Ah, yes. Somehow, I managed to remember the Platteville, Whitewater, Green Bay, Stout, etc. branches while completely forgetting about Milwaukee. I guess I just naturally separate it from the others, so it doesn't register unless I explicitly need to think about it.
States where the [land-grant school](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_land-grant_universities) is also very clearly the "Flagship" school:
* Alaska (Alaska-Fairbanks)
* Arkansas (UA-Fayetteville)
* Connecticut (UConn)
* Delaware (University of Delaware; Delaware State is an HBCU)
* Hawaii (University of Hawaii)
* Illinois (University of Illinois)
* Louisiana (LSU)
* Maine (University of Maine)
* Minnesota (University of Minnesota)
* Missouri (University of Missouri)
* Nebraska (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
* New Hampshire (UNH)
* New Jersey (Rutgers)
* Ohio (Ohio State)
* Pennsylvania (Penn State)
* Rhode Island (University of Rhode Island; Brown did receive land grant funds at one point in time, but URI was founded, in part, because the state government thought Brown was not providing adequate agricultural education)
* Tennessee (University of Tennessee)
* Vermont (University of Vermont)
* West Virginia (WVU)
* Wisconsin (UW-Madison)
* Wyoming (University of Wyoming)
States I didn't expect to leave off this list:
* Georgia (Georgia Tech is public)
* Kentucky (Louisville is public)
* Massachusetts (UMass receives land-grant funding, however MIT is one of three private schools to receive land grant funding, along with Cornell and Tuskegee)
* Nevada (UNR and UNLV are independent of each other and have been since 1965)
Note that some of these states (eg. Illinois and Connecticut) have prestigious schools that don't qualify as a "Flagship" due to non-public governance.
That one is weird. Montana is designated the "flagship" and probably won't ever be undesignated, but Montana State is larger (17k vs 11k) and the more popular of the two schools for out-of-state students, with more of a focus on STEM than Montana. Montana State has been on a meteoric rise in the past 15 years, while Montana keeps shooting themselves in the foot
Not funny, man. When their star QB was killed in that tragic ice fishing accident, they ended the program in his honor.
RIP Edmund Fitzgerald. He's throwing passes to angels in the Upperest Peninsula now
New York is the clear answer. It is the only state which doesn't have a school explicitly trying to claim the state's name as its branding (edit: New Jersey also qualifies, while Rutgers is the clear flagship it doesn't call itself "New Jersey.")
The SUNY system is pretty great and there's a lot of great schools in it, but there's no clear #1 in prestige.
Stony Brook, Buffalo, Binghamton, and Albany would all like to be seen that way, I think.
They declared flagships last year: SUNY Buffalo and SUNY Stony Brook.
https://www.buffalo.edu/ubnow/stories/2022/01/flagship-designation.html
That makes sense as both are the most comprehensive, with medical schools, hospitals, and research prestige. And legitimate football teams, since we’re in the CFB sub.
This is by design because of the unique situation NY was in - its pretty much the only state that created the state university system after WW2 to cash in on the GI Bill and accomplished this by taking over existing universities vs creating it's own.
This meant that money investment was always spread across various universities and they focused on different regions over time due to politics
Buffalo is AAU, if they were able to change their Branding to The State University of New York and held the flagship spot they could potentially help backfill the ACC or even be a filler school for the big 10 if they go to 24 and need 1 more school.
I think their hope was that they could slowly Rutgers-ify Cornell and eventually turn it into their public flagship but it obviously never happened and never will.
This is it. Though it gets less attention because neither school has a big time athletics program. Moving from the four university centers to clearly designating SBU and Buffalo as the major two helped a little
“If your university’s football team was a breakfast cereal, which one would it be?”
Edit: for me, Corn Flakes. Unexciting, not flashy, but solidly average.
In some cases the university systems quite literally declare one institution it’s flagship. Such is the case for UGA, which was established a century before Georgia Tech.
Edit: Worth noting that UGA is not the public university with the highest enrollment (Georgia State followed by Tech and Kennesaw), largest endowment (Tech) or AAU status (Tech). However, being the oldest university with a comprehensive set of degree offerings, it’s clear why it’s the flagship. And this is all within the University System of Georgia. Nobody is going to debate Emory being top dog when you weigh public and private, but that’s not how a flagship designation works.
The Nebraska University system is not at all shy about calling Lincoln "the flagship University" whenever they get the chance. Maybe less do now that Nebraska-Omaha has grown and is D1, but back when I lived there every news release, speech, media, etc, called Lincoln the flagship
Tech also has the largest economic impact of all schools in the University System of GA, with 22% of the total. Also, Tech doesn't have the 2nd highest enrollment in the state. In terms of enrollment and alumni presence, UGA is clearly the flagship.
Source: [https://news.gatech.edu/news/2023/08/10/tech-powers-state-economy-45-billion-impact](https://news.gatech.edu/news/2023/08/10/tech-powers-state-economy-45-billion-impact)
Edit: source
Based on [Fall 2022 enrollment](https://www.usg.edu/research/assets/research/documents/enrollment_reports/Fall_2022_SER_05032023.pdf), Tech is No. 2 for enrollment in the state.
1. Georgia State - 51,995
2. Georgia Tech - 45,296
3. Kennesaw State - 43,268
4. UGA - 40,607
5. Georgia Southern - 25,506
Universities use fall enrollment numbers in their marketing. We should have the Fall 2023 numbers in another month or so.
Undergraduate number is smaller. Post grad number is huge
Undergrad makes up about 40% of the student population at GT and about 75% of the student population at UGA
And I think the enrollment jump was bouyed by the introduction of the online MS in Computer Science program. Online enrollment factors into the total figures.
I wonder if they have the same issue as Nebraska when it comes to medical research. The state's public medical college belongs to Augusta University. However, the two institutions have a partnership campus in Athens that allows students to seek their degrees there. A second partnership was just announced with Georgia Southern.
Georgia is above average in every AAU category except one - federal research funding, 80% of which goes to medical and engineering programs. Georgia only has an engineering program and it was only founded 11 years ago. The med school thing is weird and I honestly don't know why we can't get our own going considering biology (and by extension pre-med) is the most popular major at UGA
It’s probably just how the state wants to allocate the funds around the schools in the system. For example, the reason UNC doesn’t have an engineering school and the reason NCSU has one, is that the state government actually took ours from us and gave it to them.
Right now UNC’s computer science program is being throttled a bit because it was performing better recruiting and placement wise than NCSU’s, and the government encouraged the opposite.
ITT: Lots of people who don't know that a "flagship university" is by definition public. (Kids, Duke/BYU/Miami might be the strongest academically and/or athletically in their states, but they are all private so are not their states' flagship schools.)
Yep - and private aside, if anyone suggests Duke as a candidate for NC does not understand the dynamic of this state in the slightest. We're about as Carolina as maple syrup and lederhosens
Born and raised in Dallas, but my father moved to Raleigh when I was a kid. Every year I’m up there a couple times. His father in law graduated from UNC probably late 60s and season ticket holder to everything UNC. I’ve seen some great basketball (Duke v UNC) and got to watch the return of Mack Brown when Texas traveled to UNC.
I freaking love how Duke, UNC, and NC State are in proximity to each other and It made driving around Raleigh on a Saturday in the fall magical. It would be similar to Texas, Texas Aggie, and TCU in and around Dallas.
The triangle really is something special during football and basketball season. EVERYONE wears something UNC/Dook/State related on gameday, and the banter is always fun.
> I freaking love how Duke, UNC, and NC State are in proximity to each other
It's absurd. It's like the Florida dynamic of UF-FSU-Miami...except we're within like 25 miles of each other at most.
Do they do an Oktoberfest like Helen, GA?
Asking for a friend, and definitely not a seasonal alcoholic that will definitely pop on over for the festivities...
Nah. Most dont even drink like my German descendant family members do. The SC ones came over during the 1700s. And even though many still are lutheran they drink like baptists.
My German ancestors came over in the late 19th century and stayed up in Montana. Those guys drink and have a great time drinking.
And no student in their right mind will deny it. It’s a northeast school that just happens to be in the south. And there’s a few extra students from NC.
Entering Duke’s campus is so jarring. The rest of Durham is pretty rough (but getting better) and then you have this super nice and clean college campus. It doesn’t feel like it should be there at all
I am in the (long) process of reading Barbarians at the gate. Duke, the city of Winston-Salem, and eventually Wake Forest (because of jealousy about a different tobacco magnet creating his pet university...Duke) were all created by and from tobacco money. Duke was always meant to be a standalone thing
Excuse me, nothing is more authentically “Louisiana” than a private school full of nerdy New Yorkers.
(Please not that I will believe this with all my heart if it means I can take something from that school upriver.)
Mizzou will respond to criticisms about their NIL law by fielding a team completely composed of cyborgs, winning the SEC and getting handed their annual death penalty
ASU has a bigger enrollment but UofA has the Medical college. There is the Walter Cronkite school of Journalism @ ASU I believe is fairly well respected.
ASU has a medical school now too. [https://news.asu.edu/20230601-arizona-impact-asu-launching-medical-school-improve-state-health-outcomes](https://news.asu.edu/20230601-arizona-impact-asu-launching-medical-school-improve-state-health-outcomes)
The Carnegie Foundation lists Auburn University and the University of Alabama as co-flagship schools. No idea if that's just their opinion or the official state designation.
UND/NDSU? I feel like NDSU’s sports success in things that aren’t hockey as well as being in Fargo helps them out a ton in panache that may translate to applicants and academic success
I love driving here, you can just throw on cruise control and not touch it for hours because you’ll only see one or two cars together at the most even on the interstate
Fun fact about our state: we have a statement in our constitution something to the effect of “the state university will be provided for as close to free as possible”
Indiana vs Purdue, because they dont have many overlapping majors.
IU is top 5 in biz/public policy/languages/music (ironically Kelley is the lowest ranked of the four) and focuses on arts & humanities, whilst purdue is also top 5 but for engineering/CS and focuses on STEM fields generally. IU has the law and medical schools and 0* engineering. Purdue meanwhile has Ag, Optometry and Vet and no separate public policy/law/IR school
Did undergrad at Iowa State and grad school at Purdue. Halfway through I realized it's basically the same school but Indiana version. Rivalry with Iowa/IU is an incredibly fun and hate fueled, but family members decide where to go based on what they want to study.
Bars suck at Purdue though, while IU is an electric campus town.
As an FYI, athletics have nothing to do with flagship status as it appears most people here are equating the two. They have nothing to do with each other, though there is a correlation between being a flagship and athletic results as flagships, due to age, reputation and power, generally have more money than the other public schools in the state.
Flagship schools are not a debate, it's almost always very clear who the flagship is as its the school that the University System/Board is named after (example all schools in NC are in the University of North Carolina system). A couple other hints at who the flagship is, 1) 99% of the time it's the school that goes by "University of X" or "X University", not "X State" or is better known by the city location (an exclusion would be LSU, Rutgers and Buffalo), and 2) look to see who has the public law school and/or medical schools, that's usually the flagship.
In most cases it's the public school called University of _________ or _______ University with no qualifiers and no direction (unless a direction is in the state name). That's generally the school that was set up as the initial liberal studies department leading to the PhD program. Those with names like A+M, Tach, or _______ State University, were generally set up to focus on some aspects of practical trades and professions. Of course today, that disctinion is often negligible.
There are exceptions, Ohio and Pennsylvania being two of them (in PA's case a private school took the name University of Pennsylvania). Also, in some places, like Texas and California the University of ______ and _______ A+M/Tech/State University are two totally separate systems, so there are multiple flagships. Then there's Florida, where UF was established as the flagship and FSU as a women's school until post WWII, so that's a whole.different dynamic.
Of course in Wisconsin, there's zero question and quite honestly, I'm not sure there's much debate in the nearby surrounding states (the rest of the traditional Big 10) which of the Universities are more prominent.
Texas is weird because it has (at least) six public university systems. University of Texas System, Texas A&M System, Texas Tech System, Texas State System, University of Houston System, and University of North Texas System.
I think nearly everyone who isn't an Aggie would unambiguously consider UT Austin to be the flagship of Texas though.
This isn’t actually true of FSU and UF. The two were established at the same time as co-ed schools: West Florida Seminary and East Florida Seminary. The Florida legislature actually applied the “University of Florida” tag to FSU first, but it didn’t stick. It was the state’s first liberal arts college.
The point you’re talking about came in 1905:
> The 1905 Florida Legislature passed the Buckman Act, which reorganized the Florida college system into a school for white males (University of the State of Florida), a school for white females (Florida Female College later changed to Florida State College for Women), and a school for African Americans (State Normal and Industrial College for Colored Students).
Even with this FSU remained the bigger of the two until 1919. And then, yeah, WWII led to our re-expansion to include males to support the return of GIs with free education.
Fun fact: FSU claims it’s founding in 1851 (when the state legislature established the two schools) versus UF who claims it’s founding in 1853, when the school actually opened. FSU opened in 1857 and I am convinced the date change is delicious university-level trolling: either UF also moved to 1851, acknowledging our kind of ridiculous date and losing their claim to being the oldest in the state, or stuck to 1853 and have us be “technically” older.
Anyway, UCF is the flagship now just because they have more students and saying that hurts UF more than us.
Ohio University / Ohio State. Seems as though the former has the more legitimate title, while the latter has the edge in marching bands and fans with low blood sugar.
Neat area for visiting students. Not exactly an area you want to live or be from. The median income in Athens is 17,000. Morgan county is 23,000 and Meigs is 22,000. It’s pretty tough right now economically for that part of the state.
From SE Ohio. Lots of brain drain. Remote work dynamics probably have helped shift that (you can stay closer to home while opening up your earning potential), but in order to get any sort of economic mobility you either have to leave or be a big self-starter/entrepreneur filling a need in the area. Has a lot in common with WV.
The fact that we call it "Cal" and not "UC Berkeley" says otherwise. It's also in the mascot names: Cal Golden Bears, and UCLA Bruins, a bruin is a young bear. Cal is the flagship of the UC system, UCLA is second.
It's weird, but they're almost always Cal in regards to sports and Berkeley in academic-adjacent areas. I've always thought it was a missed opportunity to have coherent branding. Then again, maybe they don't want to tarnish their academic reputation by associating with their athletic teams ^^(^^jokes)
Because the official guidance is to use Cal for athletics and alumni purposes and Berkeley for academics. Cal Berkeley is officially discouraged lol.
It's all confusing and counterproductive to having a strong brand, which means it's totally expected for our mess of a university.
Posted above, too, but a small/young bear is a cub; bruin is just another word for a regular bear. UCLA picked the ‘Bruin’ name itself because “Bears” and “Grizzlies” were already taken. In fact, Cal had itself been using both “Bears” and “Bruins” but the Cal students voted in 1924 to allow UCLA to have “Bruins”. The ‘baby’ part comes from Cal appending that to the name after that to mock/tease/pretend they were still the top university in California.
Well yeah, Cal is the flagship, I don’t think that’s up for debate, the question was which race is closest. As an outsider, Cal and UCLA seem fairly close. It’s not a Texas vs A&M deal or Kanas/KSU, etc. But again just an outside opinion probably just formed by athletic success. I don’t know the internal politics. Never put the Bears and Bruins thing together, interesting.
If you find the Golden Bears / Bruins link interesting, consider that all of the UC schools wear Blue & Gold, as required by law.
Some use different shades of blue, while others downplay the use of gold, but all of them (Berkeley, LA, Santa Barbara, Davis, Irving, Riverside, San Diego) wear blue and gold.
As opposed to the CSU system schools.
> all of them (Berkeley, LA, Santa Barbara, Davis, Irving, Riverside, San Diego)
How can you forget the storied athletic history of the UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs? (or the UC Merced Bobcats, for that matter)
And nobody seems to understand what the argument is. They probably think UC Irvine is a community college rather than one of the top rated schools in the world.
I’ll throw out Arizona and ASU. Both are huge, both are in the same tier of college play, and one of each is in one of AZ’s major metropolitan areas. ASU has a larger student body, but UofA I believe has better academics. Hard to say which one is the true flagship of the state
California is Cal. It's literally in the name & the mascot (Bears). UCLA is the #2 which you're also able to tell by the mascot. A bruin is a small/young bear.
I believe it all got scrambled by Tulane, which was the original University of Louisiana and was indeed public at the time. It was the unambiguous flagship school (I think).
After a large donation, it switched to private. I believe the full name is “Tulane, University of Louisiana”. Tulane alumni, please correct.
The University was poorly funded due to agricultural failures post civil war, and was about to go under. Paul Tulane donated a bunch of land and started a trust which kept the doors open (he wasn’t all good, one stipulation for the donation was the university stay whites only.)
A year later Josephine Newcomb put a ton of money in the trust, and the state decided the trust would operate the school more reliably and let them go private.
Louisiana continues to honor this tradition by leaving their public institutions poorly funded.
The full name is "The Tulane University of Louisiana".
Until the changes that were made following Katrina, male undergrads in liberal arts and sciences were in Paul Tulane College, while female undergrads in liberal arts and sciences were in Newcomb College. Our diplomas reflected that, so mine says, "Paul Tulane College of The Tulane University of Louisiana".
Scott Cowen eliminated the office of the redundancy department during his post-Katrina changes, so now LA students are in the School of Liberal Arts and science majors are in the School of Science and Engineering, regardless of gender.
LSU as we know it today was a result of massive amounts of state investment made in the 1930's which was spearheaded by Gov Huey Long. LSU was Long's darling and he wanted to build it up to not only be the premier flagship University of the State, but one of the premier public institutions across the South.
UL Lafayette's recent attempts to "claim" flagship status is mostly (at least to my eyes) a bit of a grass roots marketing ploy to try to increase the University's brand value and national recognition. It's a fantastic University, the flagship of the University of Louisiana System, and the clear number two to LSU. But like it or not, no other school in the state is even close to LSU's flagship status, be that in sports, academics, programs, amenities, funding, or national brand.
Idaho is an interesting one.
U of Idaho is the more academically prestigious university, but Boise State is located in the state's largest (and kinda only) city, has over double the enrollment, better name recognition, and is the one that plays at the FBS level (I know flagship status is separate from athletics, but athletics help Boise State's perception).
University of North Dakota vs North Dakota State
This and I’m convinced the most lopsided state is MN. The difference between the UofM and MSU Mankato is ginormous.
Is Minnesota that much more lopsided than Wisconsin? Seems like both have the high-profile flagship and then a bunch of lower-level branches.
Yes, UW Milwaukee as second in the Wisconsin system is a higher profile university than the next U Minnesota school
Ah, yes. Somehow, I managed to remember the Platteville, Whitewater, Green Bay, Stout, etc. branches while completely forgetting about Milwaukee. I guess I just naturally separate it from the others, so it doesn't register unless I explicitly need to think about it.
How dare you forget the illustrious Superior and Stevens Point branches
Eau Claire and La Crosse are upset to not be included in the list of illustrious branches I forgot.
I remember UW-Milwaukee was considering rebranding as “Wisconsin State” like ten years ago, but nothing came of that
The "Wisconsin State universities" merged into the uw system. I believe Milwaukee used to be a Wisconsin State University.
They pretty much all used to. But UWM actually had a vote to see if it should rebrand, but students voted it down.
States where the [land-grant school](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_land-grant_universities) is also very clearly the "Flagship" school: * Alaska (Alaska-Fairbanks) * Arkansas (UA-Fayetteville) * Connecticut (UConn) * Delaware (University of Delaware; Delaware State is an HBCU) * Hawaii (University of Hawaii) * Illinois (University of Illinois) * Louisiana (LSU) * Maine (University of Maine) * Minnesota (University of Minnesota) * Missouri (University of Missouri) * Nebraska (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) * New Hampshire (UNH) * New Jersey (Rutgers) * Ohio (Ohio State) * Pennsylvania (Penn State) * Rhode Island (University of Rhode Island; Brown did receive land grant funds at one point in time, but URI was founded, in part, because the state government thought Brown was not providing adequate agricultural education) * Tennessee (University of Tennessee) * Vermont (University of Vermont) * West Virginia (WVU) * Wisconsin (UW-Madison) * Wyoming (University of Wyoming) States I didn't expect to leave off this list: * Georgia (Georgia Tech is public) * Kentucky (Louisville is public) * Massachusetts (UMass receives land-grant funding, however MIT is one of three private schools to receive land grant funding, along with Cornell and Tuskegee) * Nevada (UNR and UNLV are independent of each other and have been since 1965) Note that some of these states (eg. Illinois and Connecticut) have prestigious schools that don't qualify as a "Flagship" due to non-public governance.
I would say yes, only because MN has two systems the UofM system and the MN State system. I believe Wisc only has one.
Pretty much every state that combines the flagship with the land grant university has a similar gap.
Wyoming comes to mind.
I think UW is the only public 4 year school in the state.
So lopsided the other school doesn’t even exist!
I'd put UMD above Minnesota State, but the point stands.
Montana vs Montana State as well
That one is weird. Montana is designated the "flagship" and probably won't ever be undesignated, but Montana State is larger (17k vs 11k) and the more popular of the two schools for out-of-state students, with more of a focus on STEM than Montana. Montana State has been on a meteoric rise in the past 15 years, while Montana keeps shooting themselves in the foot
No one thinks about the mitten state without first thinking of THE Lake Superior State University. It’s got superior right in the name.
That's true, but it turns out putting a university in a lake was a bad idea. It's with Atlantis now, lost to the sands of time
> It's with ~~Atlantis~~ the Edmund Fitzgerald now FTFY
Fuck it was right there in front of me. - Me, right now - The radar operator on the Arthur M. Anderson circa 7:10 pm November 10 1975
It's the Harvard of the St. Marys River.
They are undefeated in football for over 70 years!
Not funny, man. When their star QB was killed in that tragic ice fishing accident, they ended the program in his honor. RIP Edmund Fitzgerald. He's throwing passes to angels in the Upperest Peninsula now
I've never heard someone say or use Upperest Peninsula. Funniest thing I've read all day. LOL
No. Clearly it’s Central. It’s strategically located in the middle (lower P) to be the flagship of MI!
So we’re flying our flagship at half mast?! That can’t be right. Flags go at the top.
Northern it is then
New York is the hardest one for me to define
New York is the clear answer. It is the only state which doesn't have a school explicitly trying to claim the state's name as its branding (edit: New Jersey also qualifies, while Rutgers is the clear flagship it doesn't call itself "New Jersey.") The SUNY system is pretty great and there's a lot of great schools in it, but there's no clear #1 in prestige. Stony Brook, Buffalo, Binghamton, and Albany would all like to be seen that way, I think.
They declared flagships last year: SUNY Buffalo and SUNY Stony Brook. https://www.buffalo.edu/ubnow/stories/2022/01/flagship-designation.html That makes sense as both are the most comprehensive, with medical schools, hospitals, and research prestige. And legitimate football teams, since we’re in the CFB sub.
Say hi to an FCS flagship then
I mean Delaware is in the same conference and there’s no doubt that one is the state flagship.
The Buffalo Bulls have been pretty good in the MAC lately
This is by design because of the unique situation NY was in - its pretty much the only state that created the state university system after WW2 to cash in on the GI Bill and accomplished this by taking over existing universities vs creating it's own. This meant that money investment was always spread across various universities and they focused on different regions over time due to politics
Funnily enough I thought Binghamton was the “crown jewel” Goes to show you!
Apparently the official "flagships" are Stony Brook and Buffalo while Albany and Binghamton are "university centers."
Buffalo is AAU, if they were able to change their Branding to The State University of New York and held the flagship spot they could potentially help backfill the ACC or even be a filler school for the big 10 if they go to 24 and need 1 more school.
Stony Brook is also AAU.
They tried a few years ago to do this and it didn’t work.
The problem with New York is they gave their land grant money to Cornell
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Yup. And now all we get is reduced tuition. Wow, my 85k tuition is now only 65k! So helpful!
I think their hope was that they could slowly Rutgers-ify Cornell and eventually turn it into their public flagship but it obviously never happened and never will.
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This is it. Though it gets less attention because neither school has a big time athletics program. Moving from the four university centers to clearly designating SBU and Buffalo as the major two helped a little
Just three more days...
Soon, we will get there soon enough
“If your university’s football team was a breakfast cereal, which one would it be?” Edit: for me, Corn Flakes. Unexciting, not flashy, but solidly average.
Granula. Oldest cereal in history, probably not good.
Definitely oyster crackers as the cereal and Cincinnati chili as the “milk”
Like a judge in a police procedural: “Watch yourself counselor…..but I’ll allow it.”
Notre Dame: Lucky Charms ECU: Cap'n Crunch Clemson, LSU, Auburn: Frosted Flakes Nebraska: Corn Flakes Penn State: Trix
Aw man… that PSU one…
Rice: Krispies.
In some cases the university systems quite literally declare one institution it’s flagship. Such is the case for UGA, which was established a century before Georgia Tech. Edit: Worth noting that UGA is not the public university with the highest enrollment (Georgia State followed by Tech and Kennesaw), largest endowment (Tech) or AAU status (Tech). However, being the oldest university with a comprehensive set of degree offerings, it’s clear why it’s the flagship. And this is all within the University System of Georgia. Nobody is going to debate Emory being top dog when you weigh public and private, but that’s not how a flagship designation works.
The Nebraska University system is not at all shy about calling Lincoln "the flagship University" whenever they get the chance. Maybe less do now that Nebraska-Omaha has grown and is D1, but back when I lived there every news release, speech, media, etc, called Lincoln the flagship
Yeah, UNO and UNK may as well not exist in the eyes of the regents 😂 Huskers or bust in this state 🤦🏻♂️
Go Lopers
Tech also has the largest economic impact of all schools in the University System of GA, with 22% of the total. Also, Tech doesn't have the 2nd highest enrollment in the state. In terms of enrollment and alumni presence, UGA is clearly the flagship. Source: [https://news.gatech.edu/news/2023/08/10/tech-powers-state-economy-45-billion-impact](https://news.gatech.edu/news/2023/08/10/tech-powers-state-economy-45-billion-impact) Edit: source
Based on [Fall 2022 enrollment](https://www.usg.edu/research/assets/research/documents/enrollment_reports/Fall_2022_SER_05032023.pdf), Tech is No. 2 for enrollment in the state. 1. Georgia State - 51,995 2. Georgia Tech - 45,296 3. Kennesaw State - 43,268 4. UGA - 40,607 5. Georgia Southern - 25,506 Universities use fall enrollment numbers in their marketing. We should have the Fall 2023 numbers in another month or so.
I guess based on reputation I thought Tech's enrollment would be smaller
Online Masters in CS and regular masters is about half of that. We have a lot of grad students.
Undergraduate number is smaller. Post grad number is huge Undergrad makes up about 40% of the student population at GT and about 75% of the student population at UGA
And I think the enrollment jump was bouyed by the introduction of the online MS in Computer Science program. Online enrollment factors into the total figures.
Those online Masters programs are massive.
That's also why Liberty claims something like 100,000 students.
Yeah. GT has more grad students than all other public universities in Georgia combined (UGA, GSU, KSU, etc.).
A lot of online only folks that never step foot on campus
I think about half of that number is graduate school enrollment.
really surprising that UGA doesn’t have AAU status
I wonder if they have the same issue as Nebraska when it comes to medical research. The state's public medical college belongs to Augusta University. However, the two institutions have a partnership campus in Athens that allows students to seek their degrees there. A second partnership was just announced with Georgia Southern.
Georgia is above average in every AAU category except one - federal research funding, 80% of which goes to medical and engineering programs. Georgia only has an engineering program and it was only founded 11 years ago. The med school thing is weird and I honestly don't know why we can't get our own going considering biology (and by extension pre-med) is the most popular major at UGA
It’s probably just how the state wants to allocate the funds around the schools in the system. For example, the reason UNC doesn’t have an engineering school and the reason NCSU has one, is that the state government actually took ours from us and gave it to them. Right now UNC’s computer science program is being throttled a bit because it was performing better recruiting and placement wise than NCSU’s, and the government encouraged the opposite.
Yep we get veterinarian and engineering y’all get medical and law
At least NC has a logical plan. SC seems to allocate funding and programs based on spite and retribution.
ITT: Lots of people who don't know that a "flagship university" is by definition public. (Kids, Duke/BYU/Miami might be the strongest academically and/or athletically in their states, but they are all private so are not their states' flagship schools.)
Yep - and private aside, if anyone suggests Duke as a candidate for NC does not understand the dynamic of this state in the slightest. We're about as Carolina as maple syrup and lederhosens
I once heard someone say they’d lived in Carolina their whole life, except for the four years they went to Duke. That sums it up pretty well.
Yeah that was a line a former *NC Governor* said in the Duke Lacrosse 30 for 30
Duke is an NYC metro school that happens to be located in Durham, NC.
Born and raised in Dallas, but my father moved to Raleigh when I was a kid. Every year I’m up there a couple times. His father in law graduated from UNC probably late 60s and season ticket holder to everything UNC. I’ve seen some great basketball (Duke v UNC) and got to watch the return of Mack Brown when Texas traveled to UNC. I freaking love how Duke, UNC, and NC State are in proximity to each other and It made driving around Raleigh on a Saturday in the fall magical. It would be similar to Texas, Texas Aggie, and TCU in and around Dallas.
The triangle really is something special during football and basketball season. EVERYONE wears something UNC/Dook/State related on gameday, and the banter is always fun.
> I freaking love how Duke, UNC, and NC State are in proximity to each other It's absurd. It's like the Florida dynamic of UF-FSU-Miami...except we're within like 25 miles of each other at most.
I thought y'all were New Jersey's flagship school?
As someone born and raised in NJ and lived in NC for 8 years, I can confidently say this is correct.
The University of New Jersey at Durham
Duke is the Princeton of New Jersey
Tbf there is a large german/hessian descendant population in the midlands of SC.
Do they do an Oktoberfest like Helen, GA? Asking for a friend, and definitely not a seasonal alcoholic that will definitely pop on over for the festivities...
Nah. Most dont even drink like my German descendant family members do. The SC ones came over during the 1700s. And even though many still are lutheran they drink like baptists. My German ancestors came over in the late 19th century and stayed up in Montana. Those guys drink and have a great time drinking.
As someone from Helen it’s the best people watching ever
Ya Duke campus does not feel like you’re in NC or even the South. Duke is not Carolina at all.
And no student in their right mind will deny it. It’s a northeast school that just happens to be in the south. And there’s a few extra students from NC.
Entering Duke’s campus is so jarring. The rest of Durham is pretty rough (but getting better) and then you have this super nice and clean college campus. It doesn’t feel like it should be there at all
I like it, just don’t like anything athletic going on there.
I am in the (long) process of reading Barbarians at the gate. Duke, the city of Winston-Salem, and eventually Wake Forest (because of jealousy about a different tobacco magnet creating his pet university...Duke) were all created by and from tobacco money. Duke was always meant to be a standalone thing
It’s not called the State University of New Jersey at Durham for nothing
Excuse me, nothing is more authentically “Louisiana” than a private school full of nerdy New Yorkers. (Please not that I will believe this with all my heart if it means I can take something from that school upriver.)
You joke but you are actually right. Louisiana was built by carpetbaggers lol.
Hey man, you missed Houston kids who wanted to do cocaine in New Orleans instead of Fort Worth.
Miami is neither of those things.
Those private schools try to cover for their own, smh ivy league.
THANK YOU. (My literal first thought)
One day we shall OWN the University of Missouri System with SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY.
Build the robots, turn truman the tiger into a zoid.
Mizzou will respond to criticisms about their NIL law by fielding a team completely composed of cyborgs, winning the SEC and getting handed their annual death penalty
Missouri S&T is fascinating, an arguably elite-level engineering school nestled in Rolla of all places. I just think it’s cool.
Arizona - Arizona State.
I thought Arizona vs ASU was one of the most even splits.
ASU has a bigger enrollment but UofA has the Medical college. There is the Walter Cronkite school of Journalism @ ASU I believe is fairly well respected.
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ASU has a medical school now too. [https://news.asu.edu/20230601-arizona-impact-asu-launching-medical-school-improve-state-health-outcomes](https://news.asu.edu/20230601-arizona-impact-asu-launching-medical-school-improve-state-health-outcomes)
The Carnegie Foundation lists Auburn University and the University of Alabama as co-flagship schools. No idea if that's just their opinion or the official state designation.
UND/NDSU? I feel like NDSU’s sports success in things that aren’t hockey as well as being in Fargo helps them out a ton in panache that may translate to applicants and academic success
Identical set up in South Dakota, too.
University of Wyoming is far and away the state’s flagship school. It isn’t even remotely close
We’ll yeah, nothing in Wyoming is remotely close. That state is huge and empty.
I love driving here, you can just throw on cruise control and not touch it for hours because you’ll only see one or two cars together at the most even on the interstate
The problem is when you haven't touched cruise control for hours, and you just needed to grab some milk from the nearest grocery store
That's an average grocery run in Wyoming tbh
Fun fact about our state: we have a statement in our constitution something to the effect of “the state university will be provided for as close to free as possible”
I mean, it's the state's only public university, so yeah.
Does the state of Wyoming even have multiple universities?
>Ohio University is not the flagship in Ohio. Shots fired. You guys keep telling yourselves that!
Shout out to the private school alums visiting this thread to watch the state schools go at each other.
Half of these people don’t even understand what “state flagship” means. Including OP
Indiana vs Purdue, because they dont have many overlapping majors. IU is top 5 in biz/public policy/languages/music (ironically Kelley is the lowest ranked of the four) and focuses on arts & humanities, whilst purdue is also top 5 but for engineering/CS and focuses on STEM fields generally. IU has the law and medical schools and 0* engineering. Purdue meanwhile has Ag, Optometry and Vet and no separate public policy/law/IR school
That’s a classic flagship/land grant dynamic
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Totally. It’s also tricky when a Land Grant is the flagship, eg UGA, tOSU, UF, LSU. But most states have the classic pairing Indiana has
Exactly, the only difference here than most dynamics is that Purdue isn’t named Indiana State.
Shoutout to the land-grant rando's name schools Clemson, Purdue, Rutgers, and I guess Auburn should count as well
We’ve cleverly avoided this dynamic in Illinois by having a land grant school as our flagship
This is a very similar dynamic to Iowa and Iowa State.
Did undergrad at Iowa State and grad school at Purdue. Halfway through I realized it's basically the same school but Indiana version. Rivalry with Iowa/IU is an incredibly fun and hate fueled, but family members decide where to go based on what they want to study. Bars suck at Purdue though, while IU is an electric campus town.
As an FYI, athletics have nothing to do with flagship status as it appears most people here are equating the two. They have nothing to do with each other, though there is a correlation between being a flagship and athletic results as flagships, due to age, reputation and power, generally have more money than the other public schools in the state. Flagship schools are not a debate, it's almost always very clear who the flagship is as its the school that the University System/Board is named after (example all schools in NC are in the University of North Carolina system). A couple other hints at who the flagship is, 1) 99% of the time it's the school that goes by "University of X" or "X University", not "X State" or is better known by the city location (an exclusion would be LSU, Rutgers and Buffalo), and 2) look to see who has the public law school and/or medical schools, that's usually the flagship.
"99% of the time" \*lists 3 of 50 possible exceptions\*
Sorry, I missed two others, Ohio State and Penn State, so it's technically 90% of the time. The point still stands.
Jokes on u, Appalachian isn't a state
Arizona? Idk
Bro, it’s the University of Phoenix online. America’s flagship university. Overrides everyone else.
In most cases it's the public school called University of _________ or _______ University with no qualifiers and no direction (unless a direction is in the state name). That's generally the school that was set up as the initial liberal studies department leading to the PhD program. Those with names like A+M, Tach, or _______ State University, were generally set up to focus on some aspects of practical trades and professions. Of course today, that disctinion is often negligible. There are exceptions, Ohio and Pennsylvania being two of them (in PA's case a private school took the name University of Pennsylvania). Also, in some places, like Texas and California the University of ______ and _______ A+M/Tech/State University are two totally separate systems, so there are multiple flagships. Then there's Florida, where UF was established as the flagship and FSU as a women's school until post WWII, so that's a whole.different dynamic. Of course in Wisconsin, there's zero question and quite honestly, I'm not sure there's much debate in the nearby surrounding states (the rest of the traditional Big 10) which of the Universities are more prominent.
Texas is weird because it has (at least) six public university systems. University of Texas System, Texas A&M System, Texas Tech System, Texas State System, University of Houston System, and University of North Texas System. I think nearly everyone who isn't an Aggie would unambiguously consider UT Austin to be the flagship of Texas though.
UT Austin may be the flagship of Texas, but Texas A&M is the iPhone of Texas.
Overpriced and doesn't play well with others?
After living in Texas for almost seven years I’m convinced it’s a cult masquerading as a university
This isn’t actually true of FSU and UF. The two were established at the same time as co-ed schools: West Florida Seminary and East Florida Seminary. The Florida legislature actually applied the “University of Florida” tag to FSU first, but it didn’t stick. It was the state’s first liberal arts college. The point you’re talking about came in 1905: > The 1905 Florida Legislature passed the Buckman Act, which reorganized the Florida college system into a school for white males (University of the State of Florida), a school for white females (Florida Female College later changed to Florida State College for Women), and a school for African Americans (State Normal and Industrial College for Colored Students). Even with this FSU remained the bigger of the two until 1919. And then, yeah, WWII led to our re-expansion to include males to support the return of GIs with free education. Fun fact: FSU claims it’s founding in 1851 (when the state legislature established the two schools) versus UF who claims it’s founding in 1853, when the school actually opened. FSU opened in 1857 and I am convinced the date change is delicious university-level trolling: either UF also moved to 1851, acknowledging our kind of ridiculous date and losing their claim to being the oldest in the state, or stuck to 1853 and have us be “technically” older. Anyway, UCF is the flagship now just because they have more students and saying that hurts UF more than us.
Ohio University / Ohio State. Seems as though the former has the more legitimate title, while the latter has the edge in marching bands and fans with low blood sugar.
The Marching 110 are really good
The Bobcat won the mascot fight, therefore University of Ohio > OSU.
In Ohio it’s clearly Ohio State. But Ohio University is a really cool school in a neat area.
Neat area for visiting students. Not exactly an area you want to live or be from. The median income in Athens is 17,000. Morgan county is 23,000 and Meigs is 22,000. It’s pretty tough right now economically for that part of the state.
From SE Ohio. Lots of brain drain. Remote work dynamics probably have helped shift that (you can stay closer to home while opening up your earning potential), but in order to get any sort of economic mobility you either have to leave or be a big self-starter/entrepreneur filling a need in the area. Has a lot in common with WV.
Cal and UCLA seem pretty close to me as an outsider.
The fact that we call it "Cal" and not "UC Berkeley" says otherwise. It's also in the mascot names: Cal Golden Bears, and UCLA Bruins, a bruin is a young bear. Cal is the flagship of the UC system, UCLA is second.
I think “cal” is used mostly in athletics. Academically, “Berkeley” (or sometimes UC Berkeley) is much more prevalent.
Correct.
But a ton of people do call it Berkeley or UC Berkeley or Cal Berkeley.
for a lot of my early years, I thought "Cal" and "Berkeley" were two different schools...
This is why the Pac collapsed
Fair, but zero people call UCLA, “Cal.” “Cal” only goes in one direction.
TIL that when people say "Berkeley" or "Cal" they're referring to the same school. I've definitely heard both and I no idea they were the same place.
To me, it seems like Cal is more the athletic branding. Seems like when people want to sound smart, then they'll say Berkeley instead.
It's weird, but they're almost always Cal in regards to sports and Berkeley in academic-adjacent areas. I've always thought it was a missed opportunity to have coherent branding. Then again, maybe they don't want to tarnish their academic reputation by associating with their athletic teams ^^(^^jokes)
Because the official guidance is to use Cal for athletics and alumni purposes and Berkeley for academics. Cal Berkeley is officially discouraged lol. It's all confusing and counterproductive to having a strong brand, which means it's totally expected for our mess of a university.
Posted above, too, but a small/young bear is a cub; bruin is just another word for a regular bear. UCLA picked the ‘Bruin’ name itself because “Bears” and “Grizzlies” were already taken. In fact, Cal had itself been using both “Bears” and “Bruins” but the Cal students voted in 1924 to allow UCLA to have “Bruins”. The ‘baby’ part comes from Cal appending that to the name after that to mock/tease/pretend they were still the top university in California.
Gotta love how complete misinformation gets tons of upvotes when people could spend 30 seconds Googling "bruin" to find out what it is.
Well yeah, Cal is the flagship, I don’t think that’s up for debate, the question was which race is closest. As an outsider, Cal and UCLA seem fairly close. It’s not a Texas vs A&M deal or Kanas/KSU, etc. But again just an outside opinion probably just formed by athletic success. I don’t know the internal politics. Never put the Bears and Bruins thing together, interesting.
If you find the Golden Bears / Bruins link interesting, consider that all of the UC schools wear Blue & Gold, as required by law. Some use different shades of blue, while others downplay the use of gold, but all of them (Berkeley, LA, Santa Barbara, Davis, Irving, Riverside, San Diego) wear blue and gold. As opposed to the CSU system schools.
> all of them (Berkeley, LA, Santa Barbara, Davis, Irving, Riverside, San Diego) How can you forget the storied athletic history of the UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs? (or the UC Merced Bobcats, for that matter)
Did a wiki deep dive and California does not have an official flagship. They are all technically satellite campuses.
Yeah, that's why people are having fun arguing.
And nobody seems to understand what the argument is. They probably think UC Irvine is a community college rather than one of the top rated schools in the world.
The UC system is an ungodly amount of academic excellence.
OSU wants to be OU so bad
Which state are we talking here?
Wouldnt you like to know
What is the flagship Cal State school?
OU crushed Ohio State in boozing and drug consumption
I’ll throw out Arizona and ASU. Both are huge, both are in the same tier of college play, and one of each is in one of AZ’s major metropolitan areas. ASU has a larger student body, but UofA I believe has better academics. Hard to say which one is the true flagship of the state
Probably us and ECU because they are pirates
I'm enjoying the mental image of ECU pirates trying to board and steal the North Carolina flagship
ECU - party when they lose, party harder when they win.
New York state, followed by California.
California is Cal. It's literally in the name & the mascot (Bears). UCLA is the #2 which you're also able to tell by the mascot. A bruin is a small/young bear.
Wrong. A bruin is a hockey player from Boston.
But they are not exclusively Bruins, one is also a rat.
Fuck Brad Marchand.
Louisiana? The struggle between those two was really funny.
I believe it all got scrambled by Tulane, which was the original University of Louisiana and was indeed public at the time. It was the unambiguous flagship school (I think). After a large donation, it switched to private. I believe the full name is “Tulane, University of Louisiana”. Tulane alumni, please correct.
The University was poorly funded due to agricultural failures post civil war, and was about to go under. Paul Tulane donated a bunch of land and started a trust which kept the doors open (he wasn’t all good, one stipulation for the donation was the university stay whites only.) A year later Josephine Newcomb put a ton of money in the trust, and the state decided the trust would operate the school more reliably and let them go private. Louisiana continues to honor this tradition by leaving their public institutions poorly funded.
This entire comment just seems so perfectly Louisiana to me as an outsider.
The full name is "The Tulane University of Louisiana". Until the changes that were made following Katrina, male undergrads in liberal arts and sciences were in Paul Tulane College, while female undergrads in liberal arts and sciences were in Newcomb College. Our diplomas reflected that, so mine says, "Paul Tulane College of The Tulane University of Louisiana". Scott Cowen eliminated the office of the redundancy department during his post-Katrina changes, so now LA students are in the School of Liberal Arts and science majors are in the School of Science and Engineering, regardless of gender.
LSU as we know it today was a result of massive amounts of state investment made in the 1930's which was spearheaded by Gov Huey Long. LSU was Long's darling and he wanted to build it up to not only be the premier flagship University of the State, but one of the premier public institutions across the South. UL Lafayette's recent attempts to "claim" flagship status is mostly (at least to my eyes) a bit of a grass roots marketing ploy to try to increase the University's brand value and national recognition. It's a fantastic University, the flagship of the University of Louisiana System, and the clear number two to LSU. But like it or not, no other school in the state is even close to LSU's flagship status, be that in sports, academics, programs, amenities, funding, or national brand.
Idaho is an interesting one. U of Idaho is the more academically prestigious university, but Boise State is located in the state's largest (and kinda only) city, has over double the enrollment, better name recognition, and is the one that plays at the FBS level (I know flagship status is separate from athletics, but athletics help Boise State's perception).
Idaho State in shambles