This article is about the university in Clarksville, Tennessee named for former governor of Tennessee Austin Peay. For an article on that governor, see Austin Peay IV.

Austin Peay State University is an accredited public university located in Clarksville, Tennessee, and operated by the Tennessee Board of Regents. It began when the former Southwestern Presbyterian College moved to Memphis in 1925 (where it is now known as Rhodes College), leaving its former campus in Clarksville unoccupied. In 1929, area civic and political leaders encouraged the state of Tennessee to purchase the facility and operate it as a public normal school for the training of schoolteachers. This was done, and the institution was renamed in honor of former governor Austin Peay who had died in office in 1927, which many attributed at least in part to stress due to his battles with the state legislature over education issues.

The school thus began with the formal name of Austin Peay State Normal School for Rural White Teachers. Racial desegregation, among other factors, led to a name change to Austin Peay State College, and the institution was granted university status in 1967. The school grew greatly in the late 1940s and 1950s, largely due to veterans attending under the G.I. Bill of Rights, which gave the school a large number of male students for the first time, schoolteaching at the time of the school's founding having been a largely-female occupation. At the same time, several fields of study in areas beyond education were introduced into the curriculum. Much of the recent growth of the school has been in conjunction with programs conducted in conjunction with the United States Army at nearby Fort Campbell.

The school's athletic teams, some of which compete in the Ohio Valley Conference, are known as the "Governors" in honor of the school's namesake. The football team participates in the Pioneer Football League.

The site of Austin Peay State University has also been the site of Clarksville's first educational institutions, Rural Academy (1806-1810) and Mount Pleasant Academy (1811-1824). Later, Clarksville Academy (1825-1848), Masonic College, (1849-1850), Montgomery County Masonic College, (1851-1854), and Stewart College (1855-1874) would occupy this area until the arrival of Southwestern Presbyterian University (1875-1925).