Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, Ohio State was founded in 1870 as the state's land-grant university and the ninth university in Ohio with the Morrill Act of 1862. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". The university's endowment of $7.4 billion in 2023 is among the largest in the world.
Ohio State was originally known as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College and focused on various agricultural and mechanical disciplines, but it developed into a comprehensive university under the direction of then-Governor and later U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes, and in 1878, the Ohio General Assembly passed a law changing the name to "the Ohio State University" and broadening the scope of the university.
The university has over 1,000 student organizations; intercollegiate, club and recreational sports programs; student media organizations and publications, fraternities and sororities; and three student governments. Its athletic teams compete in Division I of the NCAA and are known as the Ohio State Buckeyes, and it is a member of the Big Ten Conference for the majority of its sports. As of 2017, Ohio State's football program is valued at $1.5 billion. The main campus in Columbus has grown into the fifth-largest university campus by enrollment in the United States, with nearly 50,000 undergraduate students and nearly 15,000 graduate students.