The other thread about the US education system (or non-system, rather) reminded me of something I was curious about. California seems to have two entirely seperate public universities, UC and CalState, both of which are huge. I’m only familiar with New York, which has the rather enourmous SUNY system, so what exactly are the differences between the two systems? Were they founded at seperate times? Do they have significantly different political structures or something? Any people advocating merging the systems or splitting them into smaller ones?
There are three university systems in California, the Universities of California, the California State Universities, and the California State Colleges. Each of them has many campuses. Only the Universities of California are allowed to have Ph.D. programs. Only the Universities of California and the California State Universities are allowed to have master’s programs. The California State Colleges have only bachelor’s programs.
The state university program was reorganized in the 1960’s into its present form, mostly under the direction of Clark Kerr. He was head of the University of California at Berkeley and then head of the entire University of California system. He’s still alive, incidentally, although he lost his job by irritating Ronald Reagan when he was governor. I learned these facts from The Big Test by Nicholas Lemann.
One more interesting fact. The University of California at Berkeley is called “Berkeley” by people outside of California. The people there though always call it “California” or just “Cal.”
By “California State College,” I think you mean the community colleges, right?
Where does Caltech fit into all this or are you only talking about public universities?
We’re only talking about the state-run universities and colleges, so let’s not bother with private places like Caltech. Are the names of the lowest level places not something like California State College at X, Monty? You live in California, so you could undoubtedly explain this better.
Absolutely, positively untrue. I grew up in California. We all called it Berkeley. All my friends who still live in Cali call it Berkeley. Calling it Cal is purely a Bay Area/NoCal deal.
The California State University system with 23 campuses (Cal State Hayward, Cal State Long Beach, etc.), is not the same thing as the California Community College system (Chabot College, City College of San Francisco, DeAnza College, etc.).
The California State Universities offer four-year college degrees.
From the California Community College FAQ:
The generally accepted “heirarchy” of higher education in California is University of California (highest level, most competitive, offers advanced and professional degrees, has highest level of faculty, with some schools, like Berkeley and UCLA, considered among the finest universities in the country); then California State Universities (offer standard four-year undergraduate college experience); and finally the Community College system, for people who aren’t quite ready for a four-year college or want more specific technical or vocational degrees.
Monty, that isn’t what he means. Community colleges are not the CSC and can only offer Associates. I think that Wendell has been misled by a source. The California State College system became the California State University and Colleges system in 1972. Mostly just referred to as CSU.
So to answer Wendell’s question, the lowest places are actually the community colleges, which have names like Fullerton College or Cypress College…basically x College. The CSU system is things like CSU at x, and the UC system is UC at x.
The University of California is controlled by its Board Of Regents, appointed by the Governor. Full academic program, PhD, Post Doc and the whole schmear. Usually called “UC XXXXXX” or whatever.
The California State University System is controlled by the Board Of Trustees. I think that no PhD programs are available from State Universities. Usually called “Cal State XXXXXX” or whatever.
The Community College System consists of two year schools, undergrad only. Usually called “XXXXXXX Community College.”
Neurotik writes:
> Absolutely, positively untrue. I grew up in California. We all
> called it Berkeley. All my friends who still live in Cali call it
> Berkeley. Calling it Cal is purely a Bay Area/NoCal deal.
O.K., my source was a person who lived in Berkeley. When he said that “everyone here calls it Cal,” I assumed that he meant everyone in California. He didn’t tell me that there were differences about what people in other parts of California call it. I’ll chastize him severely next time I see him.
Wendell, your friend is just plain wrong. I grew up ten minutes from the Berkeley campus and got my bachelor’s from there. “Cal” and “Berkeley” are both frequently used. No one ever calls it “California.”
The reason why it’s called “Cal” is that it was the original “University of California.” All the other U.C.s were added later and are considered “campuses” of the University of California.
I’m still confused by the “California State College” system. I’ve never heard of such a thing.
By the way, it’s New York that’s the anomaly, with its CUNYs and SUNYs. Notice that most states have a University of [state] and a [state] State. (University of Kansas, Kansas State; University of Washington, Washington State, etc.) The difference is that California is so large that it needs more public universities.
“California State College” system I believe is the “California Community College” system. These are all two-year schools and they have district boundaries.
The Los Angeles Community College District is the largest one and has several campuses. A lot of these have names like “Pasadena City College”, “Santa Monica City College”, etc.
There are nine campuses of the University of California: Berkeley, Davis, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Irvine, and Riverside.
All of them go buy the name “University of California, XXXXXXX” with the exception of the Berkeley campus which insists on calling itself the “University of California at Berkeley”.
Street signs in Berkeley refer to the campus as “U.C.” The sports teams at Berkeley are called “Cal” or “California”, but that’s about the only time you hear that phraseology.
The President of the University of California’s office used to be in Berkeley, but it has since moved to Oakland.
UC San Francisco consists mostly of graduate programs in the health sciences. The Hastings School of Law is in San Francisco also and is part of the UC system.
When you get a diploma from a UC campus it just reads that you were a graduate of the University of California and then later on down the diploma there is wording “Given at XXXXX”
I dug both of mine out of my sock drawer to check.
New York State isn’t all that different from California.
[First, CUNY stands for City University of New York, so it is completely separate from the state system as far as I know.]
But NY also has the SUNY (State University at New York) at… schools (Buffalo, Binghamton, Stony Brook and a few others) that offer a full range of graduate school programs; and the SUNY College at… schools (Brockport, Cortland, Geneseo, etc.) that offer mainly undergraduate education along with some masters’ degrees. (Geneseo has a major Master of Library Science program, for example.)
Beneath them are the two-year SUNY College of Technology (or Agriculture and Technology) at… schools and a complete system of two-year community colleges.
So, conceptually speaking, New York’s system is very similar to California’s but with colleges that aren’t quite as well known. New York University, a private school, already had dibs on the state name. And weirdly, ivy league college Cornell is the state’s land grant university.
“California State College” is synonymous with “California State University”. No differences other than name - There were previously a few schools In the CSU system that were called colleges rather than universities, but those names have now all been standardized.
A very few doctoral programs are offered at CSU’s. For example SF State offers a doctorate in education, San Diego State a doctorate on zoology. Usually this in concert with an associated UC. I know within the last decade UC Berkeley was talking to SF State about offering a joint doctoral program in Biology, but SF State backed out of the deal ( the biology department there had some reservations ). The CSU’s are increasingly research-oriented instituitions themselves ( publish or perish is more common now than in the past )and some have fairly successful and well-regarded departments in that respect. But lack of doctoral students and a focus on undergraduate education, means that the UC system will always be the more prestigious and high-powered schools.
Generally speaking, if you are just getting a Bachelor’s degree, a UC is probably a better choice, if you can get in. It has a slightly higher perceived value. However if you intend to go on to get a graduate degree, it generally makes more sense to get a Bachelor’s at a cheaper CSU ( where you may well get, depending on department and school, a slightly better undergraduate education due to smaller class-size and more actual professor participation ) and then either get a Master’s at a CSU and go on to get a doctorate at a UC, or just go to a UC. Because ultimately most employers only care about where the advanced degree came from.
- Tamerlane
Another weird thing is that the University of California has a president who oversees the whole sytem and each campus has a chancellor.
With the California State University system, the names are reversed.
As long as we’re bringing up trivia, the University of California was originally in Oakland.
I’ve been told that the UC system was built to service the top ~12% of the high school graduating class. It certainly carries a higher reputation than the Cal State system. I think I counted five UC schools in the top 30 U.S. News’ college rankings a couple years ago. I think it was Berkeley, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Irvine, and San Diego. SD and SB have made a hard charge upward in the past 15 or so years. IIRC, SB and Irvine have recently had professors awarded portions of Nobel Prizes.
Spoiler and others answered the query put to me above. The Community Colleges here are named after either geographical or historical names. In these parts, there’s American River named after the river; down in Monterey, there’s Monterey Peninsula College named after the peninsula; and so on.
If anyone’s interested, beginning tomorrow, I attend UC-Davis.
I think whoever told you that got that from the rule that students who graduate in a certain percentage of the top of their high school class are gauraunteed a spot in one of the UC campuses.
Cardinal is correct; the original admission criterion was that you had to be in the top X% of California’s entire graduating high school class for that year. I don’t recall whether it was 12% or 10% or something else.
The rule gopher describes DOES NOT guarantee a spot in UC to anyone. The top 5% (more or less) of each graduating class is academically qualified to apply to UC, but there are other criteria.