That may be the outcome, but I don’t think that was the goal. The UC system was designed to be more academic and the CSU system to be more practical, and it’s worked out that this pretty much became a tiered system. But as capybara pointed out, UC Merced is probably tiered lower than Cal Poly.
What is now Arizona State University was first out of the blocks in 1885, but as a teacher’s college. It went through several name changes, settling in 1945 as Arizona State College, then in 1958 as Arizona State University.
University of Arizona was next at 1891, but it was a university from the start. UA alumni regard ASU as a jumped up college.
Northern Arizona University is last, founded in 1899 as the Northern Arizona Normal School. 1925 it was dubbed Northern Arizona Teachers College, then in 1945 Arizona State College at Flagstaff and finally in 1966, Northern Arizona University.
All are public schools with budgets alloted by the legislature commensurate with their enrollment (ASU is the biggest, NAU the smallest) and I believe the cost per credit hour is the same for all three.
All three have some strong departments and some weaker ones. All three are strong in planetary science for some reason. 1885 to 1899 might seem a bit young but keep in mind, Arizona was still a territory at the time. UA’s first freshman class was all of six people.
Illinois is just plain confusing when it comes to this.
The University of Illinois system, Southern Illinois University system, Eastern Illinois University, Western Illinois University, Northern Illinois University and Northwestern Illinois University are all public universities.
As are Illinois State University and Chicago State University.
And there’s no clear “first-tier, second-tier, third-tier”. The University of Illinois is probably the best overall university, but there are standouts for individual majors.
So there you go.
A somewhat related question - in the South, most states (all?) have two land-grant universities. Originally, obviously, a black one and a white one. Here in South Carolina, the University of South Carolina is not a land grant university but is public. South Carolina State is the land-grant black school. Clemson University is the land-grant white school. Are there Southern states where the University / State divide is along color lines?
I have the distinction of being an Ivy-League Aggie. As an in-state Biology Major, it was a lot cheaper for me to go to the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell than to the private Cornell College of Arts and Sciences. Exactly the same courses, except that I had to take an Ag elective (things like Farm Carpentry, Bee-Keeping, Horticulture, etc.) rather than a Humanities elective like the Artsies had to.
When discussing the original land-grant schools, don’t confuse them with the much later “normal” schools. A different act of Congress enabled those. “Normal” schools were a state’s teachers colleges, once it was decided at the beginning of the last century that teachers should have formalized educations.
Here in Ohio, the “normal” school was Bowling Green State Normal College, now known as Bowling Green State University. At one time the only teachers college in the state, now supposedly the premier such Education College. Not that you can prove it by me. 
As for California, the Polytechnic schools (SLO and Pomona) really shouldn’t be compared to the State University or the UC system, regardless of how administered. They are kind of special critters. They were added to the State University system later.
Interestingly, in California, the University of California (Berkeley campus) is the original Morrill Act school, resulting from a combination of the College of California with the “Agriculture, Mining and Medchanical Arts College.” UCLA is the current incarnation of a “normal” college, but not the original Normal College of the state, which was founded at what is now San Jose State University (the California State University campuses are allowed to choose between the appellation “California State University, Location” and “Location State University”). You can read more about these interesting facts at Wikipedia, which has articles on the University of California and the California State University
The University of California is considered officially by the state to be the top tier education institution (the various campuses, 10 in all, are technically all part of the same university). The top 12% of California high school students are allowed admission to the University of California. Students who don’t fare so well in high school are relegated to the California State University (again, one university in theory with many campuses). CSU accepts applicants from the top 33% of high school graduates. Also, for the most part, CSU campuses are precluded from offering Ph.D.'s and professional degrees (medical, veterinary, legal, etc.).
According to Wikipedia (the asterisk denotes a historically black university):
Kentucky State University *
University of Kentucky
Tennessee State University *
University of Tennessee
West Virginia University
West Virginia State University *
Not a Southern state, but divided along the same lines:
Delaware State University *
University of Delaware
Case in point, Arizona State University, mentioned in the OP, which began life as Tempe Normal School.
Until 1983, the Pennsylvania State System universities were called (name) State. So you had Penn State, but also Shippensburg State, Millersville State, and so forth. After 1983, the State System schools dropped the State and became just Shippensburg University, Millersville University, and so forth. And pretty much all of them started as normal schools.
Robin
In Michigan, one has the maize (& blue) and the other has the cows…
(ducks & covers)
While I was in undergrad, my school changed its name from North Texas State University (NTSU) to the University of North Texas (UNT). For some reason, they never changed the name of the campus radio station, KNTU.
In case you are confused by all the talk of the California system, let me emphasize that, generally speaking, it is completely arbitrary. It all depends on who got to a particular name first.
In some cases, such as in Pennsylvania, the “University of X” is private and the “X State University” is public.
In some cases, such as in California, both the “University of X” and the “X State University” are public, but they are of different tiers.
In some cases, such as in Ohio and Indiana, there is no “University of X,” but there is an “X State University” and an “X University” and they are both public.
In some cases, such as in Massachusetts, there is a public “University of X” but there is no “X State University” at all.
In some cases, such as New Jersey, there is neither a “University of X,” nor an “X State University.”
In some cases, such as New York, there is a private “X University” and there is no “University of X” nor an “X State University” (but there is a public “State University of X”).
So, basic answer, again, is that it’s completely arbitrary.
Many of the schools which follow the naming guideline were founded as land grant schools. Rutgers was just received funding under the Morrell Act, it already existed. Rutgers was founded in 1766 (changed the name to Rutgers sometime in the early 1800s).
Like they’ve said, it’s generally federal land-grant vs. non-land grant schools.
In Texas’ case, UT and A&M were both originally state-chartered as the same school, much like LSU.
When the Morrell Act rolled around to Texas post-Reconstruction (1876), the “Agricultural and Mechanical College of the University of Texas” was formed (“the A&M College” as it was called).
A few years later, the State legislature granted UT 40 acres in Austin (the Forty Acres) and essentially UT ended up with the majors A&M didn’t already have.
In the mid-1960s, A&M formally became Texas A&M University, instead of the A&M College of Texas.
<Phil Leotardo>
“2 real fuckin’ universities and we got this other pygmy thing over in San Marcos!”
</Phil Leotardo>
Don’t let “Texas State” fool you either. It was originally “Southwest Texas Teacher’s College”, then “Southwest Texas State”, and finally renamed itself “Texas State” about 5-10 years ago with the intent to bamboozle and hoodwink out of state academics and students into thinking it’s something it’s not.
Texas A&M is the rightful “State” university for Texas.
Look at the list of land-grant colleges and you’ll see that there’s no pattern, so you can’t make any “generally” statement about it. It’s arbitrary.
It’s because Arizona is a good place to do astronomy from. When a telescope gets built, the usual arrangement is that time on the telescope is divided up between several universities, with some time left over for researchers from other institutions. It then gets divided year-by-year among the faculty at those universities. The state where the telescope is built usually gets some of this time. Having access to a good telescope in a good observing site is a big advantage when your university is recruiting astronomers, so you end up with a good astronomy department. You see the same phenomenon at the University of Hawaii with the Keck telescopes.
Some schools are self-explanatory however. My SIL is a tenured professor at Indiana University. She likes it Ok except the small town in Pennsylvania where it is located can be a little dull. She says that she wants to look for a new job. Miami University could be a good fit except I am not sure living in Ohio would be a big step up from what she has now.
Well, the Miami thing is easily explained. The Miami Indians lived in Ohio and Indiana and the name “Miami” appears all over the region. Miami University was founded in Oxford, Ohio, some 40 years before there was a Miami in Florida.
I have no idea what happened in the Pennsylvania towns of Indiana and California, though.
Great question, and one that I’ve wanted to ask for a long time.
Whatever the reasons for the names originally, in today’s world it’s about prestige. A good example is the change in the name of Southwest Texas State University to Texas State University. Universities with compass points in their names are seen as less prestigious that those without. In fact during football season there is a running joke about the significance of these big state universities planing schools with compass points in their names. When Texas A&M was founded they went with “A&M” instead of “State” and no one ever grabbed the Texas State moniker.
For years the folks at Southwest Texas (now Texas State) have been trying to build themselves into a major player in the college world, and they realized that getting rid of the “Southwest” in their name would go a long way towards that. And since this is Texas, their next step is to build their football program into Division I-A (or whatever the college big league is called).
I wonder why they chose to keep the “San Marcos” in the name instead of just plain “Texas State University.” Keeping in the geographic qualifier seems to drawn down on the prestige.