The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, the system is composed of its ten campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz, along with numerous research centers and academic abroad centers. The system is the state's land-grant university. Major publications generally rank most UC campuses as being among the best universities in the world. In 1900, UC was one of the founders of the Association of American Universities and since the 1970s seven of its campuses, in addition to Berkeley, have been admitted to the association. Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Diego are considered Public Ivies, making California the state with the most universities in the nation to hold the title. UC campuses have large numbers of distinguished faculty in almost every academic discipline, with UC faculty and researchers having won 71 Nobel Prizes as of 2021.
The University of California, Berkeley is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Founded in 1868 and named after Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley, it is the state's first land-grant university and the founding campus of the University of California system. Berkeley is also a founding member of the Association of American Universities. It has been regarded as one of the top universities in the world.
The University of California, Santa Cruz is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the main campus lies on 2,001 acres (810 ha) of rolling, forested hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. As of Fall 2022, its ten residential colleges enroll some 17,500 undergraduate and 2,000 graduate students. Satellite facilities in other Santa Cruz locations include the Coastal Science Campus and the Westside Research Park and the Silicon Valley Center in Santa Clara.
The University of California, Davis is a public land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institution was first founded as an agricultural branch of the system in 1905, known as University Farm, and became the seventh campus of the University of California in 1959.
The University of California, San Diego is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is the southernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California, and offers over 200 undergraduate and graduate degree programs, enrolling 33,096 undergraduate and 9,872 graduate students. The university occupies 2,178 acres (881 ha) near the coast of the Pacific Ocean, with the main campus resting on approximately 1,152 acres (466 ha).
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the California State Normal School which later evolved into San José State University. The branch was transferred to the University of California to become the Southern Branch of the University of California in 1919, making it the second-oldest of the ten-campus University of California system after the University of California, Berkeley.
The University of California, Irvine is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and professional degrees, and roughly 30,000 undergraduates and 6,000 graduate students are enrolled at UCI as of Fall 2019. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity", and had $523.7 million in research and development expenditures in 2021. UCI became a member of the Association of American Universities in 1996.
The University of California, Riverside is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on 1,900 acres (769 ha) in a suburban district of Riverside with a branch campus of 20 acres (8 ha) in Palm Desert. In 1907, the predecessor to UCR was founded as the UC Citrus Experiment Station, Riverside which pioneered research in biological pest control and the use of growth regulators.
The UC Berkeley College of Chemistry is one of the fifteen schools and colleges at the University of California, Berkeley. It houses the department of chemistry and the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering, both of which are ranked among the best in the world. Its faculty and alumni have won 18 Nobel Prizes, 9 Wolf Prizes, and 11 National Medals of Science.
The Walter A. Haas School of Business is the business school of the University of California, Berkeley, a public research university in Berkeley, California. It was the first business school at a public university in the United States.
The University of California, Berkeley College of Engineering is the engineering school of the University of California, Berkeley. The college occupies fourteen buildings on the northeast side of the main campus and also operates the 150-acre (61-hectare) Richmond Field Station. Established in 1931, the college is considered to be one of the most prestigious and selective engineering schools in both the nation and the world.
The University of California College of the Law, San Francisco is a public law school in San Francisco, California, United States. It was previously known as the University of California, Hastings College of the Law from 1878 to 2023.
The UCLA School of Education and Information Studies is one of the academic and professional schools at the University of California, Los Angeles. Located in Los Angeles, California, the school combines two departments. Established in 1881, the school is the oldest unit at UCLA, having been founded as a normal school prior to the establishment of the university. It was incorporated into the University of California in 1919.
The Rausser College of Natural Resources (RCNR), or Rausser College, is the oldest college at the University of California, Berkeley and in the University of California system. Established in 1868 as the College of Agriculture under the federal Morrill Land-Grant Acts, CNR is the first state-run agricultural experiment station. The college is home to four internationally top-ranked academic departments: Agriculture and Resource Economics; Environmental Science, Policy, and Management; Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology; and Plant and Microbial Biology, and one interdisciplinary program, Energy and Resources Group. Since February 2020, it is named after former dean and distinguished professor emeritus Gordon Rausser after his landmark $50 million naming gift to the college.
The history of the University of California, Riverside, or UCR, started in 1907 when UCR was the University's Citrus Experiment Station. By the 1950s, the University had established a teaching-focused liberal arts curriculum at the site, in the spirit of a small liberal arts college, but California's rapidly growing population made it necessary for the Riverside campus to become a full-fledged general campus of the UC system, and it was so designated in 1959.
The UCLA College of Letters and Science is the arts and sciences college of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). It encompasses the Life and Physical Sciences, Humanities, Social Sciences, Honors Program and other programs for both undergraduate and graduate students. It is often called UCLA College or the College, which is not ambiguous because the College is the only educational unit at UCLA to be currently denominated as a "college." All other educational units at UCLA are currently labeled as schools or institutes.
The University of California, Riverside, is organized into three academic colleges, two professional schools, and two graduate schools. These units provide 81 majors and 52 minors, 48 master's degree programs, and 42 PhD programs. It is the only UC campus to offer undergraduate degrees in Creative Writing and Public Policy, and one of only three UCs to offer an undergraduate degree in Business Administration. Additionally, UCR's doctoral program in the emerging field of Dance theory, founded in 1992, was the first program of its kind in the United States. UCR's various academic units are as follows:
The School of Social Welfare of the University of California, Berkeley, was established June 1, 1944 and is located in Haviland Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Its focus is to prepare graduates to become agents of social change through direct practice, agency management, policymaking, and leading new discoveries that address the grand challenges confronting society. Berkeley Social Welfare offers the Bachelor of Arts in Social Welfare through the College of Letters and Science (L&S), the M.S.W., and the Ph.D. Haviland Hall includes its own library, The Social Research Library, which was founded in 1957 and contains approximately 34,400 volumes and 200 active serial titles. The library originally housed volumes specifically for the social work field and expanded in 2014 to include education, psychology, public policy. The library also maintains an Indigenous Social Work space.
The Irwin and Joan Jacobs School of Engineering is an undergraduate and graduate-level engineering school offering BS, BA, MEng, MS, MAS and PhD degrees at the University of California, San Diego in San Diego, California. The Jacobs School of Engineering is the youngest engineering school of the nation's top ten, the largest by enrollment in the University of California system, as well as the largest engineering school on the West Coast and the ninth-largest in the country. More than thirty faculty have been named members of the National Academies. The current dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering is Albert P. Pisano.
The College of Letters and Science is the largest college at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The College, which offers 90 majors and 38 minors to over 20,000 undergraduates and 2,000 graduate students, has about 700 faculty members.
