University of California

University of California

Motto	Fiat lux (Latin)
Motto in English	Let there be light
Type	Public research university system
Established	March 23, 1868; 156 years ago (March 23, 1868)
Endowment	$29.5 billion (2024)[1]
Budget	$51.4 billion (2023–2024)[2]
President	Michael V. Drake
Academic staff	25,400 (March 2024)[2]
Administrative staff	173,300 (March 2024)[2]
Students	295,573 (Fall 2023)[3]
Undergraduates	233,272 (Fall 2023)[3]
Postgraduates	62,229 (Fall 2023)[3]
Location	Oakland (Office of the President) , California , United States 37°48′8″N 122°16′17″W / 37.80222°N 122.27139°W / 37.80222; -122.27139
Campus	10 campuses under direct control (nine with undergraduate and graduate schools, one professional/graduate only), one affiliated law school, one national laboratory
Colors	Blue   Gold[4]
Website	universityofcalifornia.edu

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 centers abroad.^[5] The system is the state's land-grant university.^[6]

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, Santa Cruz, and San Diego are considered Public Ivies, making California the state with the most universities in the nation to hold the title.^[7][8] 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.^[9]

The system's ten campuses have a combined student body of 295,573 students, 25,400 faculty members, 173,300 staff members and over two million living alumni.^[2] Its newest campus in Merced opened 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 University of California College of the Law located in San Francisco is legally affiliated with UC and shares its name but is otherwise autonomous. 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. UC is governed by a Board of Regents whose autonomy from the rest of the state government is protected by the state constitution.^[10] The University of California also manages or co-manages three national laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).^[11]

The University of California was founded on March 23, 1868, and operated in Oakland, where it absorbed the assets of the College of California before moving to Berkeley in 1873.^[12][13] It also affiliated itself with independent medical and law schools in San Francisco. Over the next eight decades, several branch locations and satellite programs were established across the state. 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 became Berkeley's first chancellor^{[14][15][16][17]} and Raymond B. Allen became the first chancellor of UCLA.^[18] However, the 1951 reorganization was stalled by resistance from Sproul and his allies,^[19] 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.^[20] At that time, chancellors were appointed for additional campuses and each was granted some degree of greater autonomy.^[21]