San Diego – the Ideal City for the Learning Experience

The birthplace of California, San Diego, is a place of many guises. It is not only a major economic center, an important naval base and a fertile agricultural area, but it also has a prominent art, culture, recreation and scientific research community. The idyllic climate, 70 miles of sandy beaches and an array of world-class attractions, including Balboa Park, San Diego Zoo and SeaWorld San Diego, make San Diego one of the best tourist destinations worldwide. 

The area of San Diego has a vibrant historic background. It was inhabited by the Kumeyaay people for more than 10,000 years; it was also the first site visited by Europeans on what is now the West Coast of the United States and a scene of numerous important historical events.  The Spaniard Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was the first European to set foot on California when his ship entered the San Diego bay in 1542.

Now San Diego is a location for leading businesses for biotechnology, software, electronics, aviation and other major industries and has more than 1.3 million residents. Being the eighth-largest city in the U.S. and the second-largest city in California, San Diego preserves a comfortable, small town atmosphere. It is a great place to live, study and work. In 2006 MONEY Magazine rated the city as the fifth-best place to live in the United States.

Education is a top priority industry in San Diego and the city provides wide opportunities for the learning experience. Recent legislation stipulates major improvements to all public schools in the City with new facilities, repairs and upgrades. Class sizes from kindergarten to third grade were reduced to less than 20 students per class. More than 250 new teachers have been hired and new schools are funded for construction in order to achieve the smaller class size. Now teachers are able to give more personalized attention to each student which contributes to a general raise in quality of education. The student to teacher ratio in San Diego for public schools is 19:1, which is 15.9% greater than the National student to teacher ratio. For a population 25 years and over in San Diego: 86% of residents completed at least  high school, 41.3% of people hold a bachelor’s degree or higher and over 13% of San Diegans have a graduate or professional degree. San Diego has the highest percentage of college graduates of any city in the country and also tops all other U.S. cities in the number of Ph.Ds per capita.

The San Diego Unified School District, which operates the majority of the public schools in the city, is the second largest district in California and serves about 132,000 students in pre-school through grade 12. It employs more than 7,000 teachers and includes 9 K-8 schools, 118 traditional elementary schools, 24 traditional middle schools, 14 atypical/alternative schools, 26 high schools and 44 charter schools. There are also a number of parochial and private schools throughout the City of San Diego.

Major universities in San Diego include San Diego State University (SDSU), the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) and the University of San Diego (USD). San Diego State University, the oldest and largest university in San Diego, has an enrollment of nearly 31,000 students. SDSU offers bachelor’s degrees in 84 areas of study, 76 master’s degrees and doctorates in 21 areas. It is home to nationally recognized academic programs in international business, entrepreneurship, speech-language pathology, biology, geography, psychology, nursing and other areas. The most popular degree programs include management, business administration, computer science, public health and biology.

The University of California at San Diego, one of the University of California’s 10 campuses, has six undergraduate colleges, five academic divisions and five graduate and professional schools. Total campus enrollment is over 29,000 students. The university offers 125 bachelor’s degree programs organized into six disciplinary divisions: Social Sciences, Engineering, Biological Sciences, Science/Math, Humanities, and Arts. UCSD’s graduate and professional schools include: Scripps Institution of Oceanography (one of the oldest and largest centers for marine science research in the world), School of Medicine, School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Jacobs School of Engineering and Rady School of Management. UC San Diego was ranked the 1st in the nation by the Washington Monthly’s 2011 College Guide and the 36th best university in the world by Times Higher Education in its 2012-13 “World Universities Rankings”.

The University of San Diego is a private, nonprofit, Roman Catholic university, which enrolls over 8,300 students. USD is well regarded for its outstanding undergraduate liberal arts education, and for its master’s and doctoral programs in business, law, education, nursing and peace studies.

There are 8 community colleges located throughout the San Diego area, as well as many private institutions of higher learning and business and vocational schools.

A large number of research centers located in San Diego are specialized in such areas as nuclear energy, oceanography, biological sciences and astronomy. The most prominent of them are the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, focused on molecular biology, neuroscience, genetics and plant biology; and the Palomar Observatory, a center for astronomy research.

San Diego’s strong economy, unique combination of high-tech industry and recreational opportunities, great educational and research institutions, highly-educated population result in unsurpassed quality of life of the city’s inhabitants and make it the ideal place for business, education and life.

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