The University was established as the Vanport Extension Center in 1946. (It became known
as "the college that wouldn't die" because it refused to close after the Vanport Flood of 1948.) In 1952
the Center moved to downtown Portland and occupied the vacated buildings of Lincoln High School on SW Broadway street. In
1955, the Center changed its name to Portland State College to mark its maturation into a
four-year degree-granting institution.PSU struggled for the next couple of decades under the ruling that no university or college in Oregon could duplicate the
programs offered by another, with grandfathered exclusions for
the University of Oregon and Oregon State University. Nevertheless, graduate programs were
added in 1961 and doctoral programs were added in 1968. The institution was granted university status by the Oregon State System of Higher Education in 1969. In 2003 PSU was approved to award degrees in Black Studies. That same year the university opened a center to support Native Americans studying at college.In 2004 Dr. Fariborz Maseeh donated, through The Masseeh Foundation, 8 million dollars to the College of Engineering and
Computer Science. This was the largest single donation to the University at the time. The college was renamed to Fariborz Maseeh
College of Engineering and Computer Science.In May, 2004, PSU announced a joint offering with Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) to offer the nation's first biomedical informatics program.