University of California.
Campuses.
Introduction.
The University of California (UC) is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-system public higher education plan, which also includes the California State University system and the California Community Colleges System.
Governed by a semi-autonomous Board of Regents, the University of California has 10 campuses, a combined student body of 238,700 students, 19,700 faculty members, 135,900 staff members and over 1.6 million living alumni as of spring 2015.
The University of California was founded in 1868 in Berkeley, California. Its tenth and newest campus, UC Merced, opened for classes in fall 2005. Nine campuses enroll both undergraduate and graduate students; one campus, UC San Francisco, enrolls only graduate and professional students in the medical and health sciences. In addition, the UC Hastings College of Law, located in San Francisco, shares the "UC" name but is otherwise effectively unaffiliated with the UC system.
The University of California's campuses boast large numbers of distinguished faculty in almost every field and it is widely regarded as one of the top university systems in the world. The University of California has won more Nobel Prizes than any other collegiate system. The universities within the University of California system are perennially ranked highly by various publications. Most notably, UC Berkeley and UCLA are both ranked as Top 10 Universities worldwide.
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. Taking advantage of the Morrill Land Grant Act, the California Legislature established an Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College in 1866. Meanwhile, Congregational minister Henry Durant, an alumnus of Yale, had established the private Contra Costa Academy, on June 20, 1853, in Oakland, California. The initial site was bounded by Twelfth and Fourteenth Streets and Harrison and Franklin Streets in downtown Oakland. In turn, the Trustees of the Contra Costa Academy were granted a charter on April 13, 1855, for a College of California. State Historical Plaque No. 45 marks the site of the College of California at the northeast corner of Thirteenth and Franklin Streets in Oakland. Hoping both to expand and raise funds, the College of California's trustees formed the College Homestead Association and purchased 160 acres (650,000 m²) of land in what is now Berkeley in 1866. But sales of new homesteads fell short.Governor Frederick Low favored the establishment of a state university based upon the University of Michigan plan, and thus in one sense may be regarded as the founder of the University of California. In 1867, he suggested a merger of the existing College of California with the proposed state university. On October 9, 1867, the College's trustees reluctantly agreed to merge with the state college to their mutual advantage, but under one condition—that there not be simply a "Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College", but a complete university, within which the College of California would become the College of Letters (now the College of Letters and Science).
Accordingly, the Organic Act, establishing the University of California, was signed into law by Governor Henry H. Haight (Low's successor) on March 23, 1868. The University of California's second president, Daniel Coit Gilman, opened the Berkeley campus in September 1873. Earlier that year, Toland Medical College in San Francisco had agreed to become the University's "Medical Department"; it later evolved into UCSF. In 1878, the University established Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco as its first law school. The California Constitution was amended to designate Hastings as the "Law Department" of the University of California in consideration of a $100,000 gift from Serranus Clinton Hastings. It is now known as Hastings College of the Law. UC Hastings is the only University of California campus which is not governed by the Regents of the University of California.
In 1959, the Legislature promoted the "Farm" and "Experiment Station" to the rank of general campus, creating, respectively, UC Davis and UC Riverside. In 1932, Will Keith Kellogg donated his Arabian horse ranch in Pomona, California, to the University of California system. However, the land remained largely unused and ownership was transferred to the California State University system in 1949. Kellogg's old ranch became the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. The San Diego campus was founded as a marine station in 1912 and, in 1959, became UCSD. UC established additional general campuses at Santa Cruz and Irvine in 1965. UC Merced opened in fall 2005.
The California Master Plan for Higher Education 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%. The University does not currently adhere to all tenets of the original Master Plan, such as the directive that no campus was to exceed total enrollment of 27,500 students in order to ensure quality. Four campuses, Berkeley, Davis, Los Angeles, and San Diego all currently enroll over 30,000.
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, an institutional repository. 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 policy to allow open access to UC faculty research. On July 24, 2013 the UC Academic Senate adopted an Open Access Policy, 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 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 ten times more predictive ability of college aptitude than the SAT I (AKA the SAT math and verbal sections).
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| Position | Salary range | Maximum off-scale limit |
| Lecturer | $50,292–$140,724 | N/A |
| Senior lecturer | $92,400–$140,724 | N/A |
| Assistant Professor | $53,200–$69,200 | $90,000 |
| Associate Professor | $66,100–$83,700 | $111,700 |
| Full Professor | $77,800–$142,700 | $178,600 |
Campuses and Rankings.
| Campus | Founded | Enrollment[40] | Endowment[1] | Athletics | Rankings | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Affiliation | Nickname | ARWU[41] | U.S. News & World Report - National[42] | QS World University Rankings[43] | THE World University Rankings[44] | U.S. News & World Report - Global[45] | CWUR[46] | ||||
| Berkeley | 1868 | 37,581 | $4,045,450,000 | NCAA Div I Pac-12 | Golden Bears | 4 | 20 | 26 | 13 | 3 | 7 |
| Los Angeles | 1919 | 42,239 | $3,495,897,000 | NCAA Div I Pac-12 | Bruins | 12 | 23 | 27 | 16 | 8 | 15 |
| San Diego | 1960 | 31,502 | $951,367,000 | NCAA Div II CCAA | Tritons | 14 | 39 | 44 | 39 | 19 | 21 |
| San Francisco (Graduate only) | 1873 | 4,904 | $2,341,444,000 | N/A | Bears | 18 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 23 | 26 |
| Santa Barbara | 1909 | 23,051 | $265,930,000 | NCAA Div I Big West | Gauchos | 38 | 37 | 129 | 39 | 24 | 64 |
| Davis | 1908 | 35,415 | $1,013,935,000 | NCAA Div I Big West | Aggies | 57 | 41 | 85 | 44 | 39 | 53 |
| Irvine | 1965 | 30,757 | $504,307,000 | NCAA Div I Big West | Anteaters | 50 | 39 | 163 | 106 | 61 | 89 |
| Santa Cruz | 1965 | 17,866 | $165,472,000 | NCAA Div III Independent | Banana Slugs | 93 | 82 | 269 | 144 | 48 | 154 |
| Riverside | 1954 | 21,680 | $185,335,000 | NCAA Div I Big West | Highlanders | 101-150 | 121 | 265 | 167 | 112 | 214 |
| Merced | 2005 | 6,268 | $38,592,000 | NAIA CalPac | Golden Bobcats | — | — | — | — | — | 936 |
Students Profile.
| Students[48] | California[49] | United States[50] | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asian (includes Indian, Filipino, Pakistani, and East Asians) | 33% | 14% | 5% |
| Black | 3% | 7% | 13% |
| Hispanic (of any race; includesChicanos and Latinos) | 18% | 38% | 17% |
| Non-Hispanic White | 31% | 39% | 63% |
| Native American | (<1%) | 2% | 1% |
| International student | 9% | N/A | N/A |
| Other | 5% | N/A | N/A |
Admissions Criteria.
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). 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 UCR and UC Merced, the system's newest campus. 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 are conducted on a two-phase basis. In the first phase, students are admitted based solely on academic achievement. This accounts for between 50 to 75% of the admissions. In the second phase, the university conducts a "comprehensive review" of the student's achievements, including extracurricular activities, essay, family history, and life challenges, to admit the remainder. Students who do not qualify for regular admission are "admitted by exception"; in 2002, approximately 2% of newly admitted undergraduates were admitted by exception. Since then, UC campuses have been evaluating students under "comprehensive review", based on these 14 factors:
1. Academic grade point average in all completed "a-g" courses, including additional points for completed University-certified honors courses.
2. Scores on the ACT Assessment plus Writing or SAT Reasoning Test, and two SAT Subject Tests.
3. Number of, content of and performance in academic courses beyond the minimum "a-g" requirements.
4. Number of and performance in University-approved honors courses and Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and transferable college courses.
5. Identification by UC as being ranked in the top 9 percent of the student's high school class at the end of his or her junior year ("eligible in the local context" or ELC).
6. Quality of the student's senior-year program, as measured by the type and number of academic courses in progress or planned.
7. Quality of the student's academic performance relative to the educational opportunities available in his or her high school.
8. Outstanding performance in one or more academic subject areas.
9. Outstanding work in one or more special projects in any academic field of study.
10. Recent, marked improvement in academic performance, as demonstrated by academic GPA and the quality of coursework completed or in progress.
11. Special talents, achievements and awards in a particular field, such as visual and performing arts, communication or athletic endeavors; special skills, such as demonstrated written and oral proficiency in other languages; special interests, such as intensive study and exploration of other cultures; experiences that demonstrate unusual promise for leadership, such as significant community service or significant participation in student government; or other significant experiences or achievements that demonstrate the student's promise for contributing to the intellectual vitality of a campus.
12. Completion of special projects undertaken in the context of the student's high school curriculum or in conjunction with special school events, projects or programs.
13. Academic accomplishments in light of the student's life experiences and special circumstances.
14. Location of the student's secondary school and residence.
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, SAT Reasoning or ACT scores, and SAT Subject scores, while at San Diego, Berkeley, and Los Angeles, academic achievement is examined in the context of the school and the surrounding community, known as a holistic review. Race, gender, national origin, and ethnicity have not been used as UC admission criteria since the passing of Proposition 209.
Source: Wikipedia
