C. Judson King. (2018). The University of California: Creating, Nurturing, and Maintaining Academic Quality in a Public-University Setting
150 years following its founding in 1868, the University of California is regarded by many as the most successful and highly respected public research university in the world. In The University of California: Creating, Nurturing, and Maintaining Academic Quality in a Public University Setting published by the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), former Berkeley and University of California provost and former Center director Judson King explores and analyzes the factors that have been most important for that success, what makes UC tick, and what approaches have made it tick best.
Patricia Pelfrey. (2004). A Brief History of the University of California. (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press
A concise book that tells the absorbing story of the development of one of the greatest public institutions in the world. Beginning with the land grant that established a university in California, the accessible narrative takes the reader through the difficulties and triumphs of the institution as it rose to the peak of scientific and scholarly stature, where it stands today.
John Aubrey Douglass. (2007). The California Idea and American Higher Education. Stanford University Press. 2nd Edition.
The author traces the social, political, and economic forces that established and funded an innovative, uniquely tiered, and geographically dispersed network of public campuses in California. This influential model for higher education, "The California Idea," created an organizational structure that combined the promise of broad access to public higher education with a desire to develop institutions of high academic quality.
Neil Smelser. (2014). Wanderlust in Academia. Center for Studies in Higher Education eScholarship
Smelser reflects on a life and career that followed multiple paths: teaching and research in UC Berkeley’s Department of Sociology; service to the campus and the University of California as a whole in the Academic Senate and beyond; and national service to the profession of sociology and to the world of foundations and public policy.