Hmmm…I suppose you’re right there. BTW, I was all set to refer to the “precedent” of Virginia Commonwealth University, but a quick check of their website revealed that they were neither a publicly-funded university, nor preceded Penn State. In fact, they weren’t even called Virginia Commonwealth until 1968.
While we’re on the subject of “State” universities, there are the curious cases of Lock Haven and Bloomsburg universities, which are “state universities” in Pennsylvania but not part of the “Penn State system.” Up until about the late '60’s, the schools were known as Lock Haven State and Bloomsburg State respectively. For some reason, both schools decided to ditch the “State” part of their names. (It couldn’t be to streamline their names, either: Lock Haven is now saddled with the clunky official title of Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, as if there was another Lock Haven floating around somewhere.) AFAIK, there was no change in funding or other university status that would have precipitated the change.
Because Kentucky State is a dinky little school in Frankfort with an enrollment of about 2,300.
The University of Kentucky (my current school) is actually a land-grant college founded way back when. Then you have the University of Louisville, which is state-funded now (city-funded until the 1970s), as well as Murray State, Morehead State and the directional colleges (Northern, Eastern and Western.)
No wackier than Florida (No jokes on my state’s wackiness, please).
All of the following are state-funded universities:
University of South Florida (Tampa Bay – not South Florida)
University of Florida (Gainesville)
University of West Florida (Pensacola)
University of North Florida (Jacksonville)
University of Central Florida (Orlando)
Florida State University (Tallahassee)
Florida A&M University (Tallahassee)
Florida Gulf Coast University (Fort Myers)
Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton)
Florida International University (Miami)
New College of Florida (Sarasota)
I would have to agree with acsenray – there is no real pattern. I suppose it’s Florida State and University of Florida because they sound better than Florida University.
But in the more western states, there is a pattern, and its the one I described above: University of X is the “research” school, and “X State” is the “practical” school–almost always (and maybe always) the land-grant school. This pattern holds in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and (sort of) Texas. There is no Nevada State University or Wyoming State University, but presumably that is because these states have small populations and therefore cannot support additonal universities.
The Morrill Act, which created the land grant colleges, passed in 1862. (See this site on the Iowa State webpage.) Most of the western states mentioned above either came into the union after that time (or just before) or, if they were in the Union already, did not have very large populations. As they grew, and their need for universities grew, they adopted the “two pronged” university system.