Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (usually referred to as Rutgers University), is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766 and is the eighth-oldest college in the United States. Rutgers was originally a private university affiliated with the Dutch Reformed Church and admitted only male students, but evolved into and is presently a nonsectarian, coeducational public research university that makes no religious demands of its students. Rutgers is one of only two colonial colleges that later became public universities. (The other is the College of William and Mary).

Rutgers was designated The State University of New Jersey by acts of the New Jersey Legislature in 1945 and 1956. The three campuses of Rutgers are in (1) New Brunswick and Piscataway, (2) Newark and (3) Camden. The Newark campus was formerly the University of Newark, which merged into the Rutgers system in 1946, and the Camden campus was created in 1950 from the College of South Jersey. Rutgers is the largest university within New Jersey's state university system, and it was ranked 54th in the world academically in a 2008 survey conducted by the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The university offers more than 100 distinct bachelor, 100 master, and 80 doctoral and professional degree programs across 175 academic departments, 29 degree-granting schools and colleges, 16 of which offer graduate programs of study.