The University of California is a system of 10 campuses, five medical centers and three affiliated national laboratories.

The Office of the President, located in Oakland CA, is the University’s headquarters.

UCOP supports campuses and students through systemwide funding and programs. It manages the University’s multi-billion dollar operations and investments. It oversees medical centers and national labs. It provides centralized labor relations and legal services. And it promotes the well-being of its diverse and large workforce through benefits and retirement programs.

The Office of the President coordinates activities that allow a complex and unique system to operate efficiently as one university, furthering its public interest, academic and research missions. It oversees and manages programs that serve the entire university system, allowing campuses to capture the savings and efficiencies that come from centralized operations.

• Academic Preparation and Outreach: provide academic support and tools for low-income and underrepresented-minority students along the K-12 continuum, manage and evaluate student and teacher preparation programs, and work with the California Community Colleges and California State University to enhance accessibility of university degrees.
• Admissions and Enrollment: maintains UC's admissions process and portal. Partners with community colleges high schools, and education groups through its Achieve UC program to reach thousands of California students each year with financial aid information, resources and encouragement to apply to the university.
• Applications: operates the centralized admissions application system serving hundreds of thousands of prospective undergraduate students.
• Benefits and Retirement: administers plans for 200,000 current and retired faculty and staff members.
• Budget: manages fiscal operations and the University of California system’s annual $29 billion budget.
• Human Resources: supports staff development and recruitment and employee relations, and develops and administers personnel policies and programs.
• Financial Aid: administers student financial assistance totaling over $5 billion annually. Three quarters of California undergraduates receive financial aid, and more than half of California undergraduates receive enough aid to cover all systemwide tuition and fees. UC undergraduates will receive more than $250 million directly from UC in 2017-18 to help pay expenses above and beyond tuition and fees such as housing, food, books and transportation.
• Intellectual Property: collects patent and licensing revenues, pays expenses and distributes royalties.
• Investments: manages UC’s $100 billion investment portfolio, including campus endowment funds and the UC pension fund that serves 270,000 faculty and retirees from across UC’s campuses and medical centers.
• Labor Relations: negotiates collective bargaining agreements on behalf of campuses.
• Legal Services: oversees legal and ethical compliance at all campuses, medical centers and UCOP.
• Medical Enterprise: oversees five public medical centers that provide critical care for Californians, serving about 1 million patients a year.
• Student Services and Engagement: helps maintain campus environments conducive to student success, diversity, health and wellness, leadership and retention.
• Systemwide Academic and Research Programs: provides evidence-based analyses and reports that inform and shape University-wide strategic planning, institutional policy creation and revision, and decision support; Administers a $220 million grants portfolio that supports multicampus research and innovation of benefit to California.
• UC Advocacy: promotes the university’s interests in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., and with the public.