Education in California
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The California education system consists of a full range of public and private schools in California, from the University of California system, to well-known private colleges, to an extensive network of secondary and primary education schools.
[edit] Universities and colleges
The preeminent state research university is the University of California (UC), which employs more Nobel Prize laureates than any other institution in the world and is considered the world's finest public university system. The nine general UC campuses are in Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, Davis, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Irvine, Riverside, and Merced. The University of California, San Francisco, teaches only graduate health-sciences students, and the Hastings College of Law, also in San Francisco, is one of UC's four law schools. The UC system is intended to accept students from the top 12.5% of college-bound students, and provide most graduate studies and research. The University of California also administers two national laboratories directly for the United States Department of Energy: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The university indirectly manages Los Alamos National Laboratory through Los Alamos National Security, LLC.
The California State University (CSU) system is also considered one of the better educational systems in the world. With over 400,000 students, the CSU system is the largest university system in the United States. It is intended to accept the top one-third (1/3) of high school students. The universities within CSU are primarily intended for undergraduate education, although many of the larger campuses, such as CSU Long Beach, CSU Fullerton, CSU Fresno, San Diego State, and San José State, are becoming more research oriented, especially in applied sciences. A marked change and a shift from the Kerr Master Plan of 1960 is to begin in 2007 as the CSU will now begin granting doctoral level degrees (Ed.D.) in education. Kevin Starr (the State Librarian) and others have argued that this small change is the beginning of a larger reorganization of higher education in California.
The California Community Colleges system provides lower division "General Education" courses, whose credit units are transferable to the CSU and UC systems, as well as vocational education, remedial education, and continuing education programs. It awards certificates and associate degrees. It is composed of 109 colleges organized into 72 districts, serving a student population of over 2.9 million.
Notable private universities and colleges include Stanford University, the University of Southern California (USC), the University of San Francisco (USF), Santa Clara University, St. Mary's College, the University of the Pacific, the Claremont Colleges, Occidental College and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) (which administers the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA).
California has hundreds of other private colleges and universities, including many religious and special-purpose institutions. This leads to many unique entertainment and educational opportunities for residents. For example, Southern California, with one of the highest densities of post-secondary institutions in the world, has a very large base of classically-trained vocalists that compete in large choir festivals. In the Bay Area and near Los Angeles, there are numerous art and film schools, including the California College of the Arts and the CalArts Institute.
[edit] Primary and secondary schools
Public secondary education consists of high schools that teach elective courses in trades, languages and liberal arts with tracks for gifted, college-bound and industrial arts students. They accept students from roughly age 14 to 18, with mandatory education ceasing at age 16. In many districts, junior high schools or middle schools teach electives with a strong skills-based curriculum, for ages from 11 to 13. Elementary schools teach pure skills, history and social studies, with optional half-day kindergartens beginning at age 5. Mandatory full-time instruction begins at age 6.
State mandates that fourth grade students are taught about the history of California, including the role of the early California missions; most schools implement this by requiring students to complete a California 4th Grade Mission Project.
California's public educational system is supported by a unique constitutional amendment that requires 40% of state revenues to be spent on education.
