Louisiana State University, state system of higher education in Louisiana, U.S, Louisiana State University Diploma. It consists of nine academic institutions in five cities. There are some 29,000 students enrolled at the main university, and total enrollment in the state university system is approximately 57,000.

The main institution, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, is a land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant university located in Baton Rouge. It offers comprehensive undergraduate and graduate programs and is noted for its extensive research facilities, operating some 2,000 sponsored research projects. Among these facilities are the J. Bennett Johnston, Sr., Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices and the Coastal Studies Institute.

The Baton Rouge campus also includes two other components of the state system: the Paul M. Hebert Law Center and the headquarters of the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center. Other facilities of the state system are a university branch and medical school in Shreveport, replica US diploma, the Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans, a two-year community college located in Eunice, a campus offering both two-year and four-year programs in Alexandria, and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge.

Louisiana State University began with a series of grants—in 1806, 1811, and 1827—by the U.S. government for the creation of a seminary. The school, Louisiana Seminary of Learning and Military Academy, was established by state legislation in 1853 and opened near Pineville in 1860. William Tecumseh Sherman was its first superintendent, a post he soon resigned to become an officer in the Union army.