Two summers ago, this was a headline. This summer, a Harper Poll showed that Penn State is the most respected university in the commonwealth after it garnered 24 percent of the state’s voting.

Harper Poll is a nationally recognized Republican polling outlet. This poll asked respondents which of some listed universities they respected the most in the state, and the results went like this:

Penn State: 24 percent
Carnegie Mellon: 17 percent
University of Pennsylvania: 17 percent
Temple: 14 percent
Pitt: 7 percent
Villanova: 6 percent
Not sure: 6 percent
Indiana University of Pennsylvania: 4 percent
Bucknell: 3 percent

Penn State received top voting in three of the state’s regions, winning the northern tier, the Scranton-Lehigh Valley area, and the south central region. State was also the No. 1 choice for both Republicans and Democrats. The poll’s sample size numbered 568 Pennsylvanians, with a margin of error of about 4 percent.

PennLive did a story last week concluding that Penn State’s recovery from the Sandusky scandal is going well, so this lends some more credence to that. It doesn’t define the parameters of what it means by respect, really, so perhaps the measures Penn State has taken since the scandal factored into the respect it received.

This is cool recognition, but we should remember that the poll targeted only Pennsylvania, in which Penn State and its campuses are by far the biggest university. Still, Penn State deserves a high five for garnering more respect among Pennsylvanians than even an Ivy league school.