University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley (commonly known as UC Berkeley or simply Cal) is a public research university located in the city of Berkeley, California, approximately 15 miles east of San Francisco across San Francisco Bay. Founded in 1868 as the flagship campus of the University of California, UC Berkeley is a public institution with a long history of academic excellence, groundbreaking research, and social and political activism. Since its earliest days, the university has maintained deep and consequential ties to San Francisco—ties forged through shared history, coordinated medical and professional education, and an economy that both cities help sustain. Berkeley has grown to instruct over 40,000 students in approximately 350 undergraduate and graduate degree programs and is often ranked among the top public universities in the United States.

Founding and Early History

The history of the University of California, Berkeley begins on October 13, 1849, with the adoption of the Constitution of California, which provided for the creation of a public university. On Charter Day, March 23, 1868, the signing of the Organic Act established the University of California, with the new institution inheriting the land and facilities of the private College of California—a private institution in Oakland founded by Andover and Yale alumnus Henry Durant—along with the federal funding eligibility of a public agricultural, mining, and mechanical arts college. Signed by President Lincoln in 1862, the Morrill Act provided for the capitalization of public universities by federal land grant.

With the completion of North and South Halls in 1873, the university relocated to its Berkeley location with 167 male and 22 female students. Women were soon admitted on equal footing: in 1874, the first woman graduated from the University of California—Rosa L. Scrivner, who earned a Ph.B in Agriculture—and Elizabeth Bragg became the first woman to receive a degree in Civil Engineering from an American university when she earned her degree at Berkeley in 1876.

Berkeley, California was named for Bishop George Berkeley and inspired by poetry—specifically his allusions to ancient Greece, the original "model" for the University of California as envisioned by its founders. The campus's physical form took shape through private philanthropy. Starting in 1891, Phoebe Apperson Hearst made several large gifts to Berkeley, endowing a number of programs, sponsoring an international architectural competition, and funding the construction of Hearst Memorial Mining Building and Hearst Hall. What is considered the historic campus today was the result of the 1898 "International Competition for the Phoebe Hearst Architectural Plan for the University of California," funded by William Randolph Hearst's mother and initially held in the Belgian city of Antwerp; eleven finalists were judged again in San Francisco.

The Flood donation—a bequest from the Cora Jane Flood estate—provided for the establishment of Berkeley's business school, then the College of Commerce and now the Haas School of Business, in 1898. It would be the country's first business school at a public university.

Berkeley's population tripled between 1900 and 1910, due to new neighborhoods created by the Key System and Southern Pacific electric rail lines, dynamic university growth, and San Francisco refugees from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. By the following decade, enrollment at Berkeley reached 10,000, making it one of the largest universities in the country.

Relationship with San Francisco

From its earliest years, the University of California maintained important academic and professional outposts directly within San Francisco. The most consequential of these was the development of what would eventually become the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). UCSF dates its founding to 1864, when South Carolina surgeon Hugh Toland founded a private medical school in San Francisco. The college prospered, and Toland sought to affiliate with the University of California, which had opened its campus in Berkeley in 1868. UC President Daniel Coit Gilman, who strongly supported science education, set a precedent for the young university by affiliating in 1873 with both Toland Medical College and the California College of Pharmacy.

The three Affiliated Colleges—also called UC departments—were located at various sites in San Francisco, and after several years there was strong interest in bringing them together. San Francisco Mayor Adolph Sutro donated 13 acres on a site overlooking Golden Gate Park—known today as Parnassus Heights—and the new Affiliated Colleges buildings opened in fall 1898.

UC's law school—the Hastings College of the Law—also opened in San Francisco, in the Old Pioneer Hall, on August 9, 1878, when John Norton Pomeroy, who had been chosen as the first Professor of Municipal Law, delivered his inaugural address. The law school at the University of California in San Francisco was the first in the state.

In 1964, what had been the UC medical enterprise in San Francisco gained full administrative independence as a campus of the UC system, headed by its own chancellor. Finally, in 1964 the institution obtained full administrative independence from Berkeley under the name University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, becoming the ninth campus in the University of California system and the only one devoted exclusively to the health sciences. Today, Berkeley retains a "comprehensive" graduate program and offers interdisciplinary graduate programs with the medical schools at the University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University.

Academic Profile and Research

In the 2026 edition of Best Colleges, University of California, Berkeley is ranked No. 15 in National Universities. It is also ranked No. 1 in Top Public Schools. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 33,469 (fall 2024), its setting is city, and the campus size is 1,232 acres. The student-faculty ratio at University of California, Berkeley is 18:1, and it utilizes a semester-based academic calendar.

The university has produced 107 Nobel laureates, more than any other public university in the world. A major research institution, it operates the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, the Energy Institute, the Cancer Research Laboratory, and the Space Sciences Laboratory; the system also operates (under federal contract) the nearby Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The campus is home to several museums including the University of California Museum of Paleontology, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Lawrence Hall of Science. The campus is also home to the University of California Botanical Garden, with more than 12,000 individual species.

The Bancroft Library, which has over 400,000 printed volumes and 70 million manuscripts, pictures, and maps, maintains special collections that document the history of the western part of North America, with an emphasis on California, Mexico and Central America. The Bancroft Library also houses the Mark Twain Papers, the Oral History Center, the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri, and the University Archives.

More than a century after its founding, UC Berkeley continues to provide broad access for students of all means—educating more federal Pell Grant recipients from low-income families than all eight Ivy League universities combined. The school's in-state tuition and fees are $17,721; out-of-state tuition and fees are $55,323.

The Free Speech Movement and Political Legacy

No event defined UC Berkeley's relationship to American political life more sharply than the Free Speech Movement of 1964–65. The Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley was a peaceful three-month effort by students and faculty that started in September 1964 after UC Berkeley banned political and social activism on university property. The university had banned political activism to mollify California's conservative political and business leaders, many of whom were financial donors to the university.

In the early 1960s, most student activism at UC Berkeley took place along a specific stretch of sidewalk at Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue, located near the school's south entrance and considered city property. Political and civil rights organizations across the spectrum commonly set up card tables to distribute literature and solicit donations for their causes.

In the fall of 1964, student activists, some of whom had traveled with the Freedom Riders and worked to register African American voters in Mississippi in the Freedom Summer project, set up information tables on campus and were soliciting donations for causes connected to the Civil Rights Movement. In 1964, Mario Savio and 500 fellow students marched on Berkeley's administration building to protest the university's order. After a stand-off with campus police, a temporary compromise was reached, but by then the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (FSM) had been born.

On December 2, 1964, approximately 1,000 students occupied an administration building called Sproul Hall, engaging in a massive act of civil disobedience. Close to 800 students were arrested, most of whom were transported about 25 miles by bus to Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, and released on their own recognizance after a few hours.

The movement began in mid-September 1964 and concluded in early January 1965 with the end of the university's restrictions on political discussions or content of speeches. The Free Speech Movement had long-lasting effects at the Berkeley campus and was a pivotal moment for the civil liberties movement in the 1960s. It was seen as the beginning of the famous student activism that existed on the campus in the 1960s, and continues to a lesser degree today. Earlier protests linked to Berkeley students had also touched San Francisco directly: protests against the House Committee on Un-American Activities meeting in San Francisco in 1960 had included an iconic scene as protesters were literally washed down the steps inside the Rotunda of San Francisco City Hall with fire hoses.

Berkeley's Role in the Bay Area Economy and Innovation

UC Berkeley occupies a central position in the economic and technological ecosystem of the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Located in downtown Berkeley, Skydeck is a research university startup accelerator that fosters entrepreneurial excellence among UC Berkeley company founders. As of July 2025, in 2025, Pitchbook ranked Berkeley #1 globally for the number of venture-funded startups its undergraduates and undergraduate alumni founded.

The campus continues to expand the dynamic ecosystem that fosters research and its translation into real world applications. Numerous programs deeply integrated into the research, educational and service activities of the university help incubate, accelerate and expand tech transfer and a strong pipeline of start-ups.

The university also actively analyzes and responds to broader Bay Area economic conditions. For decades, San Francisco has been renowned as a major tech hub, and UC Berkeley economists such as Professor Enrico Moretti have studied the Bay Area's evolving job market closely. The planned 36-acre Berkeley Space Center will provide research space for companies interested in collaborating with UC Berkeley and NASA scientists and engineers to generate innovations in aviation and space exploration.

Notable alumni who have shaped the Bay Area's technology industry include Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Inc., who graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in electrical engineering and computer sciences, and Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, who earned his Ph.D. in computer science from UC Berkeley. The "Light the Way" campaign, which concluded at the end of 2023, raised over $6.2 billion for the university, reflecting its deep philanthropic connections across the Bay Area and beyond.

UC Berkeley Extension also maintains a campus in downtown San Francisco, offering continuing education courses to working professionals and connecting the university's academic resources directly to the city's workforce.

See Also

• University of California, San Francisco
• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Berkeley, California
• Free Speech Movement
• San Francisco Bay Area