Anyone know why Penn State is actually not Penn Commonwealth?
Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Massachusetts are all commonwealths, not states. And while the practical difference is zero from what I can tell, for some reason Pennsylvania still refers to itself as a commonwealth.
So why did the Commonwealth’s university go with “State”? Virginia has VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University), so it is not unprecedented. Kentucky, however has a Kentucky State and Massachusetts doesn’t seem to have either, although they have a number of “State” universities. I just didn’t see “Mass State U” or “Mass Commonwealth” in my quick searching.
All I could find in my google-fu was a Wikipedia page that refers to Pennsyvania State University Commonwealth Campuses, which lists the locations of 19 2-year satellite campuses that are part of the PSU network.
Also, according to the psu.edu website,
Anyone with the straight dope as to why PSU is not PCU? I’ll admit, Penn State is a bit more pleasing to the ear than Penn Commonwealth, but I doubt marketing was a huge factor in 1855.
Its only 1968 that VCU got that name. Before that it was a medical college.
Perhaps they liked the way VMC became VCU … Rather than VSU … Kept two letters, changed only one.
No, no. They’re all states, just like the other 46. A “commonwealth”, in this context, isn’t a different creature from a “state”; it’s just an alternative term for “state” that these four happen to prefer in certain contexts. The reasons are historical; when they ceased to be colonies, they felt this term would call attention to their new, republican status. The other ex-colonies could equally have used the term, and some did, occasionally. But, equally, any state that uses the term “commonwealth” to describe itself doesn’t have to do so consistently. Massachussets, for instance, has a “State House”, and Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Virginia all have “State Capitols”.
I read somewhere that there is one actual state university in Pennsylvania: Indiana University of Pennsylvania (in Indiana, PA). Still, to all intents, Penn State is a public university, unlike the University of Pennsylvania, which was founded when PA was still a colony.
The Commonwealth System of Higher Education includes Penn State and Lincoln University, Temple University, and University of Pittsburgh as “state-related” colleges. Penn State was founded as private but “it was later designated as the Commonwealth’s sole land-grant institution and repeatedly defined as a “state-owned university” in numerous official acts and Pennsylvania Attorney General opinions from its creation as a land-grant, then named the Pennsylvania State College, in 1855, and thus applicable to having its road system and buildings on state campuses constructed using state funding, paying its employees through state-issued checks and having them eligible to collect state employee retirement system benefits.”
This is getting into a quite technical question of definition. One definition of a “state university” is a university that is owned by and managed by, or as, a state government department. The other definition is a university that is officially labeled with the term “State University”. Some states, such as California, have a system of public universities that are officially labeled as a “State University” system, but also have other public universities outside of that system that are still state universities by the first definition, but are not officially classified as a “State University” under the regulations defining the system that is officially called the “State University” system.
Puerto Rico, which isn’t a state, officially defines itself as a “Commonwealth” in its official English-language name, (“Commonwealth of Puerto Rico”). The official Spanish name is “Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico”, or “Associated Free State of Puerto Rico”. Names are names, people. Their definitions can vary based on context.