Koko Lists
Colleges

Boise State University

1910 University Dr, Boise, ID

Last updated

Koko Score: not enough votes yet

Boise State University, founded in 1932, has grown from a small junior college into Idaho's largest university, and its football program's distinctive blue artificial turf field, installed in 1986, made Boise State's home stadium one of the most recognizable in college football. The university's engineering and computer science programs have grown substantially alongside Boise's emergence as a significant regional technology hub, drawing on the city's growing concentration of technology employers relocating to the area. Boise State's 2007 Fiesta Bowl upset victory over Oklahoma, capped by a trick-play touchdown in overtime, remains one of the most celebrated upsets in college football history and significantly raised the university's national athletic and academic profile. The university's combination of its distinctive football brand identity and its growing technology-sector-connected academic programs has made Boise State one of the fastest-rising public universities in the Mountain West over the past two decades.

Own this business? Log in to claim this listing.

Appears on

Reviews

Log in to leave a review.

    Barks

    Log in to bark.

      Similar places

      • University of Idaho

        The University of Idaho, founded in 1889, is the state's original land-grant flagship university, and its natural resources and forestry programs benefit directly from the university's location amid some of the most significant forested and wilderness land in the American West. The university's engineering and agricultural programs reflect its land-grant founding mission, and Idaho's College of Law, the state's only law school, gives students unusually direct access to Idaho's legal profession and judiciary. The university's Moscow, Idaho campus, set in the fertile Palouse farming region, gives its agricultural science programs direct access to one of the most productive wheat and legume-growing areas in the country. The university's combination of genuine natural resources research strength and its status as Idaho's sole law school has made it central to both the state's higher education system and its forestry and agricultural economy.

        BattleCompare
      • Idaho State University

        Idaho State University, founded in 1901, has built one of the strongest pharmacy programs in the Mountain West, and its physician assistant and other health professions programs reflect the university's significant institutional investment in addressing rural Idaho's healthcare workforce shortages. The university's nuclear science and engineering programs benefit from ISU's proximity to the Idaho National Laboratory, one of the Department of Energy's most significant nuclear research facilities, giving students direct access to major federal nuclear research infrastructure. ISU's Pocatello campus and its continued focus on health professions and nuclear science education reflect a deliberate institutional strategy of serving specific regional workforce needs distinct from Idaho's larger, more comprehensive public universities. The university's combination of its health professions program strength and its unique nuclear science research partnership with Idaho National Laboratory has made ISU a distinctive contributor to both Idaho's healthcare workforce and its energy research sector.

        BattleCompare
      • Brigham Young University-Idaho

        Brigham Young University-Idaho, established in its current four-year form in 2001 after decades as a two-year college, is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and follows an unusual year-round, three-semester academic calendar that lets the university serve significantly more students than its physical campus capacity would otherwise allow. The university's extremely low, church-subsidized tuition, combined with its explicit religious mission and honor code requiring students to follow specific moral and dress standards, gives BYU-Idaho an institutional identity closely mirroring its larger sister campus in Provo, Utah. BYU-Idaho's rapid enrollment growth since its 2001 conversion to a four-year university has made it one of the largest private universities in the country by enrollment, reflecting strong demand within the LDS community for its distinctive combination of low cost and religious mission. The university's combination of its church ownership, its unusual year-round enrollment model maximizing campus capacity, and its rapid growth has made BYU-Idaho one of the most distinctive and fastest-growing religious universities in the country.

        BattleCompare
      • The College of Idaho

        The College of Idaho, founded in 1891, is the state's oldest private liberal arts college, and its PEAK curriculum requires every student to complete coursework and demonstrate proficiency across four broad academic areas, reflecting the college's institutional commitment to genuine breadth alongside deep specialization in a primary major. The college's small size and its Caldwell, Idaho campus give it a close-knit residential liberal arts community distinct from Idaho's larger public universities, and the school's need-based financial aid has helped it maintain relatively strong socioeconomic diversity for a small private college. The College of Idaho's Division II athletic programs and its continued emphasis on undergraduate research opportunities reflect a broader institutional strategy of providing a genuinely personalized liberal arts education within the state's higher education landscape. The college's combination of its genuine historical seniority as Idaho's oldest private college and its distinctive four-area PEAK curriculum has made it a notable choice among students seeking a small liberal arts alternative within Idaho.

        BattleCompare
      • Northwest Nazarene University

        Northwest Nazarene University, founded in 1913 and affiliated with the Church of the Nazarene, has built solid nursing and education programs, and the university's small size and Nampa, Idaho campus give it a close-knit religious community distinct from the state's larger public institutions. The university's continued explicit Christian mission, including mandatory chapel attendance and religious coursework, shapes campus culture throughout a student's undergraduate experience, reflecting the school's Wesleyan-Holiness theological tradition. NNU's location in the rapidly growing Boise metropolitan area gives students access to that region's expanding healthcare and business sectors, and the university's nursing program has grown substantially alongside broader regional healthcare workforce demand. The university's combination of its Nazarene religious mission and its solid nursing and education program offerings has made Northwest Nazarene a distinctive choice among Idaho's private colleges, particularly for students seeking a faith-based education near Boise.

        BattleCompare

      More in Colleges

      • edX

        edX was founded in 2012 as a joint nonprofit venture between Harvard University and MIT, launched specifically to offer free access to real university-level courses from elite institutions, directly following the same MOOC wave that produced Coursera the same year. The platform's nonprofit, open-source origins distinguished it from venture-backed for-profit competitors, and edX's underlying Open edX software platform was made freely available for other institutions and organizations to build their own independent online course offerings. edX was acquired in 2021 by the for-profit online education company 2U for $800 million, a transaction that marked a significant shift for a platform that had spent its first decade explicitly organized as a nonprofit mission-driven initiative between two of the world's most prestigious universities. edX's combination of its founding as a nonprofit Harvard-MIT partnership and its later acquisition by a for-profit education company has made it one of the most institutionally significant online learning platforms in the MOOC movement's history.

      • Udemy

        Udemy was founded in 2010, built around an open marketplace model letting virtually any individual instructor create and sell their own online course on any subject, a significantly more open and decentralized approach than platforms built around institutional university partnerships. The platform's marketplace structure, with instructors setting their own course content and often competing directly with other instructors teaching similar subjects, created an unusually large and varied course catalog spanning technical skills, business topics, and countless niche hobbyist subjects. Udemy's frequent deep-discount pricing promotions, regularly offering courses normally priced much higher for a small fraction of that cost, became a well-known and sometimes criticized part of the platform's sales strategy, reflecting the competitive economics of its open instructor marketplace. Udemy's combination of its open marketplace model for independent instructors and its massive, wide-ranging course catalog has made it one of the largest online learning platforms by total course volume in the industry.

      • MasterClass

        MasterClass was founded in 2015 by David Rogier, built around a genuinely novel premise for online education: rather than academic instructors, the platform recruits world-renowned experts and celebrities, including chefs, athletes, and artists, to teach polished, cinematically produced courses in their specific fields of mastery. The platform's production values, using film-quality cinematography and editing rather than typical webcam-style online course recording, positioned MasterClass as much as premium entertainment content as traditional education, blurring the line between the two categories. MasterClass's roster of instructors, including figures like Gordon Ramsay teaching cooking and Serena Williams teaching tennis, relies heavily on the specific celebrity and expertise of each instructor as the platform's core value proposition, a different model than platforms built around institutional academic credibility. MasterClass's combination of its celebrity-instructor business model and its unusually high cinematic production values has made it one of the most distinctive online learning platforms in the industry.

      • Duolingo

        Duolingo was founded in 2011 by Carnegie Mellon professor Luis von Ahn and his graduate student Severin Hacker, built around a free, gamified approach to language learning using short daily lessons, points, and streaks to encourage consistent practice habits. Von Ahn, who had previously co-created reCAPTCHA, brought a similar interest in crowdsourced technology to Duolingo's original business model, which for a time relied partly on having users translate real documents and web content as a byproduct of their language practice exercises. Duolingo's owl mascot, Duo, became known for its aggressively persistent notification style, reminding users to complete their daily lessons, a marketing approach that became a genuine internet meme and a widely recognized piece of the app's brand identity. Duolingo's combination of its gamified, streak-based approach to habit formation and its widely memed mascot-driven engagement strategy has made it one of the most downloaded and culturally recognized education apps ever created.

      • Coursera

        Coursera was founded in 2012 by Stanford computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, building on the massive open online course (MOOC) format that had generated significant attention after Stanford's own free online AI course drew over 100,000 enrolled students the previous year. The platform's partnership model, hosting courses created by actual professors from major universities including Stanford, Yale, and the University of Michigan, gave it a level of institutional academic credibility that distinguished it from platforms built around independent instructors. Coursera's evolution to offer full online degree programs and professional certificates from major employers including Google and IBM reflected a broader shift in how the platform positioned itself, moving from free enrichment courses toward credentialed programs with direct career and educational value. Coursera's combination of its origins in Stanford's pioneering MOOC experiments and its evolution into a platform offering full accredited degrees has made it one of the most academically significant online learning platforms in the industry.