The campus is going to feature a “global citizenship” curriculum, too.

Berkeley Plans to Build a Global Campus, 10 Miles From Home

The University of California at Berkeley plans to open a global campus, but it intends to do so without going very far from home. Under the plan, partner universities from around the world would set up shop at a new outpost just 10 miles from Berkeley’s main campus.

The Berkeley Global Campus at Richmond Bay, campus officials say, will offer a “global citizenship” curriculum—with a focus on topics like governance, ethics, health, and sustainability—for graduate students from the United States and abroad.

By situating the campus nearby—an unusual move in an era when many American institutions are building abroad—Berkeley hopes to establish partnerships with universities from around the world while preserving full academic freedom for its faculty.

It’s a hefty undertaking. The campus’s development manager, Terezia C. Nemeth, said it would take years—possibly decades—and hundreds of millions of dollars to fulfill the university’s vision. It’s unclear where the money will come from. Nils Gilman, an associate chancellor at Berkeley, said the university was pursuing a range of options, including philanthropic donations and federal and state funds. Partner universities would also bring their own money to the project.

Mr. Gilman said Berkeley officials were “quite far down the road” in talks with several potential partner universities in Europe and Asia. Those universities had been chosen, by and large, because of previous collaborations with Berkeley and its faculty, he said.

The university would not name any of those institutions. But Nicholas B. Dirks, Berkeley’s chancellor, said he hoped to announce the initial partner universities this year, if not this month.

After that, and once enough money is raised, the university will break ground on the global campus, which sits by the bay in Richmond, Calif., about an hour’s drive from Silicon Valley. Berkeley already maintains some research facilities on the site.