State university system

While the academy, later known as Augusta State University and now merged into Augusta University, was founded as a high school, it taught college-level classes from its creation, and its graduates were accepted into four-year colleges as sophomores or juniors, effectively making it a combination of a modern high school and community college.

The University of South Carolina was chartered in 1801 and held classes for the first time in 1805.

However, neither institution was a "state university" in the modern sense of the term until many decades later.

It stated: "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."

Many state universities were founded in the middle 19th century, in particular supported by the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Acts of 1862 and 1890.

Following the Second World War, many state universities were merged with smaller institutions to achieve economies of scale in administration and also to raise the prestige of the degrees granted by some smaller institutions.

There is much diversity between the states in terms of how governing power is distributed between boards of regents (or trustees), presidents, chancellors, provosts, and other senior university executives.

At one end of the spectrum is the University of California, in which each campus has a chancellor as its chief executive officer.

At the other end is Kansas, where there is no true state university system with a systemwide brand identity and a systemwide chief executive officer empowered to establish uniform policies across multiple campuses and to supervise the chief executive officer of each campus.

[3] There are several states with hybrid in-between arrangements, such as Hawaii, Indiana, and South Carolina, where the systemwide leader of the state university retains direct executive control over the original flagship campus but also supervises the leaders of all other campuses in the system.

During the growth and restructuring of the state systems, names such as University of California have changed their meanings over time.