University of California announced it will divest its $83 billion in endowment and pension funds from the fossil fuel industry, ostensibly to avoid the "financial risk" inherent in that industry because of
climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...
, but also responsive pleas to stop investing in fossil fuel.


Criticism

In 2008, the
Western Association of Schools and Colleges The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) was an organization providing accreditation of public and private universities, colleges, secondary and elementary schools in California and Hawaii, the territories of Guam, American Sam ...
, the regional accreditor of the UC schools, criticized the UC system for "significant problems in governance, leadership and decision making" and "confusion about the roles and responsibilities of the university president, the regents and the 10 campus chancellors with no clear lines of authority and boundaries". In 2016, university system officials admitted that they monitored all e-mails sent to and from their servers.


Campuses and rankings

At present, the UC system officially describes itself as a "ten campus" system consisting of the campuses listed below. These campuses are under the direct control of the regents and president. Only ten campuses are listed on the official UC letterhead. Although it shares the name and public status of the UC system, the
Hastings College of the Law The University of California, Hastings College of the Law (UC Hastings) is a public law school in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1878 by Serranus Clinton Hastings, UC Hastings was the first law school of the University of California a ...
is not controlled by the regents or president; it has a separate board of directors and must seek funding directly from the Legislature. However, under the California Education Code, Hastings degrees are awarded in the name of the regents and bear the signature of the UC president. Furthermore, Education Code section 92201 states that Hastings "is affiliated with the University of California, and is the law department thereof".


University rankings

Annually, UC campuses are ranked highly by various publications. Six UC campuses rank in the top 50 U.S. National Universities of 2022 by '' U.S. News & World Report'', with
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
,
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...
, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego,
UC Irvine UC may refer to: Arts and entertainment * '' University Challenge'', a popular British quiz programme airing on BBC Two ** ''University Challenge (New Zealand)'', the New Zealand version of the British programme * Universal Century, one of the t ...
, and
UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institu ...
all ranked in the top 50. Four UC campuses also ranked in the top 50 in the ''U.S. News & World Report'' Best Global Universities Rankings in 2021, namely
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...
,
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
, UC San Francisco, and UC San Diego. UC San Francisco is ranked as one of the top universities in
biomedicine Biomedicine (also referred to as Western medicine, mainstream medicine or conventional medicine)
in the world and the UCSF School of Medicine is ranked 3rd in the United States among research-oriented medical schools and for
primary care Primary care is the day-to-day healthcare given by a health care provider. Typically this provider acts as the first contact and principal point of continuing care for patients within a healthcare system, and coordinates other specialist care ...
by ''U.S. News & World Report''. Three UC campuses:
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...
,
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
, and UC San Diego all ranked in the top 15 universities in the US according to the 2020 '' Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)'' US National University Rankings and also in the top 20 in World University Rankings. The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' also ranked UC San Francisco,
UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institu ...
,
UC Irvine UC may refer to: Arts and entertainment * '' University Challenge'', a popular British quiz programme airing on BBC Two ** ''University Challenge (New Zealand)'', the New Zealand version of the British programme * Universal Century, one of the t ...
, and UC Santa Barbara in the top 50 US National Universities and in the top 100 World Universities in 2020.
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...
,
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
, and UC San Diego all ranked in the top 50 universities in the world according to both the ''
Times Higher Education World University Rankings The ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'' (often referred to as the THE Rankings) is an annual publication of university rankings by the ''Times Higher Education'' (THE) magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarel ...
'' for 2021 and the ''Center for World University Rankings (CWUR)'' for 2020, while
UC Irvine UC may refer to: Arts and entertainment * '' University Challenge'', a popular British quiz programme airing on BBC Two ** ''University Challenge (New Zealand)'', the New Zealand version of the British programme * Universal Century, one of the t ...
, UC Santa Barbara, and
UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institu ...
ranked in the top 100 universities in the world. ''
Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...
'' also ranked the six UC campuses mentioned above as being in the top 50 universities in America in 2021. Forbes also named the top three public universities in America as all being UC campuses, namely, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC San Diego, and ranked three more campuses, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Irvine as being among the top 20 public universities in America in 2021. The six aforementioned campuses are all considered
Public Ivies "Public Ivy" is a term that refers to prestigious public colleges and universities in the United States that provide a collegiate experience similar to those in the Ivy League.Richard Moll in his book ''Public Ivys: A Guide to America's best pub ...
. The ''
QS World University Rankings ''QS World University Rankings'' is an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). The QS system comprises three parts: the global overall ranking, the subject rankings (which name the world's top universities for th ...
'' for 2021 ranked three UC campuses: UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego as being in the top 100 universities in the world. Individual academic departments also rank highly among the UC campuses. The 2021 '' U.S. News & World Report'' Best Graduate Schools report ranked
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...
as being among the top 5 universities in the nation in the departments of Psychology, Economics, Political Science, Computer Science, Engineering, Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Mathematics, Earth Sciences, Physics, Sociology, History, and English, and ranked
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
in the top 20 in the same departments. ''U.S. News & World Report'' also ranked the same departments at UC San Diego among the top 20 in the nation, with the exception of the departments of Sociology, History, and English.
UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institu ...
,
UC Irvine UC may refer to: Arts and entertainment * '' University Challenge'', a popular British quiz programme airing on BBC Two ** ''University Challenge (New Zealand)'', the New Zealand version of the British programme * Universal Century, one of the t ...
and UC Santa Barbara ranked in the top 50 in the departments of Psychology, Economics, Political Science, Computer Science, Engineering, Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Mathematics, Earth Sciences, Physics, Sociology, History, and English, with the exception of UC Santa Barbara's Psychology and Political Science departments, according to ''U.S. News & World Report''. UC Santa Cruz and UC Riverside ranked in the top 100 in the nation in the same departments, along with UC Merced's Psychology and Political Science departments.


Academics

As of 2020, UC controls over 11,601 active patents. UC researchers and faculty were responsible for 1,706 new inventions that same year. On average, UC researchers create five new inventions per day. Seven of UC's ten campuses (
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...
,
UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institu ...
,
UC Irvine UC may refer to: Arts and entertainment * '' University Challenge'', a popular British quiz programme airing on BBC Two ** ''University Challenge (New Zealand)'', the New Zealand version of the British programme * Universal Century, one of the t ...
,
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Santa Cruz) are members of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an alliance of elite American research universities founded in 1900 at UC's suggestion. Collectively, the system counts among its faculty (as of 2002): * 389 members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences * 5
Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award h ...
recipients * 19
Fulbright The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...
Scholars * 25
MacArthur Fellows The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...
* 254 members of the
National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...
* 91 members of the
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...
* 13
National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...
laureates * 61
Nobel laureates The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make ou ...
* 106 members of the
Institute of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Eng ...


Nobel Prize winners

As of October 2021, the following data are taken from List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation, which counts university alumni and staff, and are not the official count from the University of California.


UC Libraries

At 40.8 million print volumes, the University of California
library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...
system is home to one of the largest collections of printed materials in the world. On July 27, 2021, all ten campuses went live with a unified online library catalog, UC Library Search. Besides on-campus libraries, the UC system also maintains two regional library facilities (one each for Northern and Southern California), which each accept older items from all UC campus libraries in their respective region. As of 2019, Northern Regional Library Facility is home to 7.4 million items, while Southern Regional Library Facility is home to 6.5 million items.


Academic calendar

Eight campuses operate on the quarter system, while two (Berkeley and Merced) are on the semester system. However, all five law schools operate on the semester system, as does the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.


Academic organization

Davis, Los Angeles, Riverside, and Santa Barbara all followed Berkeley's example by aggregating the majority of arts, humanities, and science departments into a relatively large College of Letters and Science. Therefore, at Berkeley,
Davis Davis may refer to: Places Antarctica * Mount Davis (Antarctica) * Davis Island (Palmer Archipelago) * Davis Valley, Queen Elizabeth Land Canada * Davis, Saskatchewan, an unincorporated community * Davis Strait, between Nunavut and Gre ...
,
Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...
, and Santa Barbara, their respective College of Letters and Science is by far the single largest academic unit on each campus. The College of Letters and Science at Los Angeles is the largest academic unit in the entire UC system. Riverside later separated the natural sciences and kept only social sciences grouped with arts and humanities, an example followed by Merced at its founding. Due to President Kerr's interest in not reproducing the impersonal undergraduate experience often seen in such gigantic academic units, San Diego and Santa Cruz both implemented residential college systems inspired by British models (in which each college has distinctive general education requirements reflecting its chosen theme) and grouped most academic departments into a small number of broadly defined divisions which are all independent of the colleges. Finally, Irvine is organized into 13 schools and San Francisco is organized into four schools, all of which are relatively narrow in scope.


Admissions

Each UC campus handles admissions separately, but a student wishing to apply for an undergraduate or transfer admission uses one application for all UC campuses. Graduate and professional school admissions are handled directly and separately by each department or program to which one applies. In May 2020, UC approved plans to suspend standardized testing score requirements in admissions until 2024. In May 2021, after a student lawsuit, the University of California announced that it would no longer consider SAT and ACT scores in admissions and scholarship decisions. The Early Academic Outreach Program (EAOP) was established in 1976 by University of California (UC) in response to the State Legislature's recommendation to expand post-secondary opportunities to all of California's students including those who are first-generation, socioeconomically disadvantaged, and English-language learners. As UC's largest academic preparation program, EAOP assists middle and high school students with academic preparation, admissions requirements, and financial aid requirements for higher education. The program designs and provides services to foster students’ academic development, and delivers those services in partnership with other academic preparation programs, schools, other higher education institutions and community/industry partners. The University of California admits a significant number of transfer students primarily from the California Community Colleges. Approximately one out of three UC students begin at a community college before graduating. In evaluating a transfer student's application the universities conduct a "comprehensive review" process that includes consideration of grade point averages of the generally required, transferable and or related courses for the intended major. The review may also include consideration of an applicant's enrollment in selective honor courses or programs, extracurricular activities, essay, family history, life challenges, and the location of the student's residence. Different universities emphasize different factors in their evaluations.


Freshmen

Before 1986, students who wanted to apply to UC for undergraduate study could only apply to one campus. Students who were rejected at that campus but otherwise met the UC minimum eligibility requirements were ''redirected'' to another campus with available space. Available through
ProQuest ProQuest LLC is an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based global information-content and technology company, founded in 1938 as University Microfilms by Eugene B. Power. ProQuest is known for its applications and information services for libraries, provid ...
Historical Newspapers.
Students who did not want to be redirected were refunded their application fees. UC Riverside chancellor
Ivan Hinderaker Ivan Henrik Hinderaker (29 April 1916 – 23 September 2007) was an American educator and academic administrator. He served as the second chancellor of the University of California, Riverside from 1964 to 1979. At the time, Hinderaker was the lo ...
explained in 1972: "Redirection has been a negative rather than a plus. Some come with a chip on their shoulders so big they never give the campus a chance. They poison the attitudes of the students around them." Therefore, in 1986, the undergraduate application system was changed to the current "multiple filing" system, in which students can apply to as many or as few UC campuses as they want on one application, paying a fee for each campus. This significantly increased the number of applications to the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses, since students could choose a campus to attend after they received acceptance letters, without fear of being redirected to a campus they did not want to attend. The University of California accepts fully eligible students from among the top one-eighth (1/8) of California public high school graduates through regular statewide admission, or the top 9% of any given high school class through Eligibility in the Local Context (see below). Part of the eligibility process is completion of the A-G requirements in high school. All eligible California high school students who apply are accepted to the university, though not necessarily to the campus of choice. Eligible students who are not accepted to the campus(es) of their choice are placed in the "referral pool", where campuses with open space may offer admission to those students; in 2003, 10% of students who received an offer through this referral process accepted it. In 2007, about 4,100 UC-eligible students who were not offered admission to their campus of choice were referred to UC Riverside or the system's newest campus, UC Merced. In 2015, all UC-eligible students rejected by their campus of choice were redirected to UC Merced, which is now the only campus that has space for all qualified applicants. The old undergraduate admissions were conducted on a two-phase basis. In the first phase, students were admitted based solely on academic achievement. This accounted for between 50 and 75% of the admissions. In the second phase, the university conducted a "comprehensive review" of the student's achievements, including extracurricular activities, essay, family history, and life challenges, to admit the remainder. Students who did not qualify for regular admission were "admitted by exception"; in 2002, approximately 2% of newly admitted undergraduates were admitted by exception. The process for determining admissions varies. At some campuses, such as Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz, a point system is used to weight
grade point average Grading in education is the process of applying standardized measurements for varying levels of achievements in a course. Grades can be assigned as letters (usually A through F), as a range (for example, 1 to 6), as a percentage, or as a numbe ...
, SAT Reasoning or ACT scores, and SAT Subject scores, while at
San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
, Berkeley, and
Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...
, academic achievement is examined in the context of the school and the surrounding community, known as a holistic review. Race,
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most culture ...
,
national origin National origin is the nation where a person was born, or where that person's ancestors came from. It also includes the diaspora of multi-ethnic states and societies that have a shared sense of common identity identical to that of a nation while ...
, and
ethnicity An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
were not used as UC admission criteria due to the passing of
Proposition 209 Proposition 209 (also known as the California Civil Rights Initiative or CCRI) is a California ballot proposition which, upon approval in November 1996, amended the state constitution to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering ...
. This information was collected for statistical purposes. Eligibility in the Local Context, commonly referred to as ELC, is met by applicants ranked in the top 9% of their high school class in terms of performance on an 11-unit pattern of UC-approved high school courses. Beginning with fall 2007 applicants, ELC also requires a UC-calculated GPA of at least 3.0. Fully eligible ELC students are guaranteed a spot at one of UC's undergraduate campuses, though not necessarily at their first-choice campus or even to a campus to which they applied.


Student profile


Admissions practices

In many recent years, the University of California has faced growing criticism for high admissions of out-of-state or international students as opposed to in-state, California students. In particular, UC Berkeley and UCLA have been heavily criticized for this phenomenon due to their extraordinarily low acceptance rates compared to other campuses in the system. At a Board of Regents meeting in 2015, California Governor
Jerry Brown Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected Secretary of S ...
reportedly said about the problem: "And so you got your foreign students and you got your 4.0 folks, but just the kind of ordinary, normal students, you know, that got good grades but weren’t at the top of the heap there—they’re getting frozen out." State lawmakers have proposed legislation that would reduce out-of-state admission. A 2020 California
auditor's report An auditor's report is a formal opinion, or disclaimer thereof, issued by either an internal auditor or an independent external auditor as a result of an internal or external audit, as an assurance service in order for the user to make decisions ...
indicated that at least 64 wealthy students were wrongfully admitted to UC schools as favors to powerful figures. Many of the admissions were justified by falsely classifying the applicants as student athletes. The incidents disproportionately (55 of 64) occurred at
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...
.


Research

In 2006 the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) awarded the University of California the SPARC Innovator Award for its "extraordinarily effective institution-wide vision and efforts to move scholarly communication forward", including the 1997 founding (under then UC President Richard C. Atkinson) of the California Digital Library (CDL) and its 2002 launching of CDL's
eScholarship The California Digital Library (CDL) was founded by the University of California in 1997. Under the leadership of then UC President Richard C. Atkinson, the CDL's original mission was to forge a better system for scholarly information management a ...
, an
institutional repository An institutional repository is an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution. Academics also utilize their IRs for archiving published work ...
. The award also specifically cited the widely influential 2005 academic journal publishing reform efforts of UC faculty and librarians in "altering the marketplace" by publicly negotiating contracts with publishers, as well as their 2006 proposal to amend UC's
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...
policy to allow
open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
to UC faculty research.PDF
On July 24, 2013, the
UC Academic Senate UC may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''University Challenge'', a popular British quiz programme airing on BBC Two ** ''University Challenge (New Zealand)'', the New Zealand version of the British programme * Universal Century, one of the tim ...
adopted an
Open Access Policy An open-access mandate is a policy adopted by a research institution, research funder, or government which requires or recommends researchers—usually university faculty or research staff and/or research grant recipients—to make their publishe ...
, mandating that all UC faculty produced research with a publication agreement signed after that date be first deposited in UC's eScholarship open access repository. University of California systemwide research on the SAT exam found that, after controlling for familial income and parental education, so-called achievement tests known as the SAT II had 10 times more predictive ability of college aptitude than the SAT I.


Peripheral enterprises

The University of California has a long tradition of involvement in many enterprises that are often geographically or organizationally separate from its general campuses, including national laboratories, observatories, hospitals, continuing education programs, hotels, conference centers, an airport, a seaport, and an art institute.


National laboratories

The University of California directly manages and operates one United States Department of Energy National Laboratory: *
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, the United States Department of Energy. Located in ...
(LBNL, or Berkeley Lab) (
Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...
) UC is a limited partner in two separate private limited liability companies that manage and operate two other Department of Energy national laboratories: *
Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...
(LANL) (
Los Alamos, New Mexico Los Alamos is an census-designated place in Los Alamos County, New Mexico, United States, that is recognized as the development and creation place of the atomic bomb—the primary objective of the Manhattan Project by Los Alamos National Labo ...
) operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC. *
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...
(LLNL) (
Livermore, California Livermore (formerly Livermorès, Livermore Ranch, and Nottingham) is a city in Alameda County, California. With a 2020 population of 87,955, Livermore is the most populous city in the Tri-Valley. It is located on the eastern edge of Californi ...
) operated by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory conducts unclassified research across a wide range of scientific disciplines with key efforts focused on fundamental studies of the universe, quantitative biology, nanoscience, new energy systems and environmental solutions, and the use of integrated computing as a tool for discovery. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory uses advanced science and technology to ensure that U.S. nuclear weapons remain reliable. LLNL also has major research programs in supercomputing and predictive modeling, energy and environment, bioscience and biotechnology, basic science and applied technology, counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and homeland security. It is also home to the most powerful supercomputers in the world. The Los Alamos National Laboratory focuses most of its work on ensuring the reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons. Other work at LANL involves research programs into preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction and US national security, such as protection of the US homeland from terrorist attacks. The UC system's ties to the three laboratories have occasionally sparked controversy and protest, because all three laboratories have been intimately linked with the development of
nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
s. During the
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
, Lawrence Berkeley Lab developed the electromagnetic method for the separation of uranium isotopes used to develop the first atomic bombs. The Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore labs have been involved in designing U.S. nuclear weapons from their inception until the shift into
stockpile stewardship Stockpile stewardship refers to the United States program of reliability testing and maintenance of its nuclear weapons without the use of nuclear testing. Because no new nuclear weapons have been developed by the United States since 1992, even ...
after the end of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
. Historically the two national laboratories in Berkeley and Livermore named after
Ernest O. Lawrence Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was an American nuclear physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is known for his work on uranium-isotope separation fo ...
, have had very close relationships on research projects, as well as sharing some business operations and staff. In fact,
LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...
was not officially severed administratively from LBNL until the early 1970s. They also have much deeper ties to the university than the Los Alamos Lab, a fact seen in their respective original names; the University of California Berkeley Radiation Laboratory and the University of California Radiation Laboratory at Livermore. The UC system's ties to the labs have so far outlasted all periods of internal controversy. However, in 2003, the U.S. Department of Energy for the first time opened the
Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...
(LANL) contract for bidding by other vendors. UC entered into a partnership with Bechtel Corporation, BWXT, and the
Washington Group International Washington Group International was an American corporation which provided integrated engineering, construction, and management services to businesses and governments around the world. Based in Boise, Idaho, WGI had approximately 25,000 employees ...
, and together they created a private company called
Los Alamos National Security, LLC Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS LLC) was a private limited liability company (LLC) formed by the University of California, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, and URS Energy and Construction (which was purchased by AECOM in 2014). From its creat ...
(LANS). The only other bidder on the LANL contract was a
Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American aerospace, arms, defense, information security, and technology corporation with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It ...
Corporation-created company that included, among others, the
University of Texas System The University of Texas System (UT System) is an American government entity of the state of Texas that includes 13 higher educational institutions throughout the state including eight universities and five independent health institutions. The UT ...
. In December 2005, a seven-year contract to manage the laboratory was awarded to the Los Alamos National Security, LLC. On October 1, 2007, the University of California ended its direct involvement in operating the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Management of the laboratory was taken over by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, a limited liability company whose members are Bechtel National, the University of California, Babcock & Wilcox, the Washington Division of URS Corporation, Battelle Memorial Institute, and The Texas A&M University System. Other than UC appointing three members to the two separate boards of directors (each with eleven members) that oversee LANS and LLNS, UC now has virtually no responsibility for or direct involvement in either LANL or LLNL. UC policies and regulations that apply to UC campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California no longer apply to LANL and LLNL, and the LANL and LLNL directors no longer report to the UC Regents or UC Office of the President.


Observatories

The University of California manages two observatories as a multi-campus research unit headquartered at UC Santa Cruz. *
Lick Observatory The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The observatory is managed by t ...
atop Mount Hamilton, in the
Diablo Range The Diablo Range is a mountain range in the California Coast Ranges subdivision of the Pacific Coast Ranges in northern California, United States. It stretches from the eastern San Francisco Bay area at its northern end to the Salinas Valley ...
just east of San Jose. *
Keck Observatory The W. M. Keck Observatory is an astronomical observatory with two telescopes at an elevation of 4,145 meters (13,600 ft) near the summit of Mauna Kea in the U.S. state of Hawaii. Both telescopes have aperture primary mirrors, and when ...
at the summit of
Mauna Kea Mauna Kea ( or ; ; abbreviation for ''Mauna a Wākea''); is a dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii. Its peak is above sea level, making it the highest point in the state of Hawaii and second-highest peak of an island on Earth. The peak ...
in
Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...
. The Astronomy Department at the Berkeley campus manages the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in
Shasta County Shasta County (), officially the County of Shasta, is a county in the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its population is 182,155 as of the 2020 census, up from 177,223 from the 2010 census. The county seat is Redding. Shasta ...
.


High-performance networking

The University of California is a founding and charter member of the
Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC ( )) is a nonprofit corporation formed in 1997 to provide high-performance, high-bandwidth networking services to California universities and research institutions. Through ...
, a nonprofit organization that provides high-performance Internet-based networking to California's K-20 research and education community.


UC Natural Reserve System

The NRS was established in January 1965 to provide UC faculty with large areas of land where they could conduct long-term ecosystem research without having to worry about outside disturbances like tourists. Today, the NRS manages 39 reserves that total more than . University of California Natural Reserve System"> File:Outdoors (5223138163).jpg, Coal Oil Point Reserve File:Rancho Marino Reserve.jpg,
Rancho Marino Reserve Kenneth S. Norris Rancho Marino Reserve is part of the University of California Natural Reserve System. The reserve is located along the coast of San Luis Obispo County at the south end of the town of Cambria, California. It is named for Kenneth S ...
File:Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve 167.JPG,
Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve is a unit of the University of California Natural Reserve System and is administered by the University of California, Davis. It is within the Blue Ridge Berryessa Natural Area, in the Northern Inner California Coast R ...
File:Younger Lagoon Reserve (7184158388).jpg,
Younger Lagoon Reserve Younger Lagoon Reserve is a 72-acre (28-hectare) University of California Natural Reserve System reserve on the northern shore of Monterey Bay in Santa Cruz County, California. The site is owned by the University of California and managed for t ...
File:Bodega Marine Lab 3543.jpg,
Bodega Marine Reserve Bodega Marine Reserve is a nature reserve and marine reserve on the coast of northern California, located in the vicinity of the Bodega Marine Laboratory on Bodega Head. It is a unit of the University of California Natural Reserve System, adm ...


UC Agriculture and Natural Resources

(UCANR, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources) plays an important role in the state's agriculture industry, as mandated by UC's legacy as a land-grant institution. In addition to conducting agriculture and
Youth development Positive youth development (PYD) programs are designed to optimize youth developmental progress. ''Youth.gov'' states that "PYD is an intentional, prosocial approach that engages youth within their communities, schools, organizations, peer groups, ...
research, every county in the state has a
cooperative extension The Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES) was an extension agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), part of the executive branch of the federal government. The 1994 Department Reorganization Act, ...
office with county farm advisors. The county offices also support 4-H programs and have nutrition, family, and consumer sciences advisors who assist local government. Currently, the division's University of California 4-H Youth Development Program is a national leader in studying
thriving Thriving is a condition beyond mere survival, implying growth and positive development. Youth development The synthesis of existing lines of research has given a lens through which to view research, theory, and practice in the field of yo ...
in the field of
youth development Positive youth development (PYD) programs are designed to optimize youth developmental progress. ''Youth.gov'' states that "PYD is an intentional, prosocial approach that engages youth within their communities, schools, organizations, peer groups, ...
.


Other national research centers

From September 2003 to July 2016, UC managed a contract valued at more than $330 million to establish and operate a University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) at the
NASA Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) labora ...
at
Moffett Federal Airfield Moffett Federal Airfield , also known as Moffett Field, is a joint civil-military airport located in an unincorporated part of Santa Clara County, California, United States, between northern Mountain View and northern Sunnyvale. On November 10 ...
—the largest grant ever awarded the university. UC Santa Cruz managed the UARC for the University of California, with the goal of increasing the science output, safety, and effectiveness of
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...
's missions through new technologies and scientific techniques. Since 2002, the NSF-funded San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego has been managed by the University of California, which took over from the previous manager,
General Atomics General Atomics is an American energy and defense corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, specializing in research and technology development. This includes physics research in support of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion energy. Th ...
.


Medical centers and schools

The University of California operates five medical centers throughout the state: *
UC Davis Medical Center UC Davis Medical Center is part of UC Davis Health and a major academic health center located in Sacramento, California. It is owned and operated by the University of California as part of its University of California, Davis campus. The medical c ...
, in
Sacramento ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...
; * UC Irvine Medical Center, in Orange; * UCLA Medical Center, comprising two distinct hospitals: **
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center (also commonly referred to as ''UCLA Medical Center'', "RRMC" or "Ronald Reagan") is a hospital located on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, Unit ...
, in Los Angeles; ** UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center, in
Santa Monica Santa Monica (; Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. Census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to i ...
; * UC San Diego Medical Center, comprising two distinct hospitals: ** UC San Diego Medical Center, Hillcrest, in
San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
; ** Jacobs Medical Center, in
La Jolla La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood within the city of San Diego, California, United States, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the 2010 census was 46,781. La Jolla is surrounded on ...
; and *
UCSF Medical Center The University of California, San Francisco Medical Center is a research and teaching hospital in San Francisco, California and is the medical center of the University of California, San Francisco. It is affiliated with the UCSF School of Med ...
, operating as a single medical center across three physically distinct campuses around San Francisco. File:UC Davis Medical Center.jpg, UCD Medical Center File:Jacobs Medical Center southwest.jpg, UCSD Medical Center File:Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center June 2012 002 (cropped).jpg, UCLA Medical Center File:UCSF Medical Center and Sutro Tower in 2008 (cropped).jpg,
UCSF Medical Center The University of California, San Francisco Medical Center is a research and teaching hospital in San Francisco, California and is the medical center of the University of California, San Francisco. It is affiliated with the UCSF School of Med ...
File:Ucirvinemedicalcenter (cropped).jpg,
UCI Medical Center The University of California, Irvine Medical Center (UCIMC or UCI Medical Center) is a major research hospital located in Orange, California. It is the teaching hospital for the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. History P ...
There are two medical centers that bear the UCLA name, but are not operated by UCLA: Harbor–UCLA Medical Center and
Olive View–UCLA Medical Center Olive View–UCLA Medical Center is a hospital, funded by Los Angeles County, located in the Sylmar neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It is one of the primary healthcare delivery systems in the north San Fernando Valley, especially the area ...
. They are actually
Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the List of the most populous counties in the United States, most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, ...
-operated facilities that UCLA uses as
teaching hospital A teaching hospital is a hospital or medical centre that provides medical education and training to future and current health professionals. Teaching hospitals are almost always affiliated with one or more universities and are often co-located ...
s. Each medical center serves as the primary teaching site for that campus's
medical school A medical school is a tertiary educational institution, or part of such an institution, that teaches medicine, and awards a professional degree for physicians. Such medical degrees include the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS, ...
. UCSF is perennially among the top five programs in both research and primary care, and both UCLA and UC San Diego consistently rank among the top fifteen research schools, according to annual rankings published by '' U.S. News & World Report''. The teaching hospitals affiliated with each school are also highly regarded – the
UCSF Medical Center The University of California, San Francisco Medical Center is a research and teaching hospital in San Francisco, California and is the medical center of the University of California, San Francisco. It is affiliated with the UCSF School of Med ...
was ranked the number one hospital in California and number 5 in the country by ''U.S. News & World Report''s 2017 Honor Roll for Best Hospitals in the United States. UC also has a sixth medical school—
UC Riverside School of Medicine The University of California, Riverside (UCR), School of Medicine is the graduate medical school of the University of California, Riverside, acting as one of six University of California medical schools. It enrolled its first class in 2013, wit ...
, the only one in the UC system without its own hospital. In the latter half of the 20th century, the UC hospitals became the cores of full-fledged regional health systems; they were gradually supplemented by many outpatient clinics, offices, and institutes. Three UC hospitals are actually county hospitals that were sold to UC, which means that UC currently plays a major role in providing healthcare to the indigent. The medical hospitals operated by UC Irvine (acquired in 1976), UC Davis (acquired in 1978), and UC San Diego (acquired in 1984) each began as the respective county hospitals of Orange County, Sacramento County, and
San Diego County San Diego County (), officially the County of San Diego, is a county in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,298,634, making it California's second-most populous county and the f ...
. As of 2021, UC medical centers handle each year about 8.1 million outpatient visits, 349,074 emergency room visits, and roughly 1.1 million inpatient days.


Facilities outside of California

UC operates several other miscellaneous sites to support faculty, students, and researchers away from its general campuses: * The UC Office of the President's Education Abroad Program currently operates one mini-campus which supports UC students, faculty, and alumni overseas: **Casa de California in
Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
. **EAP also briefly operated California House in
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
during the early-to-mid 2000s. * UC Washington Center in Washington, D.C. with a dormitory for students interning with the
federal government A federation (also known as a federal state) is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a central federal government ( federalism). In a federation, the self-gover ...
. **UC Davis's UC Center Sacramento supports students interning with the California government. * UC Berkeley operates the Richard B. Gump South Pacific Research Station in Mo'orea,
French Polynesia )Territorial motto: ( en, "Great Tahiti of the Golden Haze") , anthem = , song_type = Regional anthem , song = "Ia Ora 'O Tahiti Nui" , image_map = French Polynesia on the globe (French Polynesia centered).svg , map_alt = Location of French ...
on land donated in 1981 by the heir to the founder of the Gump's home furnishings store.


Hospitality facilities

Unlike other land-grant institutions (e.g.,
Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
) UC does not provide a hospitality management program, but it does provide general hospitality at some locations: * UC Berkeley's Cal Alumni Association operates travel excursions for alumni (and their families) under its "Cal Discoveries Travel" brand (formerly BearTreks); many of the tour guides are Berkeley professors. CAA also operates the oldest and largest alumni association-run family camp in the world, the Lair of the Golden Bear. Located at an altitude of 5600 feet in Pinecrest, California, the Lair is a home-away-from-home for almost 10,000 campers annually. Its attendees are largely Cal alumni and their families, but the Lair is open to everyone. * Berkeley Lab operates its own
hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a re ...
, the Berkeley Lab Guest House, available to persons with business at the Lab itself or UC Berkeley. * UCLA Housing & Hospitality Services operates two on-campus hotels, the 61-room Guest House and the 254-room Meyer & Renee Luskin Conference Center, and a lavish off-campus conference center at Lake Arrowhead (with a mix of chalet-like condominiums, lodge rooms, and stand-alone cottages). During the summer, the Lake Arrowhead conference center hosts the Bruin Woods vacation programs for UCLA alumni and their families. * Separately, UCLA Health operates the 100-room Tiverton House just south of the UCLA campus to serve its patients and their families. * UC Santa Cruz leased the University Inn and Conference Center in downtown Santa Cruz from 2001 to 2011 for use as off-campus student housing.


University Airport

UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institu ...
operates the
University Airport University Airport is a public-use airport located two nautical miles (4 km) west of the central business district of Davis, a city in Yolo County, California, United States. It is owned by the University of California and operated by Transp ...
as a utility airport for air shuttle service in the contractual transportation of university employees and agricultural samples. It is also a public general aviation airport. University Airport's ICAO identifier is KEDU.


Seaport

UC San Diego's
Scripps Institution of Oceanography The Scripps Institution of Oceanography (sometimes referred to as SIO, Scripps Oceanography, or Scripps) in San Diego, California, US founded in 1903, is one of the oldest and largest centers for ocean and Earth science research, public servi ...
owns a seaport, the Nimitz Marine Facility, which is just south of Shelter Island on Point Loma, San Diego. The port is used as an operating base for all of its oceanographic vessels and platforms.


UC Extension

For over a century, the university has operated a continuing education program for working adults and professionals. At present, UC Extension enrolls over 500,000 students each year in over 17,000 courses. One of the reasons for its large size is that UC Extension is a dominant provider of
Continuing Legal Education Continuing legal education (CLE), also known as mandatory or minimum continuing legal education (MCLE) or, in some jurisdictions outside the United States, as continuing professional development, consists of professional education for attorneys ...
and Continuing Medical Education in California. For example, the systemwide portion of UC Extension (directly controlled by the UC Office of the President) operates Continuing Education of the Bar under a joint venture agreement with the
State Bar of California The State Bar of California is California's official attorney licensing agency. It is responsible for managing the admission of lawyers to the practice of law, investigating complaints of professional misconduct, prescribing appropriate disciplin ...
.


See also

*
Police departments at the University of California Police departments in the University of California system are charged with providing law enforcement to each of the system's campuses. History The University of California was established in 1868, and moved its first campus to Berkeley in 187 ...
*
University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facul ...
* University of California Student Association


References


Further reading

* * * * *


External links

* * {{Authority control University of California system California, University of Schools accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges California, University of 1868 establishments in California California culture