Public university
A public university is an institution of higher education that is predominantly funded by public means through a national or regional government. In places such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Portugal, South Africa, the United Kingdom and other countries in Europe, most significant universities are public, while in the United States and Japan, both public and private universities are common and generally regarded as having similar academic standards. Many major public universities around the world were formerly private or religious institutions.
In the United States, most public universities are state universities, which are founded and operated by state government entities. Every U.S. state has at least one public university to its name, and the largest states have more than a dozen. States generally charge higher tuition to out-of-state students, a practice which the United States Supreme Court has deemed constitutional because the state is acting as a market participant providing a service, rather than protecting a fundamental right.
It has never been determined whether the U.S. Constitution would allow the federal government to establish a federal university system; the only federally chartered universities that currently exist are those under the auspices of the U.S. military, such as West Point, the Naval Academy and the United States Air Force Academy.
In Canada and Germany, education, including the administration of universities, is the responsibility of the individual provinces (in Canada) or Bundesländer (in Germany).
In Taiwan, public ("national") universities are considered to be generally more prestigious than private universities and require higher entrance examination scores.
In mainland China today, few private universities exist, and have only appeared in recent years. Several have been founded by large (public) institutions as legally independent spin-offs. These institutions are generally less highly regarded than their public counterparts, as they are seen by many to be focused primarily on income generation rather than the educational endeavor.
Historically, the most prestigious universities in the United States have been private institutions such as Harvard University, Yale University and other Ivy League universities. While this perception continues, some of the top public institutions, like the University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, San Diego, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Michigan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Virginia, College of William and Mary, University of Texas at Austin and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, are highly prestigious as well. In fact, many of these universities are referred to as Public Ivies in an influential book by Richard Moll.
Worldwide, some public institutions like Peking University, ETH Zurich, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and Tokyo University are also held in particularly high esteem. In fact, in a recent worldwide university study by the The Times Higher Education Supplement, four of the top 10 universities were public, with UC Berkeley 2nd, Cambridge and Oxford 5th and 6th, and ETH Zurich rounding out the top 10. World rankings by Shanghai Jiaotong University came up with similar findings.
