The Cleveland State University is a public university located in Cleveland, Ohio. The main campus is located in downtown Cleveland, with satellite campuses in Westlake, Ohio and Solon, Ohio. It is home to many disciplines and research facilities, with 70 major fields, 27 master's degree programs, two post-master's degrees, six doctoral and two law degrees. The University is organized around seven academic colleges: College of Arts and Sciences, James J. Nance College of Business Administration, College of Education, Fenn College of Engineering, Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, and Graduate Studies. The Division of University Studies focuses on academic support services, and the Division of Continuing Education extends existing academic services beyond the campus.. The university is basically a commuter university, with only 500 students living on campus. Its current president is Michael Schwartz, who was most recently president at the Kent State University.

Cleveland State traces its historical roots to 1870, when the Cleveland YMCA began to offer free classes. The YMCA program was formalized in 1881, reorganized in 1906 as the Association Institute, and became the Cleveland School of Technology, later renamed Fenn College. Cleveland State adopted the buildings, faculty, staff, and programs of Fenn College, a private institution of 2,500 students, in 1964, becoming a public university.

The Cleveland-Marshall College of Law traces its origins to the founding of Cleveland Law School in 1897 as the first evening law school in the state and one of the first to admit women and minorities. In 1946, Cleveland Law School merged with the John Marshall School of Law, founded in 1916, to become Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Cleveland-Marshall became part of Cleveland State University in 1969.

One of the most famous alumni of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law is Tim Russert, host of the popular Sunday political talk show Meet the Press.

As of 2002, 10,356 undergraduate students and 5,618 graduate students were enrolled at Cleveland State. The university employed 490 full-time and 420 part-time faculty.

Until recently, the university maintained a policy of open admissions for the undergraduate programs. This is currently being phased out in favor of basic admission standards for full-time and most part-time students, allowing others to begin basic coursework or shifting them to local community colleges.

Cleveland State fields varsity teams in seventeen sports, including cheerleading. Most of the teams compete in the Horizon League. The men's basketball team achieved the greatest notoriety in 1986 when seeded 14th in the NCAA tournament, it upset heavily favored 3-seed Indiana and St. Joseph's before being narrowly beaten by Navy, an unprecedented achievement for such a low seed.

In 1997, Cleveland State University licensed PeopleSoft's student information system. After seven years of difficulties with the software, on March 29, 2004 the university sued PeopleSoft for $510M over accusations of fraud, breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation and four other counts.