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In the MA most state schools are known by their towns. Which causes a few issues because Amherst has Amherst College as well, and Dartmouth is also an Ivy. But UMass Lowell and all the state schools are just usually referred to by the town their in. SUNY is the same way. SUNY Buffalo is UB or UBuffalo SUNY Binghamton is Binghamton, SUNY Stony Brook is Stony Brook.
In either state saying SUNY or UMass will get you a "which?" In response.
Purdue is unusual as being the only land granht school in a state with two flagships because it was a university from its inception, unlike Clemson, Texas A&M, Michigan State, and the rest of them which started life as colleges.
Actually, edsg25, Purdue was not really a university at the beginning but, rather, a UINO (university in name only). It was no different than the other named schools: Indian's land grant A&M college. It was just lucky enough that Lafayette, IN biz magnate, John Purdue, offered $250K (tens of millions in today's dollars) to locate the new land grant school in his home town. Purdue was quite fortunate in this sense because, as you noted, it early on had the aura with some people of being a private university (although many people at the time understood it was really a land grant college -- as opposed to Cornell University, which established itself as a true "university" before 1900 by establishing liberal arts, law, medical and graduate schools in addition to the largely New York State funded ag programs.
Purdue is really more of a public engineering/tech school, like Georgia Tech or Virginia Tech (a similar land grant school) after late 19th Century Purdue president James Smart really emphasized the "M" part of Purdue's A&M -- and as you probably know, there was an understood agreement in the State of Indiana whereby, for economical reasons, Purdue would be forbade from operating liberal arts degree-granting programs while Indian University, Bloomington would be restricted from engineering... Of course sometime in the 1950s or 60s Purdue did, in fact, begin bachelor of arts liberal arts programs even though IUB still has no engineering. It could be argued, therefore, that Purdue really wasn't a true university until it began offering liberal arts and established a grad/PhD program ... the latter of which I'm not sure when it was implemented.
IUPU Indianapolis is not its only campus. I think IUPU was created because more so than any state with two flagship universities, Indiana relly does seem to divide the curricula to a bigger degree than other states. IU gets the liberal arts and tech, agriculture goes to Purdue. Putting together IU and Purdue at those IUPU locations gave them a wider scope of curricula.
IUPUI was created because in the 1960s, then Indianapolis mayor Richard Lugar wanted a great urban university. IU and Purdue at the time operated independent of each other in Indianapolis, but consolidated into modern day IUPUI because that is what the leaders in Indianapolis wanted.
There are rumors that IUPUI is close to rebranding itself to just IU-Indianapolis and dropping Purdue. The previous Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne is now just Purdue Fort Wayne branded as Fort Wayne in athletics. The former IPFW moniker has been dropped.
But if you're talking academic circles, Miami of Ohio carries more weight than Miami of Florida, imho. And Michigan State destroys Mississippi State, the latter of which few have heard much of academically.
I doubt the majority of people in this country know any more about Michigan State than they do about Miss State. I think employers in the south are going to be more familiar with Miss State.
I doubt the majority of people in this country know any more about Michigan State than they do about Miss State. I think employers in the south are going to be more familiar with Miss State.
Well it makes sense that employers from the south would be more aquainted with a regional school, but where else? Outside of SEC country and SEC football I don't think Miss St. is as known nationally as Mich St.
Michigan State has 50k students and a $3 billion endowment, to Miss St's 22k students and $470 million. Those numbers alone are going to give the school more exposure. As Michigan's number 2 university Michigan State ranks higher in several metrics from enrollment, to endowment, to academic rankings, than several states flagship universities.
It's been my experience that some refer to The Ohio State University as just plain "Ohio". To me, an issue is that Ohio University also brands as "Ohio" in certain situations (in others, it's OSU and OU respectively). Ohio State is obviously much better known, but they are both D-I athletics (not sure about OU footbal).
Branding nerd (perhaps branding nazi) that I am, I prefer Ohio State for the Buckeyes and Ohio for the Bobcats.
Also, with Ohio State, I think in the eastern half of the country, OSU means Ohio State but in the West, OSU means Oregon State. When people just say Oregon they mean the University of Oregon.
There's the College of Charleston in SC but also the University of Charleston in WV. People always think they're the same and that its in South Carolina.
Many people don't know the University of Charleston exists. In fact hardly anyone outside of WV, southern Ohio or eastern Kentucky even knows Charleston WV exists despite it being the state capital. Here in Louisiana many people don't even know WV is a separate state from Virginia. They would say things like how Virginia has a great economy and not even know that while the federal contractors have enriched NOVA, WV is struggling because of Obama's war on coal.
Of the "State" schools (per above) it gets a lot more messy. Here's how I would rank them in terms of prominence.
Penn State
Ohio State
Louisiana State
Florida State
Michigan State
Arizona State
Oregon State
Iowa State
Oklahoma State
Kansas State
Mississippi State
Colorado State
But what goes into your definition of "prominence?" If you're talking from a sports angle, I probably would agree with you. If you're talking academics, no way Michigan State, or even ASU ranks behind LSU or Florida State. MSU certainly is at least on par with your first group listed.
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