The University of California, Santa Barbara traces its history to 1891. Its timeline records that the Santa Barbara State Teachers College entered the University of California in 1944 as Santa Barbara College, moved to its current Goleta site in 1954 and was designated a general campus of the UC system in 1958.
Undergraduate teaching is organised in three colleges: the College of Creative Studies, the Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering and the College of Letters & Science. Graduate units include the Graduate Division, the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education. The university reports an average of 24,673 students on campus in 2023-2024 and more than 200 majors, degrees and credentials. Dennis Assanis, formerly President of the University of Delaware, was appointed the sixth chancellor in 2025.