California is a newer state, so it isn’t like Massachussetts or other northeast states which has had time to build up a reputation. I’d assume MA & CA are the two states with the best higher educational system.
I was once told that an average UC university is about the same as the best university in most states, and that their best public university (UC Berkeley) is world class. At the same time California has world class private universities like Stanford and Caltech.
So what made California so successful in higher education, especially compared to other large states like Texas or Florida?
Head to international rankings and you find Cal Berkeley at number 8.
So they are doing fine. The challenge is that they are stuck with having increase the number of full fare international students to balance the books. This reduces the seats for Californians, whose taxes are paying for at least some of the school’s operations.
California has a large population and tax base. That gives it the assets to create a top quality university system.
California also has a geographic advantage. It’s located far enough away from other major universities that it minimizes competition with them. So it can recruit “local” students throughout the western states.
And California is a big state - the eight Ivy League colleges, while spread out over seven states, are all encompassed in an area that’s smaller than the state of California.
Texas or Florida have the same thing but their educational system doesn’t compare to California. Large population, large tax base, geographically isolated from other major universities (both being in the south surrounded by small states), physically large state (at least Texas is).
Yes. It may be tough to believe for some, but California wasn’t always associated with high poverty rates, high taxes, and dysfunctional government. Once upon a time, people and businesses flocked to California for economic opportunity, and the state had loads of money to spend.
I don’t think it is relevant how California is doing right now as the California educational system has been world class for years.
Having said that, California is doing fairly well now. They have a budget surplus and are creating jobs. Plus California is a world leader in biotechnology, IT, entertainment, etc. Which begs the question is that a cause of, consequence of or unrelated to their educational system.
Before Prop13. And judging from the state of the freeways I drive on, people are flocking here now. I wish some would flock someplace else.
California really cared about higher education, and made it a priority. And, for whatever reason, we don’t have the density of world class private schools Massachusetts has. Yeah, we have Stanford and CalTech - but Cambridge beats that in with two schools 100x closer together than these two schools. Not to mention Tufts, Brandeis, Northeastern, BU, etc., etc.
As for the tertiary schools (Cal State system) - a fair number of our PhDs who did not get a faculty position at a UC school LIKE living here in California, so they often stick around and choose to teach at the Cal State schools. They don’t have the same opportunity for research, but it lets them be employed in their field.
To the extent the question is, why does USNWR rank UC schools so highly, presumably the place to look for answers is USNWR. Other bodies rank them differently: Forbes, which purports to measure student outcomes, rates them lower, while the Washington Monthly, which rates research and certain social outcomes, rates them higher.
If I had to guess, I would think that selectivity matters, noting that Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, and Irvine are the most selective of the UCs. By and large, academically weaker students don’t go to the UCs at all, they go into the Cal State system. Other states don’t necessarily divide their universities in such a way, so their ratings reflect a different overall academic population.
I’ve lived in lots of states, and most of them had this kind of two tier (or three tier) system also. In Illinois there was a big difference between the U of I and the more local state schools. Louisiana was similar. California has more top schools because of its size, but the hierarchy is there all over the country.
And conversely: We once had a very healthy amount budgeted for education (among other things too, like libraries and fixing potholes). That was then.
As I understand the history (I was rather young at the time), California was a pioneer in the field of getting higher education to the masses. If I understand it right, California was a leading pioneer in the institution of having nearly-free two-year (lower-division) Community Colleges that nearly everybody could attend. The history, in one form or another, goes back to 1907, with the CC system formally established in 1967. Yes, under Governor Ronald Reagan.
Proposition 13 in 1978 largely trashed that and much else in California. Now, our schools have to hold the proverbial bake sales to buy textbooks and lightbulbs.
I came to Berkeley from Los Angeles in 1969. The Bay Area of 1969 was so much more fabulously beautiful than Los Angeles!
The Bay Area of 1969 was also much nicer than the Bay Area of 1979. It was already getting more congested with traffic, freeways, and smog.
I left the area from 1980 to 1984, and then left again in 1989. My last day living in the area, it was smoggy and my throat hurt just like growing up in Los Angeles.
Since then, the air has gotten cleaner with all the pollution controls. But it’s getting more and more crowded. And the roads and schools are getting more and more crowded. And they are having to hold more and more bake sales to buy textbooks and lightbulbs.
Not sure how Texas fits in, but USNWR ranks the University of Florida 14th among public universities, just a few spots behind the UC block (though not Berkeley.)
I suspect that in the case of Florida, it’s mostly about newness. In 1950, California had nearly five times the population of Florida; today, the figure is less than double. We also tended to concentrate resources in a few really huge universities rather than building lots of smaller ones, as California has. UCF,* FIU and UF are among the ten largest university campuses in the country.
If you look at the change in rankings after about 1960, when space and tourist dollars started coming to Florida and the state university system started turning out astrophysics grads as well as agriculture grads, the picture is more complete I think.
*UCF is now the largest university in the country even though it has only existed since 1968.
