Talk:University system

Term used internationally?
Currently this article seems to be implying the term is used internationally but I've never heard it applied to non-US institutions. Here in the UK a lot of universities have multiple campuses (because of both mergers and many being located in cities with limited scope for single site expansion) but there are almost never any separate identities for different campuses and a lot of degree courses have teaching at more than one campus. (The main exceptions tend to be medical schools and, for a limited time, institutions that have merged in taking time to shed their separate identity.) If there's anything that one might consider analagous to a university system it would be the federal universities of London and Wales, although with some very loose usage. Timrollpickering 11:46, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Multi-campus university vs. university system
I'm not an expert on this subject, but I think there's a difference between a multi-campus university and a university system. A multi-campus university, I believe, is a single university with more than one campus. A university system, I believe, is a group of separate, associated universities and colleges.

For example my alma mater, Hawaii Pacific University, has two campuses but all the accreditation, record-keeping, and decision-making is done cohesively. Prospective students don't apply to a specific campus because it is a single university. The curriculum and admissions decisions are exactly the same for both campuses, and students can (and do) take classes at either campus.

The University of California, on the other hand, is not a single, cohesive university. Admissions are different, record-keeping is probably different, and students probably can't take classes as any campus they want. Each campus is probably accredited separately, also.

I think this article should avoid confusing multi-campus universities and university systems. --JHP 05:21, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * DeVry is a multinational university system. There are substantial divisions, including separate accreditation, between DeVry Chicago, DeVry Calgary, and DeVry in New York State. In addition, the DeVry University article also covers DeVry Inc (which legally does not appear to be a separate entity), which owns a number of specialized institutions. Vagary 07:26, 19 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Hey JHP, I didn't mean to disagree with your call for clarification: DeVry is not a university system because it has multiple campuses, as the sentence in question implies. And the fact that it's for-profit has nothing to do with it, IMO. We should definitely work on a clear definition and I'm sorry if I suggested otherwise. Vagary 04:16, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * That's OK. Sometimes the difference between a multi-campus university and a university system can be vague. Just read how the University of Michigan-Dearborn describes the University of Michigan:


 * "The University of Michigan-Dearborn is one of two regional campuses of the University of Michigan. The main campus [is] in Ann Arbor.... While governed by a single publicly elected Board of Regents, each campus has a unique mission, suite of academic programs, and identity as one of the 15 public universities of the State of Michigan. Each receives a separate appropriation in the state budget.


 * "...graduates [of U. Mich-Dearborn] are members of the largest alumni organization of its kind in the world, the University of Michigan Alumni Association. Faculty and students collaborate across all three campuses in research and scholarly activity, and degrees for all three campuses are conferred by the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan."


 * Rutgers University has three campuses, but considers itself to be a single university. It is accredited as a single university, but U.S. News & World Report ranks each campus separately.


 * Another test of the difference between a university and a university system could be to look at what the diploma says. Does it say "University of XXXX" or "University of XXXX at YYYY"? I haven't checked, but I'm not sure how many people post images of their diplomas on the web. --JHP 03:39, 21 June 2007 (UTC)


 * However, it is common that a System University does not include campus information. For example, all University of California and Indiana University degree's only indicate that you graduated from UC or IU, respectively.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.226.244.2 (talk) 22:36, 26 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I can't tell if they're authentic or fake, but the few images of Rutgers diplomas I find using Google Image Search just say "Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey", with no mention of the campus. That suggests that Rutgers is a multiple campus university, not a university system. Perhaps a Wikipedian who has attended Rutgers can look at his/her diploma and see if it makes a distinction regarding the campus. --JHP (talk) 01:15, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * This is far from cut and dry, though, and it largely depends on the institutions themselves. The University of Michigan system, for example, makes almost no effort to distinguish the branch campuses from the flagship campus... the branding is uniform, branch campus students are eligible to use facilities at the main campus (including attending sporting events), even the student ID system is entirely integrated. But at the same time, the branch campuses have different academic standards and focuses, they have their own admissions standards and departments and their own funding structures. So in some senses, it's one university but in other (some might say more important) respects, they're different. If the University of Michigan-Flint chose to change their colors to orange and black and offer D1 athletics (ala the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), would it have ceased to be part of the university? And if such a minor change could facilitate that, were they ever really a part of it? I think it might be better to look at it this way: some university systems choose to emphasize their singularity while others choose to emphasize their multifaceted nature. -- MichiganCharms (talk) 05:37, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Rutgers is one university with three campuses. The diplomas granted do not specify a specific campus or region (unless the region or campus used to be part of the admitted school name, like Livingston College/Rutgers College prior to their merger into SAS, but those are much older diplomas). Furthermore, faculty are considered part of the university and are not tied to a specific campus. (i.e. Professors at RBS teach on both the Newark and New Brunswick campuses, often travelling between them on the same day, or alternating days, with offices on both campuses). Faculty can be assigned to teach on any campus. The Student ID system is uniform (RUID), parking passes are cross-honored between campuses, computing services are integrated (NetID single sign-on), the school branding is uniform (Images/logotype, Color Scarlet, Motto, Bus System on two campuses, etc.), and it is centrally administered. Strategically, they have been integrating the campuses over time (such as RBS, which is a single program located in both New Brunswick and Newark, and soon the Rutgers School of Law merger, which will span a single program across Camden and Newark). Rutgers is a multiple campus university, not a university system. -Kai445 (talk) 17:00, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Examples &rarr; Category
I'd like to propose the list in Examples be replaced with a Category:University systems (and perhaps a disjoint Category:Multiple-campus universities). Vagary 06:59, 21 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The latter's not terribly workable because "campus" isn't always defined. A lot of urban universities use separate buildings and bandy terms like "campus" and "site" around with little regard. Timrollpickering 07:24, 21 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with User:Timrollpickering. "Multiple-campus" is just an adjective I was using to distinguish single universities from university systems. --JHP 20:48, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Don't know how this discussion thing really works... but I think its more important to first make distinctions between public systems and private systems.Shlomo Rydzinski (talk) 15:37, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Federal universities
Would these be analogous to university systems or do they deserve a separate article? I'm thinking of things like the University of London (a complicated one in itself due to lots of university-wide elements and history), the University of Wales (ditto) and the Federal University of Surrey (which only lasted four years and one of the two institutions wasn't actually in modern Surrey!). There may be other examples internationally? Timrollpickering 15:34, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

University of Arizona
The University of Arizona only has one campus - as indeed indicated in the list. Therefore it is not a system and should not be included in the list. I removed it. If it is to be included, please explain why. Jusfiq (talk) 21:22, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Article organization
The lead of this article is becoming overlong, and the information on some countries (particularly ones with smaller higher ed systems like Vietnam and the Philippines) is becoming undue. I would suggest trimming down the lead, and moving the more detailed information on how university systems work in each country to the sections in which the systems are listed. Cheers,  Sdkb  talk 23:59, 15 May 2024 (UTC)