The University of California (UC) is the state's largest system of higher education, with more than 170,000 faculty and staff teaching more than 220,000 students on 10 campuses. UC also manages three U.S. Department of Energy laboratories, operates five medical centers with clinical teaching programs, and has dozens of museums, concert halls, art galleries, botanical gardens, observatories and marine centers on its campuses. UC researchers have long been leaders in agriculture, medicine, the environment and technology, generating billions of dollars of economic activity in the state through their discoveries.

It Starts Here: UC at the Frontier (UC website)

The University of California was officially founded in 1868, when the state acquired the College of California in Oakland. That eight-year-old school taught agriculture, mining, and mechanical arts; the state passed the Organic Act and made the campus a “complete university” by including humanities in the curriculum. A medical school in San Francisco was added to the university system in 1873. Lick Observatory was obtained as a gift in 1874 and Hastings College of Law opened in 1878. UC maintains a time line of its own history showing acquisitions and the leaps in enrollment through the 1990s.

In 1879, the University of California was written into the state’s constitution as a public trust to be administered by the Board of Regents, an independent governing board. Article IX, Section 9 states that “the university shall be entirely independent of all political and sectarian influence and kept free therefrom in the appointment of its Regents and in the administration of its affairs.” Further, the Board of Regents has “full powers of organization and governance.”

By 1900, enrollment topped 2,600, and the first foreign student was admitted. A UC hospital was opened in San Francisco in 1917 (a school of medicine already existed). A milestone was reached in 1923 when UC led the world in combined undergraduate and postgraduate enrollment. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory got its start in 1931 when Dr. Ernest Lawrence needed a dedicated laboratory to house his cyclotron—an invention that would win him the Nobel Prize. Today, it is one of three Department of Energy National Laboratories run by UC.

The Board of Regents authored a 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, much of it approved by the state Legislature as the Donahoe Higher Education Act. This plan designated UC as the state’s primary academic research institution and gave it exclusive jurisdiction in public higher education for doctoral degrees (with two exceptions) and for instruction in law, medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine.

The plan also defined the missions of California’s state universities and community colleges and provided that the top one-eighth of high school graduates who are residents of California will be placed in the UC system as freshmen. The plan was reaffirmed by the Legislature in the 1970s and the 1980s. An expansion of the plan, bringing all levels of education from kindergarten through the universities, has been under consideration for several years.

The Cal Grant program provides student aid to ensure that high-performing students can attend the colleges of their choice, although in recent years, as fees have been forced up by budget constraints, the financial grants have been impacted as well.

Today, UC is comprised of 10 universities (the most recent campus in Merced opened in 2005), five medical centers, three affiliated national laboratories and a statewide agriculture and natural resources program. The number of students has grown from an enrollment of 38 students (all male) and 10 teachers in 1868 to 220,000 students today, supported by 170,000 faculty and staff.

A Brief History of the University of California (UC website)

The UC system is comprised of 10 university campuses: Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco (devoted exclusively to health sciences), Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz. These top-tier universities educate over 220,000 students each year. Each campus is headed and managed by a chancellor.

In addition, UC includes five teaching hospitals/medical centers providing a full range of health care services to millions of patients each year in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Davis, San Diego and Irvine; three national laboratories under the Department of Energy: Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos; and over 150 institutes, centers, bureaus and research laboratories all over the state.

UC’s governing body, the Board of Regents, has 26 members. Eighteen are appointed by the governor and approved by the state senate for staggered 12-year terms. In addition, one student is appointed for a one-year term. The other seven members are ex officio: the governor, lieutenant governor, speaker of the state assembly, superintendent of public instruction, the president and vice president of the Alumni Associations of UC, and the UC president, who is elected by the board. Two faculty members also sit on the board as non-voting members. The board meets six times a year.

The Board of Regents empowers an Academic Senate to exercise direct control over academic matters, such as approval of courses and curricula, degree requirements and conditions for admission. The board also operates 10 committees: on compliance and audits, compensation, educational policy, finance, governance, grounds and buildings, health services, investments, long range planning, and oversight of the Department of Energy Laboratories.

The Board of Regents elects the president of the university. The office of the president, headquartered in Oakland, is responsible for overall policy development, resource allocations and planning..

The Office of the President has expenditures of $22.67 billion for fiscal year 2011-2012. That includes all instructional support, programs and salaries, research, administration costs, student financial aid, operational costs, etc. at all 10 campuses, laboratories, five teaching hospitals and extramural programs. The state’s General Fund covers $2.37 billion of this, and other funds—research funds, special taxes, the state lottery, federal outlays, etc.—make up the rest.

Seventy-three percent of UC's revenue's are restricted, by law, by the source of funding, such as federal research grants. In 2011-12, 27% of that funding was from medical centers; 17% from sales, services and other auxillary funds such as museums, theaters, and UC Extension; and 18% from government contracts and grants; 7% from privates sources; and 2% from other sources.

The remaining 27% of unrestricted funds come from student fees (13%), the state General Fund (11%) and UC general funds (4%, which includes nonresident tuition, Department of Energy lab management fees and patent royalties).

UC spent its money in 2011-12 on academic salaries (30%), staff salaries (23%), equipment, utilities and other (18%), student financial aid (14%), and employee and retiree benefits (14%)

3-Year Budget (pdf)

How the Budget Works (University of California)

2012-13 UC Budget Request (pdf)

Student Fee Hikes

California has faced a budget crisis for the past few years resulting in cuts in many programs, including the UC system funding. To counter the cuts, UC has raised fees. UC claims that it’s done what it could; that staff has been laid off or furloughed, salaries reduced, offices downsized and other money-saving techniques employed. On campuses, classes have been dropped and class size increased, and some academic programs cut altogether. Still, the state support for UC that covers per student costs has decreased by 51% since 1990. In that time the student’s share of those costs has gone from 13% to 41%.

However, UC funding comes from many other sources, and not all of them are impacted by the state budget crisis. Property taxes, federal stimulus spending and other sources fill part of the gap. “The Legislature worked hard to increase state support for the University of California,” Darrell Steinberg, state Senate President Pro Tem wrote in a letter to the Board of Regents. “We provided more than $600 million in additional funding to backfill for cuts made in recent years while also funding for increased enrollment, class sections and vital student services. Consequently I am deeply concerned about the recently adopted fee increases. . . . Passing more costs on to students and families threatens to price more Californians out of a quality education. . . . It is essential that we change this dynamic.”

In the 2009-2010 school year, UC fees—which for all intents and purposes means tuition—suffered “a wallet-emptying 32% increase,” as a Los Angeles Times editorial put it. At UCLA, 50 student protesters took over a building while hundreds more carried signs and gathered outside, in protest of the fee hike.

Even after the Legislature restored $265 million to UC’s 2010-2011 budget, and even after federal stimulus money came in, fees were raised again by 8%. “UC fees have more than doubled in less than a decade,” the editorial went on. “Costs are rising so fast that California families cannot even plan for their children’s education.”

Will the increase in fees continue? In response to the most recent state budget in June 2011 which imposed a $650 million cut on UC, the Office of the President expressed deep disappointment: “Cuts of this magnitude inevitably will drive up tuition for public university students and their families.”

Budget News (University of California)

Darrell Steinberg Letter (pdf)

The Rising Cost of a UC, CSU Education (Sacramento Bee graphics)

Fees or Tuition, It's Too Much (Los Angeles Times editorial)

UC Statement on Budget Plan

UC Irvine Medical Center Problems

The UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange County has been a magnet for controversy for 16 years. The biggest scandal occurred in 1995, when fertility doctors at the Center for Reproductive Health were accused of stealing patients’ eggs and implanting them in other patients without notifying either party.

In 1999 and 2000, a director at the center’s Willed Body Program was caught selling off parts of cadavers (spines, specifically, and they fetched $5,000 each) and performing unauthorized autopsies. A similar program at UCLA Medical Center was shut down in 2004 when a director and confederate were caught selling body parts for profit.

In 2005, UC Irvine Medical Center’s liver transplant program was shut down after Medicare suspended its funding and began an investigation. Irvine’s center was found to have the worst performance record of all liver transplant centers in the state. Doctors were turning down organs that were then sent elsewhere and transplanted successfully. Over a two-year span, 32 people awaiting transplants from UCI died. UC paid $7.5 million to settle lawsuits over the liver transplants, and the medical center’s chief resigned.

In 2008, UC Irvine Medical Center was placed under state supervision because of complaints focused on the anesthesiology department. Among other concerns, medical records were filled out in advance. Another review that year found that the center was not meeting standards in several areas, including infection control.

Poor oversight and systems that did not protect patients surfaced in a surprise inspection and nearly lost the center its Medicare funding in 2009, according to a 127-page report. Patient neglect, giving the wrong medication and other problems may have contributed to patient deaths. Investigators discovered that five patients at UCI had gotten overdoses due to untrained nurses. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services paid a surprise visit to UC Irvine Medical Center in October of that year, and issued an 85-page report outlining poor oversight and further mistakes by doctors, nurses and pharmacists.

Over the years, in answer to these reports, changes in procedures were immediately implemented. Staff changes, daily audits, retraining and other procedural changes resolved problems, at least until the next surprise inspection.

Report Finds Lax Oversight of UC Cadaver Programs (by Alan Zarembo, Los Angeles Times)

UCI's Liver Transplant Programs (Aitken, Aitken, Cohn law firm)

Federal Regulators Identify New Problems at UCI Hospital (by Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times)

UCI Medical Center Forced to Rectify Problems Found by Medicaid (by Suzanne Casazza, New University)

The Loyalty Oath

At the onset of the Cold War, in 1949, the UC Board of Regents decided that all university employees must sign an oath denying membership or belief in the Communist Party or any organization advocating the overthrow of the United States government.

The oath said, in part:

"I hereby formally acknowledge my acceptance of the position and salary named, and also state that I am not a member of the Communist Party or any other organization which advocates the overthrow of the Government by force or violence, and that I have no commitments in conflict with my responsibilities with respect to impartial scholarship and free pursuit of truth."

The Regents said it merely codified what had already been established as university policy during the previous decade.

Faculty, other employees and students resisted and a battled ensued over the next three years that ended with a decision by the California Supreme Court.

Just a few months earlier, anti-communist crusading Republican State Senator Jack Tenney, in his eighth year as chairman of the Senate Un-American Activities Committee, introduced 13 bills in reaction to suspicions that communists were infiltrating government.

Tenney's bills never got past the Assembly, but shortly thereafter (in March) the UC Regents introduced their loyalty oath. By year's end, faculty and staff were actively opposing the oath. While U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy was making his sensational (and sensationally false) accusation on the national stage that more than 200 “card carrying Communists” were working in the State Department, the Regents set an April 30 deadline for its “sign or get out” policy.

Two issues dominated the controversy: communists and control of the university. The Regents and the employees clashed repeatedly and by mid-year, the university had moved to fire a number of faculty and staff.

On June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea and the public grew less responsive to pleas for academic freedom.

On August 31, fired UC faculty members sued for reinstatement, claiming the oath violated tenure, that the university was required by the Constitution to be free from “political or sectarian influence” and that as state employees they were exempt from having to sign any oaths.

The next month, Governor Earl Warren, an early opponent of the oath (and future civil liberties icon as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court), supported the Legislature's passage of a loyalty oath for all state employees.

In April 1951, the state Court of Appeals ruled against the Regents. The Regents appealed to the state Supreme Court, but in the meantime rescinded the oath while retaining its anti-communist policy.

In October 1952, the Supreme Court upheld the ruling against the Regents and ordered the university to rehire fired non-signers of the oath.

Dwight Eisenhower was elected president in 1952, the Korean War armistice was signed in 1953 and Senator McCarthy's anti-communist crusade peaked in 1954 with the Army-McCarthy hearings that ended in his December censure by the U.S. Senate.

The Loyalty Oath Controversy, University of California 1949-1951 (Berkeley Digital Library SunSite)

Suggestions for reform in the last two years have been driven mostly by budget constraints placed on the UC system by the state Legislature. Anticipating a budget shortfall of $900 million in 2011, for example, UC’s Office of the President imposed internal cuts totaling $50 million, or 17% of its budget, on top of a similar amount cut since 2007-2008. To do this, they’ve eliminated programs that duplicate work or are not strictly necessary, reduced travel and limited equipment purchases and upgrades.

The governor has proposed an amendment to California’s constitution that would protect the level of funding from the state’s General Fund that goes to UC. However, as California’s Legislative Analyst Office points out, the proposed amendment ignores other sources of revenue (like student fees), excludes community colleges, and creates a link between UC and prison funding. LAO believes the proposal would make budgeting for higher education more difficult, not less.

President Mark Yudof has proposed changes in how his office and the UC campuses are funded, claiming these would improve budget transparency and give campuses more input over centralized programs and services, which all agree are desirable outcomes. Under Yudof’s proposal, each campus would keep revenue that comes from these centralized programs and services, sending only a small amount back to UCOP. The current model funnels all revenue to the office of the president to be redistributed using complex formulas.

2010-11 Budget: Higher Education (Legislative Analyst’s Office)

Systemwide Office to Cut Operating Costs (by Carolyn McMillan, UC Newsroom)

Will Higher Education Become an Elite Privilege?

Who cares? That’s the implication in a Mother Jones editorial. “After all,” author Kevin Drum says, “smart kids go to college, and smart kids are going to earn more regardless.” Drum cited a recent survey that found that going to elite colleges did not result in greater financial earnings. Drum himself graduated from the decidedly un-elite California State University at Long Beach and wrote, “I did pretty well. . . . If you can only afford to go to a state university, don’t fret about it too much.”

Yes, Higher Education is Becoming an Elite Privilege

Zungazunga blogger Aaron Bady answered Kevin Drum directly, claiming that “Drum went to a state university that does not exist anymore. When he graduated from Cal State Long Beach in 1981, he paid $160 in fees.” According to Bady, Drum and others miss the point. The option of a cheaper school is disappearing. “We all need to open our eyes to the fundamental transformation of American society that it represents.”

“American higher education, in effect, is essentially working only for the rich,” wrote Sam Pizzigati in the blog TooMuch. He described how money from the rich—who once paid nearly three times the tax rate they do now—expanded higher education in the 1950s and 1960s by funding public universities. Children from working class families could attend college as “a viable option.”

“Now that viable option is disappearing . . . as lower tax revenues from wealthy taxpayers translate into state and federal budget cutbacks for two- and four-year public colleges.”

A CNN Money story confirms the fact: “College is becoming so expensive, it’s starting to hold them back. The crux of the problem; Tuition and fees at public universities, according to the College Board, have surged almost 130 percent over the last 20 years—while middle class incomes have stagnated.”

Is Harvard Worth It? (by Kevin Drum, Mother Jones)

Hyperbole (and Progressive Bloggers) Fail Me: The End of Public Higher Education (by Aaron Bady, zunguzungu)

How Did We Ever Get Higher Ed Backwards? (by Sam Pizzigati, Too Much)

Surging College Costs Price Out Middle Class (by Annalyn Censky, CNN Money)

No, Higher Education is Not an Elite Privilege

“Education Pays 2010,” a report from the College Board Advocacy and Policy Center, claims that many facets of life are improved by education, and going to college is well worth the expense and the loans. A person with a four-year degree has “earned enough by age 33 to compensate for being out of the labor force for four years, and for borrowing the full amount required to pay tuition and fees without any grant assistance.” Other benefits are mentioned: lower unemployment, better benefit packages at work and a healthier lifestyle for college grads. As of 2008, the number of students from lower-income homes who attended college was still steadily rising.

“The higher the education, the lower the unemployment rate—and the higher that median weekly earning,” wrote E.C. Thompson in his Where’s the Outrage blog. He posted graphs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to make his point. However, he opened his post with the caution that “The average teacher salary is about $42,000,” so someone who wants to teach AND go to Harvard for a PhD “might want to re-think your plan.”

The question of whether education is a privilege or a right is one Americans must decide “as a matter of public policy,” wrote Michelle Singletary in the Washington Post. She cited a Pew report that 75 % of the general public felt that college was too expensive, but also quoted President Barack Obama: “Every American will need to get more than a high school diploma.” The president wants the U.S. to reclaim the honor of having the most college graduates in the world.

“If going to college is a right and vital to our nation’s economic standing, then government will have to do more to make it affordable for all. If it’s a privilege, only the nation’s wealthiest families will one day be able to send their children to college.”

Education Pays Overview (College Board Advocacy & Policy Center)

Education Pays (Where’s the Outrage?)

Higher Education: Right or privilege? (by Michelle Singletary, Washington Post)

Robert C. Dynes, 2003-2008

Richard C. Atkinson, 1995-2003. Atkinson is known for his research on human memory and cognition, which had profound influence in both psychology and computer-assisted instructional advances. During his administration as president he established research initiatives that increased UC’s contribution to the state economy. He took office just after the Board of Regents voted to end use of ethnicity and race factors in deciding admission at UC schools. Atkinson presided over several programs that partnered with schools to raise academic achievements by disadvantaged students. He also challenged the use of SAT, and made significant changes in the way students are tested for college admission.

Jack W. Peltason, 1992-1995

David Pierpont Gardner, 1983-1992. Gardner persuaded Governor Deukmejian to increase the UC budget by 30% for one year and kicked off the biggest building project in UC’s history. During the last year of his presidency, though, budget crises forced him to freeze salaries and increase fees to meet the cuts.

David Stephen Saxon, 1975-1983

Charles Johnston Hitch, 1967-1975

Harry Wellman, 1967 (acting)

Clark Kerr, 1958-1967. Kerr was at the helm during the years of student demonstrations and unrest, and many blamed him for a lack of order. He was voted out of office in a controversial move by the Board of Regents.

Robert Gordon Sproul, 1930-1958. Sproul oversaw a huge expansion of the university system during his tenure. As president during the Depression, World War II and the postwar “baby boom,” he kept academic standards up and found private funding for research during the lean years. In the 1950s, he reorganized the administration to grant more autonomy to local campuses.

William Wallace Campbell, 1923-1930

David Prescott Barrows, 1919-1923

Benjamin Ide Wheeler, 1899-1919. Before accepting the office, Wheeler set conditions that increased the president’s power in appointments and in setting the direction of the university’s growth.

Martin Kellogg, 1893-1899

Horace Davis, 1888-1890. Davis was instrumental in keeping California loyal to the Union during the Civil War and served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Edward Singleton Holden, 1885-1888

William Thomas Reid, 1881-1885

John Le Conte, 1876-1881

John Le Conte, 1875-1876 (acting)

Daniel Coit Gilman, 1872-1875. Gilman left UC to become the first president of Johns Hopkins University and helped found the Johns Hopkins Medical School.

Henry Durant, 1870-1872. Durant is considered to be the first president of the University of California. He founded Contra Costa Academy in 1853, which trained students for his next venture, the College of California in Oakland. That school became the first campus of the University of California; it moved to Berkeley in 1873.

John Le Conte, 1869-1870 (acting)

Biographies (UC Berkeley archives)