The University of California system consists of 10 different campuses spread throughout the state: Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz. They also offer numerous courses online. This university system has more than 220,000 students and more than 170,000 faculty and staff. Different campuses offer different degrees, both undergraduate and graduate, and certificate programs. For example, while the Berkeley campus has the optometry program in the UC system, the Davis campus has the only veterinary medicine program.
Stanford University, located in Stanford, California, was founded in 1891. This Ivy League university has seven schools offering graduate and/or undergraduate programs: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Humanities & Sciences, Business, Education, Law and Medicine. Students at Stanford can compete in 35 varsity sports, including football, fencing and cross-country, and 20 club sports, such as skiing and squash. Stanford hosts about 630 organized student groups on campus, 35 of which are recognized religious organizations, in which the university's more than 10,000 students can participate.
The state of California has a system of 112 community colleges throughout its borders, serving more than 2.9 million students annually. These colleges, which are divided into 72 districts, provide affordable post-secondary-education options. Students at different colleges can select from several majors and degree programs, such as an Associate of Science degree in horticulture at the Antelope Valley College and an Associate of Science degree in dental hygiene at Taft College. Most students at these state community colleges earn Associate of Arts degrees.
The University of Southern California in Los Angeles is home to about 37,000 students. Undergraduate students can choose from more than 50 majors in the humanities, including jazz studies and landscape architecture, as well as from around 100 majors in the social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. USC has a large international student population; in fact, it enrolls more international students than any other university in the U.S. This research university has two campuses: the main University Park campus and the Health Sciences campus, which is home to the university's medical school, school of pharmacy and several teaching hospitals.