Institutional Research and Academic Planning
Academic planning council workgroup on systemwide academic calendar
In the fall of 2024, the University of California began the process of exploring whether all UC general campuses should operate under a common calendar. Currently, UC Berkeley and UC Merced are on semesters and UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz are on quarters.
The Provost with the Systemwide Academic Senate Chair established an Academic Planning Council (APC) Workgroup on a Systemwide Academic Calendar. The workgroup charge and academic, administrative, and student members can be found on this website.
Recognizing the APC workgroup members did not represent all interests, the workgroup took an inclusive and deliberative approach to collect quantitative and qualitative data to inform this work, including but not limited to an environmental scan of existing academic calendar features and potential new calendar features; input from UC student affairs, advisors, career center representatives, and other related campus offices; and input from peer institution representatives that completed or are completing a calendar conversion; 90 responses to a questionnaire directed to representatives of campus constituent groups; and over 200 responses to the calendar@ucop.edu email.
A separate calendar conversion costing workgroup estimated the costs to convert to a common calendar. The calendar conversion cost estimate report can be found on this webpage.
The APC workgroup produced a draft report that described existing semester and quarter calendar features, an alternate quarter calendar for consideration, factors to consider before any calendar change (including but not limited to calendar conversion costs), and the opportunities and challenges with common calendar options. The draft report presented multiple options for consideration: 1) a common semester calendar, 2) a common quarter calendar, 3) a hybrid option of semester calendar and alternate quarter calendar with aligned start dates, and 4) maintaining the status quo.
The co-chairs requested UC President Drake and systemwide Senate Chair Cheung distribute the draft report for student, faculty, and staff input. The 90-day comment period ran from March 1 to May 30, 2025. During that period, the systemwide Academic Senate held a formal review, including an Academic Council discussion. UCOP also met with the UC Student Association, UC Graduate & Professional Students Association, and UC Council of Presidents to encourage student feedback. UCOP received almost 5,900 responses to a questionnaire asking for draft report feedback and input separately submitted through calendar@ucop.edu emails. This final report found on this webpage incorporates changes based on that feedback.