The California Community Colleges is a postsecondary education system in the U.S. state of California. Despite its plural name, the system is consistently referred to in California law as a singular entity. The system includes the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges and 73 community college districts. The districts currently operate 116 accredited colleges. The California Community Colleges is the largest system of higher education in the United States, and third largest system of higher education in the world, serving more than 1.8 million students.

A university system is a set of multiple affiliated universities and colleges that are usually geographically distributed. Typically, all member universities in a university system share a common component among all of their various names. Usually, all member universities of a university system are governed by a system-wide governing body, such as a board of trustees or a board of regents. In the United States, many states have one or two state university systems under which many of their publicly funded universities are aligned, both in name and in governance. Additionally, for-profit universities, such as DeVry University, often have multiple campuses which share the same name; these may be, but are not always, described as a university system.