Two universities claim the succession of the Taras Shevchenko State University of Tiraspol; the Transnistrian State University (Russian: Приднестровский государственный университет имени Т. Г. Шевченко, romanized: Pridnestrovsky gosudarstvennyy universitet imeni T. G. Shevchenko) located in Tiraspol, Transnistria, and the Tiraspol State University (Romanian: Universitatea de Stat din Tiraspol) located in Chișinău, Moldova.

The original university in Tiraspol was founded in 1930 as the State Pedagogical Institute in the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR), then being a constituent part of the Ukrainian SSR located in modern Transnistria.

The institution was renamed in 1939 to honor the Ukrainian poet and painter Taras Shevchenko, on his 125th birthday.

The university employs over 1,000 teaching staff including 36 Doctors and 220 Masters of Science.

Classes are taught mainly in Russian, with only a few programs in Romanian (called "Moldavian in Cyrillic script") and Ukrainian.