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<p>I don’t think that’s a good analogy at all. Cornell is clearly a private institution that operates some programs under contract with the state of New York. Penn State is clearly a public institution–it says so itself. Granted, it’s a public institution with a peculiar governance structure, but it was founded by the state legislature and from the outset funded with state money. The Governor and several other state officials sit on its Board of Trustees ex officio, and the Governor appoints a substantial number of Trustees. The rest of its Trustees are elected through a unique corporatist interest-group representation model: a certain number of alumni, a certain number representing state agricultural societies, a certain number representing the state’s dominant industries. It’s not a governance model followed by other public universities, but it’s certainly not a governance model followed by any truly private institution, either. It’s clearly intended to be “public,” i.e., to represent Pennsylvania-specific interests. But unlike private colleges and universities, the school has been subsidized by the state from its outset. It’s a public university through and through, albeit one with a fair amount of fiscal and operational autonomy and an unusual governance structure. It’s not “owned by” the state, but that’s also true of many other state flagships.</p>
<p>A better analogy, I think, is the University of Michigan, which was founded in 1817, twenty years before Michigan became a state. It was nonetheless founded as a public institution, intended to serve the people of the state (just as Penn State was). The University of Michigan is not a creature of the state legislature, and it is not under the control of the legislature, the Governor, or any executive branch agency. The state of Michigan’s original 1837 state constitution recognized the University as an autonomous institution, and provided for direct public election of its governing body, the Board of Regents, who are consequently state constitutional officers in their own right, not beholden to the Governor or the legislature. The University’s only formal tie to state government, apart from state constitution’s recognition of its independent status and provision for its governing body, is that the state constitution instructs the legislature to contribute to its funding. That’s it. Neither the legislature nor the Governor nor any executive branch agency has any say in the University’s budget or its educational policies and priorities. To that extent, it’s even more autonomous than Penn State, which has the governor, several Cabinet-level state officials, and a number of gubernatorial appointees sitting on its board. But like Penn State, the University of Michigan now gets an almost trivial fraction of its budget from legislative appropriations, about 6%. It raises the rest of its money through tuition, private contributions to its endowment (which actually dwarfs Penn State’s), annual giving, competitive research grants (largely federal, some corporate or foundation-related), intellectual property royalties and licensing fees, and other “private” revenue streams over which the state legislature and governor have absolutely no control.</p>
<p>To characterize Penn State as a “private” or “semi-private” institution is just a category mistake. It is no more autonomous than any number of public flagships, and it was founded and initially funded by the state, not by a religious society or by private philanthropists as truly private institutions were. It is a public institution through and through.</p>