flagship is singular 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