UC was to select from among the top one-eighth of the state’s high school graduating classes. The plan reaffirmed UC’s mission as the state’s primary academic research institution. They developed the California Master Plan for Higher Education, which outlined three college tracks. In the 1960s, UC system leaders and the State Department of Education anticipated a spike in college enrollment due to the baby boomer generation approaching college age. Davis is renowned for its agricultural programs and it’s among the best schools in the nation to study winemaking and the viticultural arts. It traces its roots to 1908 when it was known as University Farm, established as a research and science-based extension of the original UC in the Bay Area.
Next came UC Davis, added to the UC system as a full campus in 1959. In 1919, the University of California expanded south, to the burgeoning city of Los Angeles, taking over a piece of a state institution, the Normal School, that had been founded in 1881 to educate teachers. The flagship campus started in Oakland and in 1873, moved next door to Berkeley. California had become a state less than two decades earlier, in 1850. At its founding in 1868, state and higher ed leaders envisioned the first University of California as an institution that could provide an accessible and practical education for a broad range of residents. UC has been a model of public higher education for more than 150 years.