For the most part, the concept of the “national university” possess significant overlaps with the public/state, civic, and flagship university. Toward enriching the conceptual toolkit of higher education, this study explores what has been meant by a 'national university' and how could we identify such an organization empirically. Through a thematic analysis of a digital corpus in English, the study identifies four substantive themes that characterize the national university as it was articulated during the formative period of the nation-state. The core themes of such a concept include functioning as a tool for state development in terms of human capital, cultural identity, and social networks; serving as a nation’s most advanced learning institution; providing meritocratic higher education without discrimination and in consideration of subnational divisions; and possessing a definite link with the central government. Comparing these findings with closely related organizational models in higher education, a key difference of the national university is in its role in articulating a national identity through providing advanced education that is particularly inclusive of subnational divisions. The paper further forwards two contrasting empirical approaches to the national university: a historical–legal de jure approach and a sociocultural de facto approach.

在大多数情况下，“国立大学”的概念与公立/州立大学、公民大学和旗舰大学有很大的重叠。为了丰富高等教育的概念工具包，本研究探讨了“国立大学”的含义以及我们如何从经验上识别这样一个组织。通过对英语数字语料库的主题分析，该研究确定了民族国家形成时期阐明的国立大学特征的四个实质性主题。这一概念的核心主题包括作为国家在人力资本、文化认同和社会网络方面发展的工具；成为国家最先进的学习机构；无歧视地提供精英高等教育，并考虑到国家以下地区的划分；并与中央政府有一定的联系。将这些发现与密切相关的高等教育组织模式进行比较，国立大学的一个关键区别在于其通过提供特别包容地方部门的高等教育来阐明国家身份的作用。本文进一步提出了两种截然不同的国立大学实证方法：历史-法律法理方法和社会文化事实上方法。