What's the difference between the UC and the CSU university systems in California?

Answer 1

I attended a CSU college for my bachelor's and a UC university for my master's. The difference I found was cost -- the UC system is quite a bit more expensive. Here is Wikipedia's explanation:

Both university systems are California publicly funded higher education institutions.

According to the California Master Plan for Higher Education (1960), both university systems may confer Bachelors or Master's degrees as well as professional certifications, however only the University of California has the authority to issue Ph.D degree (Doctor of Philosophy) and professional degrees in the fields of law, medicine, veterinary, and dentistry. As a result of recent legislation (SB 724), the California State University may now offer the Ed.D degree (also known as the Doctor of Education or "education doctorate degree") to its graduate students as well as certain types of professional doctorate degrees (for instance, audiology, etc.). Additionally, the California State University offers Ph.D degree (Doctor of Philosophy) as a "joint degree" in combination with other institutions of higher education, including "joint degrees" with the University of California and accredited private universities. This is why, for instance, San Diego State can qualify as a "Research University with high research activity" [1] by offering 16 doctoral degrees.

The California State University (CSU) attempt is to accept applicants from the top 1/3 of California high schools. The University of California (UC) attempts to accept the top 12.5%. In an effort to maintain a 60/40 ratio of upper division students to lower division students and to encourage students to attend a California community college first, both university systems give priority to California community college transfer students. The state, which funds all three institutions, encourages this because the cost of educating a student through a community college is less.

While historically the requirements for admission to the CSU have been less stringent, due to changing demographics, campuses such as San Luis Obispo, Pomona, San Diego, Long Beach, and Humboldt have been forced to turn away students who would otherwise be CSU-eligible. In addition to the above campuses, Chico, Fullerton, Northridge, San Marcos, and Sonoma are considered impacted. This means more students apply to these universities than the campuses can accommodate. Because of this these campuses have higher admission standards than the CSU minimum. Unlike UC, Cal State admissions are based more on GPA and SAT/ACT scores than other factors such as admission essays. In spite of the outline of the Donahue Higher Education Act many CSU campuses are in fact more selective than some UC campuses.

There are 23 CSU campuses and 10 UC campuses representing 414,000 and 191,000 students respectively. The cost of CSU tuition is approximately half that of UC. Thus, the CSU system has been commonly referred to by California residents as "The People's University."

Answer 2

UC schools are research universities -- meaning that the faculty are there to do two things: teach and research. All of them are highly ranked an selective. Berkeley and UCLA are among the best universities in the US.

CSU schools are less selective. The faculty are not expected to do the same level of research.

You can get a good education at a CSU school. You can get a great education at a UC school.

Answer 3

The most obvious of which are the requirements to get into the schools. There's others, but they don't come to mind real quick