The history of public education in California goes back at least to the 1790s, when the governor of the Spanish colony assigned retired soldiers to open one-room schools at the Franciscan mission settlements of San Jose, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, San Diego, and Monterey. Most of these schools, and others opened during the next three decades, were short-lived, however. During the 1830s, a few more schools were established for Spanish children, including girls, who were taught needlework. Easterners and Midwesterners who came to California in the 1840s laid the foundation for the state's present school system. The first American school was opened in an old stable at the Santa Clara mission in 1846, and the following year a schoolroom was established in the Monterey customhouse. San Francisco's first school was founded in April 1848 by a Yale graduate, Thomas Douglass, but six weeks later, caught up in Gold Rush fever, he dropped his books and headed for the mines. Two years after this inauspicious beginning, the San Francisco city council passed an ordinance providing for the first free public school system in California. Although the first public high school was opened in San Francisco in 1856, the California legislature did not provide for state financial support of secondary schools until 1903.
The state's first colleges, Santa Clara College (now the University of Santa Clara), founded by Jesuits, and California Wesleyan (now the University of the Pacific), located in Stockton, both opened in 1851. A year later, the Young Ladies' Seminary (now Mills College) was founded at Benicia. The nucleus of what later became the University of California was established at Oakland in 1853 and moved to nearby Berkeley in 1873. Subsequent landmarks in education were the founding of the University of Southern California (USC) at Los Angeles in 1880 and of Stanford University in 1885, the opening of the first state junior colleges in 1917, and the establishment in 1927 of the Department of Education, which supervised the vast expansion of the California school system in the years following.
California ranks first among the states in enrollment in public schools and in institutions of higher learning. In 2000, 76.8% of Californians age 25 and older were high school graduates. Some 26.6% had obtained a bachelor's degree or higher.
The total enrollment for fall 1999 in California's public schools stood at 6,038,589. Of these, 4,336,687 attended schools from kindergarten through grade eight, and 1,701,902 attended high school. Minority students made up approximately 63% of the total enrollment in public elementary and secondary schools in 2001. Total enrollment was estimated at 6,239,539 in fall 2000 and expected to reach 6,357,000 by fall 2005. Enrollment in nonpublic schools in fall 2001 was 619,067. Expenditures for public education in 2000/01 were estimated at $39,026,563.
As of fall 2000, there were 2,556,598 students enrolled in institutions of higher education. In the same year California had 419 degree-granting institutions. In 1997, minority students comprised 49.3% of total postsecondary enrollment. The University of California has its main campus at Berkeley and branches at Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles (UCLA), Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz. The Hastings College of Law is also part of the UC system. The California state college and university system is not be confused with the University of California. California's 23 state universities include those at Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose; locations of state colleges include Bakersfield, San Bernardino, and Stanislaus. Privately endowed institutions with the largest student enrollments are the University of Southern California (USC) and Stanford University. Other independent institutions are Occidental College in Los Angeles, Mills College at Oakland, Whittier College, the Claremont consortium of colleges (including Harvey Mudd College, Pomona College, and Claremont McKenna College), and the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena. California has 16 Roman Catholic colleges and universities, including Loyola Marymount University of Los Angeles.
The California Student Aid Commission administers the California Guaranteed Student Loan Program and the State Graduate Fellowship Program. All recipients must have been California residents for at least 12 months.