# University of \_\_\_\_ and \_\_\_\_ University **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 14, 2010, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786 "2010-09-14T23:20:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/42 "2010-09-15T22:20:12Z")
Some useful _generalities_, noted with the caveat that exceptions are numerous (feel free to note them, but kindly don’t call me out on “this breaks your rule” – because it doesn’t; I’m giving some often-but-not-always-true broad-brush generalizations: 1. Many “University of [Statename]” schools are the state-operated liberal arts ‘prestige’ institutions for their states. 2. “[Statename] University” is rarely a state-operated school, but “[Statename] State University” generally is, and is very often (a) engineering, technical, and/or agricultural oriented and (b) quite commonly the state’s Morrill Act land-grant school. (Note that “[Othername] State University” is generally a constituent part of a multi-university state-operated system simply located in “Othername,” such as Kent State and Appalachian State Universities, which are not the state schools of states named Kent and Appalachia, but constituent parts of the Ohio and North Carolina systems that are respectively located in Kent OH and the Appalachians. Likewise Wayne State U. in Detroit is named for Wayne County. 3. When “University of [Placename]” occurs, it is more often than not representative of [Placename] – even if only in a prestige sense. That is, it may well be a private school but is linked in some way, perhaps quite informally, to its namesake location. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/43 "2010-09-16T00:23:04Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > > [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > > > But this, at any rate, has led to UC Berkeley people’s tendency to refer to their school as “Cal”, which gets them greatly disliked by those of us who’ve attended UC’s other fine campuses. > > :dubious: Really? I went to one of the other campuses of the UC and I don’t give a shit. They were there first, they get to be Cal. I suppose “greatly disliked” is overstating it. I wouldn’t even mildly dislike someone for something this trivial. Come to think of it, “Cal” isn’t so bad, but I do object to “California” used to mean just UCB, because of the implication that the other campuses are just lower division feeders, or specialized institutes–which is, in fact, how many of them started out, but is no longer the case. UCLA, for instance, started life around 1880 as the Los Angeles State Normal School. Later when it became part of UC, it was first known as UC Southern Branch, and only taught the first two years of a four year program. **MsRobyn** , speaking of Pennsylvania, I understand that Philadelphia Central _High School_ is empowered to grant bachelor’s degrees to students who graduate with an average of 90% or better; this must be unique in the whole country, if not the world. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/44 "2010-09-16T00:43:59Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > 1. “[Statename] University” is rarely a state-operated school, but “[Statename] State University” generally is, and is very often (a) engineering, technical, and/or agricultural oriented and (b) quite commonly the state’s Morrill Act land-grant school. Which is just what the curators and alumni of Sothwest Missouri wanted you to think when they lobbied the legislature to change the name of the school to just plain Missouri State University. In our state, the University of Missouri is both the state’s designated research university AND the land-grant school. Missouri State is just a _poseur_. ---
**Author:** ![JpnDude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/838e76/32.png) [@JpnDude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JpnDude)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/45 "2010-09-16T00:48:54Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > To add to the confusion, in the early days it wasn’t uncommon to refer to "U of \ as simply “\”. So if you were attending the Berkeley campus in 1910, you might well have said simply that you were a student at California, and Michigan was probably going to beat your team again this year, because their coach, Fielding Yost, wrote the book on football, [literally](http://chestofbooks.com/sports/football/Player-Spectator/). But this, at any rate,\*\* has led to UC Berkeley people’s tendency to refer to their school as “Cal”,\*\* which gets them greatly disliked by those of us who’ve attended UC’s other fine campuses. (_bolding mine_ Then there’s plenty of others who call the school, “Cal Berkeley.” ROLL ON YOU BEARS! ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/46 "2010-09-16T02:48:07Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > > [@dtilque](#): > > > > Somewhere I heard that this was the result of a publicity campaign for the Big 8 back in the 70s. I didn’t see the campaign myself, but apparently they needed to have all the abbreviations end with a U, probably for rhyming purposes. > > Sorry, no. I graduated the University of Missouri (Columbia, if anyone cares) in 1974, and the MU designation was there long before I ever set foot on campus. For that matter, our archrival was KU and that school to the southwest of us was OU. I’ll bow to your superior experience. I live on the left coast, so have only hearsay evidence about it. Obviously it was wrong. > [@RaftPeople](#): > > 1. The abbreviation for “The Ohio State University” is TOSU, they seem to like the “The” as part of their name > > 2. I can’t find “OSU” anywhere on their logo’s and licensing pages, are you sure they own that mark? I don’t think anyone owns the three letters OSU as a trademark. Some schools may own the three letters in a specific graphic representation, though. > [@](#): > > 1. I believe Oregon State switched recently to just “OS”, probably for trademark issues, but now I’m wondering if Ok State has the trademark People, including Oregon State University, still use the letters OSU to refer to that institution. What the school did was to come up with a [new logo](http://www.cidoc.net/003007.html) that just has the letters OS in a specific graphic representation. Previously, their block letter OSU looked a whole lot like OK State’s block letter logo. Note that both schools have the same colors, orange and black, so you can imagine the potential confusion. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/47 "2010-09-16T03:21:34Z")
> [@Gagundathar](#): > > Bonus Trivia Challenge: Only one state in the country does not have the state name in the name of its “State University”. Which one? (I’ve won many a drink off this one) Rutgers in NJ ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/48 "2010-09-16T03:23:55Z")
Meanwhile, Princeton University was originally called the College of New Jersey. ---
**Author:** ![Wheelz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wheelz/32/5718_2.png) [@Wheelz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wheelz)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/49 "2010-09-16T13:24:45Z")
> [@Zakalwe](#): > > Re the OP: Most states don’t have a “STATE” university. They have a “STATE NAME” State and a University of “STATE”. There is [Indiana University](http://www.indiana.edu/). I’m guessing there must be others. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2010, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/50 "2010-09-16T13:32:34Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > I was in my twenties before I realized that they are officially called the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. Oxford Brookes University, on the other hand, is something different. ---
**Author:** ![Zakalwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zakalwe/32/270_2.png) [@Zakalwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zakalwe)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/51 "2010-09-17T01:48:54Z")
> [@Wheelz](#): > > There is [Indiana University](http://www.indiana.edu/). I’m guessing there must be others. Well, unless you can find 25 others, my statement stands. ---
**Author:** ![Visual\_Purple](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/5daacb/32.png) [@Visual\_Purple](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Visual_Purple)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/52 "2010-09-17T02:58:28Z")
I don’t know if the Economist still does this, but it used to, as a matter of style, change any University of [State] to [State] University. “Michigan University” just looks odd, and isn’t sufficiently distinct from Michigan State University, but, no, they insisted. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/53 "2010-09-17T04:09:20Z")
> [@Zakalwe](#): > > > [@Wheelz](#): > > > > There is [Indiana University](http://www.indiana.edu/). I’m guessing there must be others. > > Well, unless you can find 25 others, my statement stands. The only other one I know of is West Virginia University. ---
**Author:** ![NetTrekker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nettrekker/32/2909_2.png) [@NetTrekker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NetTrekker)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/54 "2010-09-17T04:18:49Z")
> [@Neptunian\_Slug](#): > > > [@RaftPeople](#): > > > > Why do you wince? Is it because there are so many other OSU’s (Ohio State University=OSU, Oklahoma State University=OSU, etc.) and you think that is confusing? > > No confusion about it. There is only one OSU. The Ohio State University. That would be TOSU. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2010, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/55 "2010-09-21T22:05:18Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > > [@Neptunian\_Slug](#): > > > > No confusion about it. There is only one OSU. The Ohio State University. > > Most universities share their abbreviation with others, but Ohio State alums seem to be uniquely confused by the situation. Now, I don’t want to imply this reflects on the quality of the education, but …🙂 Nitpick: it’s not the quality of the education (most of the [T]OSU faculty were, after all, educated elsewhere), but of the matriculants. 😉 A bit of a hijack here, but do you guys care to list the exceptions to the general rule that the U. of \_\_\_ is more prestigious or selective than the \_\_\_ State school? For example, in Florida, FSU’s criminology program is said to be very good indeed… there must be many, many similar examples across the US. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2010, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/56 "2010-09-21T23:16:45Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > > [@Polycarp](#): > > > > 1. “[Statename] University” is rarely a state-operated school, but “[Statename] State University” generally is, and is very often (a) engineering, technical, and/or agricultural oriented and (b) quite commonly the state’s Morrill Act land-grant school. > > Which is just what the curators and alumni of Sothwest Missouri wanted you to think when they lobbied the legislature to change the name of the school to just plain Missouri State University. In our state, the University of Missouri is both the state’s designated research university AND the land-grant school. Missouri State is just a _poseur_. I have Heinlein’s word for it, and he oughta know, being from nearby: them guys from Rolla can engineer almost _anything_! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![zamboniracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9a140/32.png) [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2010, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/57 "2010-09-22T00:17:58Z")
As an aside, in 1999 THE Ohio State University and Ohio University had a trademark dispute over who had the right to the name “Ohio.” The parties settled. [Link](http://www.ohio.edu/ohiotoday/fall99/departments/green/dispute.html) We needn’t discuss tOSU’s recent trouncing of OU on the football field, or the OU mascot’s embarrassing mascot on mascot violence against Brutus Buckeye. [Link](http://www.popfi.com/2010/09/21/mascot-on-mascot-violence/) 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2010, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/58 "2010-09-22T01:44:16Z")
They’re fighting like ca… Never mind. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![CTburns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a5b964/32.png) [@CTburns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CTburns)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2010, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/59 "2010-09-22T02:27:44Z")
> [@Neptunian\_Slug](#): > > > [@Zakalwe](#): > > > > It is, however, NOT the oldest state university in the country. That honor belongs to the University of North Carolina. > > > > Re the OP: Most states don’t have a “STATE” university. They have a “STATE NAME” State and a University of “STATE”. So, University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University. Florida State University and University of Florida. Mississipi State and U of Mississippi (Ole Miss). Arizona State and U of Arizona. Oklahoma State and U of Oklahoma, etc, etc. > > > > Bonus Trivia Challenge: Only one state in the country does not have the state name in the name of its “State University”. Which one? (I’ve won many a drink off this one) > > New Jersey Rutgers of Course! ---
**Author:** ![CTburns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a5b964/32.png) [@CTburns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CTburns)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2010, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/60 "2010-09-22T02:33:19Z")
[ and then there’s Boston College and Boston University [/QUOTE] BU Alumni like to say that when someone tells you that they go to Boston College, They’ve lied to you twice! BC is mostly in Newton, Ma, and it’s a University! ---
**Author:** ![opossum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2bfe46/32.png) [@opossum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/opossum)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2010, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786/61 "2010-09-22T04:01:32Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Some useful _generalities_, noted with the caveat that exceptions are numerous (feel free to note them, but kindly don’t call me out on “this breaks your rule” – because it doesn’t; I’m giving some often-but-not-always-true broad-brush generalizations: > > 1. Many “University of [Statename]” schools are the state-operated liberal arts ‘prestige’ institutions for their states. > > 2. “[Statename] University” is rarely a state-operated school, but “[Statename] State University” generally is, and is very often (a) engineering, technical, and/or agricultural oriented and (b) quite commonly the state’s Morrill Act land-grant school. (Note that “[Othername] State University” is generally a constituent part of a multi-university state-operated system simply located in “Othername,” such as Kent State and Appalachian State Universities, which are not the state schools of states named Kent and Appalachia, but constituent parts of the Ohio and North Carolina systems that are respectively located in Kent OH and the Appalachians. Likewise Wayne State U. in Detroit is named for Wayne County. > > 3. When “University of [Placename]” occurs, it is more often than not representative of [Placename] – even if only in a prestige sense. That is, it may well be a private school but is linked in some way, perhaps quite informally, to its namesake location. Florida is an exception to #1 and #2. The University of Florida is the land grant school, and has the better agriculture, veterinary and engineering programs. For liberal arts, it’s probably about equal to Florida State University (formerly Florida State College for Women, if I recall correctly). Which is the flagship depends on who you ask, and probably mostly depends on the department you’re looking at. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/university-of-____-and-____-university/553786.md?page=4)