UCLA started calling itself UCLA in 1927, but it didn’t become a separate university with its own governance until 1951. It was a sub-branch of Berkeley until then. For that quarter of a century, it was the University of California at Los Angeles and it had a provost who reported to Berkeley and all of its academic issues were controlled by Berkeley. Needless to say, the boosters of Southern California were not happy about this, and eventually had the clout to break the Berkeley monopoly on control of the system, thus leading to the creation of all of the separate UCs.
Toland became “the Medical Department of the University of California” in the 1870s when the University of California was nothing but the one university, based in Berkeley. It stayed that way until the 1950s when it too was spun off as its own separate administrative body. The only reason that Berkeley never created a medical school is because it already had the best one going at UCSF.
It depends what you mean CU123. If you are referring to quality of education, I disagree. You can get as good an education at a top public university as you can at a top private university. If you are referring to campus feel and experience, then it varies. First of all, public universities do not necessarily have much in common with each other. Cal and Michigan are very different in terms of campus culture and feel. In terms of private universities, Brown, Chicago and Dartmouth do not have much in common with Michigan, but Cornell, Northwestern and Penn do.
True but Harvard and UCLA have virtually nothing in common. You can get a great education at any state flagship but the look and feel including the student body will be very different from the top small private colleges. Student/faculty ratio being a large part of that, not to mention sports. The graduation rate also says a lot about the student body admitted to the school, large universities don’t have 95%+ graduation rates. Also I used the word college not university. Cornell, Penn, and NW are all undergraduate universities which does make them more like the large public universities but still quite different. Cal and Michigan are much more alike than Penn and Michigan.
“True but Harvard and UCLA have virtually nothing in common.”
Obviously. I am not sure there are many who would dispute that.
“You can get a great education at any state flagship but the look and feel including the student body will be very different from the top small private colleges.”
Again, it depends on the schools. Like I said, you will not be able to distinguish between the Cornell or Penn student bodies and the Michigan or UVa student bodies.
“Student/faculty ratio being a large part of that.”
That is actually not the case. The reason why you think that is because most private universities do not include thousands of graduate students from their student to faculty ratios. Public universities, on the other hand, always include graduate students in their calculations. That is why several private universities claim to have ratios of 5:1 or 6:1 or 7:1, while most top public universities have ratios of 15:1 or 16:1. But in virtually all cases, if private universities include graduate students like public universities do, their ratios would be 10:1 or higher.
“Cal and Michigan are much more alike than Penn and Michigan.”
Actually, the opposite is true. Michigan and Penn are more alike than Michigan and Cal. Cal and Michigan are very different from each other.