Talk:Flagship university

message: ::::As one of the authors of the Florida State University page I can tell you exactly why FSU is considered a "flagship" university.  The history of the university, the traditions of the university, the law of the state and the political reckoning therein.  FSU has actually more of these qualities than UF does, though some seem to acknowledge UF but deny FSU.  Check out the history of FSU sometime.  Then we have a few suggest research monies, SAT scores and magazine ratings make the difference, which does not meet the other qualities often stated, like origin.  You just cannot get it both ways...either you accept the history, law and all that or you just drop the term and say "highest rated".  If the other qualities matter, then up to about 1905 FSU (which was coed) was clearly the "flagship" of Florida, before it was changed into the female-only school and UF was created from several other schools.
::::Dr Berdahl, the now deceased chancellor at UC Berkeley had the best definition, which considers the origin and current state as to "flagship" in a 1998 speech here:http://cio.chance.berkeley.edu/chancellor/sp/flagship.htm  Even the (now ex) Florida governor says the two are flagship schools here: http://www.puaf.umd.edu/puaf650-Fullinwider/handouts-AA-Florida%20Plan.htm Sirberus (talk) 12:04, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Why FSU is a Flagship University

message: "First, I did not designate them as flagships to the exclusion of others," Spitzer said when asked those questions after his budget briefing Tuesday. "But I think that they are uniquely positioned very rapidly to move to that status."
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=657818&category=CAMPUSCOL&BCCode=&newsdate=1/24/2008  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.68.215.107 (talk) 21:07, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Albany

message: *USA Today 2006 Classification
--I just think that we should use their 75 Universities that they used to say which Public Universities are their respective Flagships of their state.  I am sure the less schools will be upset, however it's the historic leaders, and should be acknowledged as such.  Just my opinion. (User:Rothamell)  —Preceding comment was added at 01:40, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: USA Today did a classification in 2006

message: Isn't the easiest definition the University in the State system receiving the largest slice of the funding pie?  Alatari (talk) 03:42, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flagship definition 

message: What is the point of this article?  Academic, encyclopedic, or simply marketing and promotion for certain universities and their motivated alumni?  This article should be deleted, and deleted promptly. Streltzer (talk) 00:33, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion 

message: *Interesting someone from a California State University System would want to delete the Flagship distinction.  This is clearly not marketing and is a historic distinction. (User:Jccort) 00:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Don't Delete 

message: Michigan State University is not a university "system" within the state of Michigan. As far as I'm aware, the only university system is U-M. (User:LakeshoreLancer2004) 17:55, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  MSU ? 

message: Many states have two (or more) excellent state universities; often, one may exceed the other on one or another measure of excellence.  But a state with two excellent universities has that - not two flagships.  "Flagship" is a singular term - a good reference for the word generally can be found here.  In this context, "flagship" means, as the introduction says, "the leading comprehensive public research university in a given U.S. state".  (The only sort of exception that makes sense in this context is a system like New York's, where the state university system resembles a system of franchises more than anything else.)  With this in mind I've edited the list to remove some schools that are plainly not a state's "flagship".  I left a state's entry alone if I wasn't sure, and so some double-entries do remain; someone who knows those schools better should fix those.
As the edit summary says, I also removed a couple of external links that required paid subscriptions in order to view, per WP:Links to be avoided.  JohnInDC (talk) 13:39, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flagship is singular 

message: For a few weeks now I've been watching this list morph and grow (and occasionally contract), and I confess that I am at a loss to understand the criteria being used for inclusion on or exclusion from this list.  I took a crack at narrowing the field a while ago, proceeding from the logical (and, I thought, largely uncontroversial) premise that "flagship" was a singular term, bestowed on the one school in a state's university system that staked the greatest claim to excellence, tradition, public financial support and the like.  I still think the premise is logical (not to mention consistent with the historical use of the term "flagship") but it is increasingly clear that there's no agreement at all on that.
Well, okay - maybe a state can have two flagships.  Two unique schools, as it were.  But two seems to be no limit either.  In trying to find some useful, meaningful definition for the term, I learned, for example, that the State of Michigan appears to consider that it has *at least* four flagships - not just the University of Michigan (IMO the obvious candidate) but also Michigan State, Wayne State, Western Michigan, and perhaps others not identified in this one clipping.  See here.
Of course it doesn't matter for the purposes of a Wikipedia article that a state might have two or four or six flagships, if one can say with some confidence what a flagship is.  The problem is that there does not seem to be any generally agreed definition of "flagship" that can be applied to determine whether a school is, or isn't, a flagship.  The definition set forth in this article is not helpful.  The only part of it that everyone would agree on, I think, is that it a flagship needs to be a large(ish) public research university.  No private schools, no small special-purpose colleges.  Beyond that, we have nothing.  The flagship may or may not be the largest school, may or may not be the best known, may or may not be the oldest, may or may not be the best funded, may or may not bear the state's name, may or may not be a land grant college.  The more I think about it, I don't think there *is* a useful way to define the term.  And, given that there appears to be no limit to the number of "flagships" in a state then eventually the term simply comes to mean, "a big public university that someone, at some time, has described as a 'flagship'".  At that point the article becomes meaningless, literally a compendium of schools that at one point or another have had the label attached to them, or *could* have the label attached to them, by excelling in -- something.
I am coming to think that the term "flagship university" is irredeemably subjective, POV, and unverifiable (probably OR too); that for those reasons this article fails a variety of the tests set forth at Wikipedia:Overcategorization, and is a good candidate for deletion.
Thoughts?  JohnInDC (talk) 14:23, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: At the very least... Western MIchigan and Wayne State need to be removed as flagships. Its a joke to have them listed. I support MSU being included. (Aventius (talk) 04:04, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: From a personal point of view, I agree.  When I think of "flagships", I really don't think of Wayne or WMU as among them.  But personal points of view are the essential problem with this article.  It's now plain that "flagship university" means pretty much whatever people want it to.  Whatever you and I may think about including Wayne and WMU in the mix, education officials within the state have referred to those schools as "flagships" (see the reference), and so they should be included.  I really don't think there's any coherent, NPOV basis for leaving them off in this case.  JohnInDC (talk) 10:48, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: To illustrate further how arbitrary the whole thing is, here's an additional article that includes WSU and WMU as "flagships".  And here is one from a couple years later that has Wayne in, but Western out.  And neither of these of course comports with the commonsense notion that the flagship in Michigan is the University of Michigan (plus Michigan State, if the term is not singular).  So much confusion - and that's just in one state.  JohnInDC (talk) 12:49, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

text: Rather than delete material, I have attempted to qualify the listing to make clear that it lays no claim to definitiveness or authority.  This is, I think, the best way to handle the inherent problem of trying to include, or exclude, particular schools on the basis of an inherently vague definition -- an approach which is, finally, just an invitation to squabbles between partisans of different schools (abundantly evidenced by the edit history of this article).  JohnInDC (talk) 16:36, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The squabbles continue.  I think the listing needs to go.  See below.  JohnInDC (talk) 04:21, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tempted to nominate for deletion 

message: The state of Texas has 3 different University systems; University of Texas system, Texas A&M University system, and Texas Tech University system.  All public state-level Universities fall into one of those systems.  Shouldn't all three be included as flagship universities?  Ndenison (talk) 04:36, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Texas 

message: UGA and Georgia Tech should both be considered flagship universities.  While UGA has larger enrollment, Tech is involved in much more research and has several campuses throughout the world.  Ndenison (talk) 04:38, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Georgia 

message: The University of Iowa is listed as a flagship university, although Iowa State has a virtually identical enrollment.  In 2010, the SAT and ACT scores of incoming freshmen were also virtually identical (see http://collegeapps.about.com/od/collegeprofiles/p/U_of_Iowa.htm for the U of I and http://collegeapps.about.com/od/collegeprofiles/p/iowa-state.htm for Iowa State).  Each is an AAU school.  In 2010, Iowa State had 47 incoming National Merit Scholars to the University of Iowa's 26 .  The biggest difference is that Iowa State is more engineering, science, and ag, while the University of Iowa emphasizes liberal arts and graduate professional programs, although that hardly seems like the basis for either school claiming "flagship" status over the other. Ottoump (talk) 19:58, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Iowa 

message: This topic is almost impossibly to in verify.  It will always be a hotbed for edit warring.  Ndenison (talk) 13:56, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I was thinking the same thing myself just this morning.  Let's see if someone can salvage it.  JohnInDC (talk) 13:59, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been reverting editing, mostly people removing UCLA.  I tried to direct them to the discussion here to no avail.  There's no definitive sources on the topic, it really is subjective.  They'll be hundreds of school on the list in a few months.  Ndenison (talk) 14:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, finally it's just silly. Even the states themselves give the term wide berth because by designating one or two schools "flagships" they risk ticking off the other state schools in the system, and to no worthwhile end.  Finally it's all just opinion, propped up by whatever facts one can muster in support of, or in opposition to, a particular school.  JohnInDC (talk) 14:16, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

text: Thats probably the only thing we could do short of deleting the article.  I totally agree with the move.  Ndenison (talk) 14:11, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

text: I disagree that there's no basis for including/excluding a particular school: if the system to which the university belongs designates it as the flagship, it's the flagship. See http://www.maine.edu/prospective/univ-maine.php for an example.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 13:43, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed Deletion 

message: I removed the "naming" example that used UVA and VT.  Virginia has always made it a point to not label any of their schools as flagships.  This example was obviously pulled from the USA Today article and would be considered original research.  Bvjrm (talk) 07:56, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Virginia example 

message: I think this article should be merged into Flagship#University_campuses. J3ff (talk) 09:08, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  JohnInDC (talk) 12:23, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

text: Count me in.  Ndenison talk 21:08, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

text: AGAINST this is a very important distinction.  I am sorry if some people are sore that their alma mater is not the State Flagship, but you can not change history. NorwalkJames (talk) 22:15, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

text: MERGEPretty dumb subject as-is and we should conserve the electrons.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.252.231.55 (talk) 19:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

text: AGAINST It shouldn't be merged.  It's a legally-descriptive term distinguishing the primary university in any university system, and it has relevance to anyone doing federally-funded research where certain grants require that principal investigators reside at flagship universities, and not branch campuses or centers.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.111.163.179 (talk) 13:54, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not legally descriptive in the least.  To the contrary, as these Talk page comments reveal, the term is meaningless.  Some states claim more than one flagship.  Alumni of rival schools argue about whose alma mater can lay true claim to flagship status.  If the term were "legally descriptive" then we'd have a better list of purported "flagship" schools than an aging, ad hoc list from USA Today.  This Wikipedia article adds nothing to the discussion found within the discussion of the more general term "flagship" and the articles should be merged.  This one is just taking up index space needlessly.  JohnInDC (talk) 14:05, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 

message: Below I have listed the respective flagship universities of each state. The source is College Board and an annual survey of colleges. College board has been putting out this type list comparing flagship prices for many years now, and it just got updated for the 16-17 year. 
I will also include some other sources like from the US Department of Education - ERIC which lists each state flagship, recognized by the United States Government- https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED495096
And from the Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board (government report) - http://www.wsac.wa.gov/sites/default/files/TuitionandFees2009-10Report-Final.pdf 
List below copied from https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/tuition-fees-flagship-universities-over-time
University of Alaska Fairbanks	AK
University of Alabama	AL
University of Arkansas	AR
University of Arizona	AZ
University of California: Berkeley	CA
University of Colorado at Boulder	CO
University of Connecticut	CT
University of Delaware	DE
University of Florida	FL
University of Georgia	GA
University of Hawaii at Manoa	HI
University of Iowa	IA
University of Idaho	ID
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	IL
Indiana University Bloomington	IN
University of Kansas	KS
University of Kentucky	KY
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College	LA
University of Massachusetts Amherst	MA
University of Maryland: College Park	MD
University of Maine	ME
University of Michigan	MI
University of Minnesota: Twin Cities	MN
University of Missouri: Columbia	MO
University of Mississippi	MS
University of Montana	MT
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	NC
University of North Dakota	ND
University of Nebraska - Lincoln	NE
University of New Hampshire	NH
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey: New Brunswick/Piscataway Campus	NJ
University of New Mexico	NM
University of Nevada: Reno	NV
State University of New York at Buffalo	NY
Ohio State University: Columbus Campus	OH
University of Oklahoma	OK
University of Oregon	OR
Penn State University Park	PA
University of Rhode Island	RI
University of South Carolina	SC
University of South Dakota	SD
University of Tennessee: Knoxville	TN
University of Texas at Austin	TX
University of Utah	UT
University of Virginia	VA
University of Vermont	VT
University of Washington	WA
University of Wisconsin-Madison	WI
West Virginia University	WV
University of Wyoming	WY
AlaskanNativeRU (talk) 23:53, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of Flagship Universities 

message: It appears a university can be designated a Wikipedia flagship university provided any of the following conditions are met:
* Included in a list of published flagship universities - College Board, USA Today, Princeton Review, S&P, Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, etc.
* Self-identification as a flagship university by the university
* Federal or state designation as a flagship university
* Determined effort by an alumnus usually sourcing a published list
Not being included in the College Board list of 50 flagship universities does not preclude being designated as a Wikipedia flagship university.  For instance, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation lists 92 universities including three in Pennsylvania - Penn State, Pitt and Temple.  While Temple may be a surprise to the good folks in Pennsylvania (and probably to more than few Temple alums!), it does meet one of the criteria. Sandcherry (talk) 01:51, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flagship university designation criteria