Plymouth State University, formerly Plymouth State College, is a University System of New Hampshire institution of higher education located in Plymouth, New Hampshire.

Plymouth State University is a coeducational, residential university with an enrollment of approximately 4,000 undergraduate students and 500 graduate students. The school was originally founded as Plymouth State Normal School in 1871. Since that time it has evolved to a Teachers College, a State College, and finally to a State University in 2003.

It was originally founded as a Teacher's College, and it still retains a distinguished teaching program/major to this day. Since that time however it has diversified its academic profile, adding many new majors and fields of study. It has become known in recent years for its meteorology program (Judd Gregg Meteorology Institute), which is considered one of the best in the eastern United States, and is also strong in business, visual and performing arts, interdisciplinary studies, and psychology. Also, new majors such as Criminal Justice have been added and other programs have increased their stature, especially the natural sciences with the creation of The Center for the Environment.The university now has a total of eighteen academic departments, with nearly forty different options within the major programs. The campus has also grown substantially in recent years with the addition of the Hartman Union Building (HUB) and Boyd Science Center and renovations/expansions to the Silver Center for the Arts, Lamson Library, Prospect Dining Hall, and the Physical Education Center. The university is considered to be a comprehensive regional university and has worked in recent years to increase its profile compared to other regional institutions such as University of New Hampshire (UNH). Enrollment has swelled in recent years concurrent with the official name change from college to university. A new residence hall, Langdon Woods, is currently under construction and expected to open in Fall 2006 to accommodate the increased enrollment figures. There are also plans under revision to expand certain key or "heavy use" buildings on campus, such as Lamson Library and the University Bookstore, due to complaints of over crowding and long waiting lines. Robert Frost, America's Poet Laureate, lived and taught at Plymouth from 1911 - 1912. The college has a campus newspaper distributed every Friday called The Clock, the first college newspaper in the nation to have a Soduku puzzle in its pages.