The research excellence of the University of California system is a tribute to California's Master Plan for Higher Education, which designed the nation's most effective method for building research universities, according to the author of a new study on American research universities.

Hugh D. Graham, a professor of American history at Vanderbilt University, said, "Building the University of California has been an achievement without parallel in the history of the world."

Graham and Nancy Diamond, an administrator at Goucher College, are the authors of a new book, "The Rise of American Research Universities: Elites and Challengers in the Postwar Era."

In a presentation to UC Regents on Thursday (June 19), Graham said that California's master plan established an environment that provided the right mix of "the conflicting values of competition and protection." He said, "Competition for the University of California meant competing against the nation's other leading universities, private as well as public, as well as competing with the UC system itself. Protection meant special designation and nurture as the state's research and doctoral-training institutions."

Moreover, "California almost alone has maintained the political will necessary to defend the system from degrading under attack," Graham said.

In their study, Graham and Diamond found that the University of California as a system leads the nation in research excellence and productivity among public universities. They cite the remarkable rise of UC's smaller, younger campuses as well as the success of its large, established ones.

In a ranking that combined three areas -- science, social science and the arts and humanities, the study concluded that the Berkeley campus is No. 1 and Santa Barbara No. 2, among public research institutions. All other UC general campuses are in the top 26.

Among public research universities, the study also found the following:

In science alone, the San Diego campus is No. 1 among public institutions followed by Berkeley and Irvine, ranking second and third, respectively. Two other UC campuses -- Santa Barbara and UCLA, ranking sixth and seventh, respectively — are in the top 10. In the social sciences, Santa Cruz is No. 1 among public institutions. Three other UC campuses were in the top 10: Riverside, Santa Barbara and Berkeley, ranking fourth, seventh and eighth, respectively. In the arts and humanities, Berkeley is No. 1, followed by No. 2 Santa Barbara among the public institutions. UCLA, Riverside and Santa Cruz also are in the top 10, ranking fourth, sixth and eighth, respectively. Four UC campuses are among the top 10 "rising stars" of public research universities. Santa Barbara is No. 1, followed by Riverside, Santa Cruz and Irvine, ranking fourth, fifth and seventh, respectively.

UC San Francisco, which was considered separately as a medical school, is No. 1 in federal funding among both public and private institutions, ahead of Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Washington and Yale.

UC President Richard C. Atkinson said the study by Graham and Diamond confirms the university's record of excellence, not just on one or two campuses but across all UC campuses.

Graham, speaking at a meeting at UC Irvine, said he became interested in measuring the research performance of universities while dean of research at the University of Maryland in the early 1980s. Business and government wanted to invest in university research as a way to help the nation maintain its economic competitiveness, but they didn't have a way to measure the results of their investment.

So Graham and Diamond designed a method to measure and compare institutional performance that was novel in three respects.

First, it excluded subjective data and information regarding reputation. Instead, it measured federal research dollars awarded, scientific and scholarly journal articles published and prestigious fellowships won in the arts and humanities.

Second, the survey compared data at the institutional level, rather than by discipline or department or school.

And third, the survey included a control for the size of the institution. To level the playing field between large and small campuses, the researchers divided the totals in each category by the number of faculty at each institution to get per faculty performance.

Graham said that UC clearly dominated the rankings. Factors contributing to UC's success include the distinctive and historic role of the Berkeley campus, which has been a "jewel in the crown" of the state's tripartite system of higher education.

Another factor is the "crucial validating role of UCLA," as the nation's first successful "second flagship." The success of UCLA vindicated the "one university" principle and paved the way for the rise of the younger campuses, Graham said.

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