The American Council on Education designates a “state flagship” university for 49 states. New York has one state university with dozens of campuses and no “main” campus, thus no “flagship.”

The “flagship” is that state’s most prestigious public university. West Virginia University (WVU) is our state’s flagship.

All 50 states have “land grant” universities. Each has an agricultural college established via the 1862 federal land grant. About half the states assigned land grants to flagships (WVU is ours), and the other states designated a different school.

Additionally, in 1890 a second land grant went to each of the 18 states that denied Blacks admission to their agricultural college, to establish such a school for African Americans. West Virginia State University is our 1890 land grant university.

There are several entities that rank colleges and universities academically. The best known, and the one to which the public pays the most attention, is US News. US News includes all 49 flagships in its category “national universities,” along with over 300 other public and private universities.

Some academics believe such rankings irrelevant. But the public thinks them relevant.

For each of the last three years, I culled the 49 flagships (one list) and the 25 flagship/land grants (another list). Using the US News rankings, I ranked the flagships 1 through 49 and the flagship/land grants 1 through 25. I presented these findings to the Joint Committee on Education at the Legislature’s September Interim Meetings. This column lacks space to list all schools.

I believe comparing WVU to its fellow flagship/land grants is more meaningful than comparing it with all 48 other flagships. On that list of 25 WVU is next to last, ranking ahead of only the University of Alaska in prestige. On US News’s list of national universities, WVU has dropped from 205 to 228 to 241 in the last three years.

WVU ranks well below the University of Kentucky (#15 of 25) and Louisiana State University (#18). Those states are marginally larger than West Virginia, but are economic bottom feeders like our state. WVU also ranks below the Universities of Delaware (#11), Vermont (#13), New Hampshire (#17) and Rhode Island (#19,). Those states are more economically successful than West Virginia, but are much smaller in population.

Most dismal to me is that WVU ranks below the Universities of Hawaii (#19, tied with Rhode Island), Wyoming (#21) and Maine (#22). These three states are as economically challenged as West Virginia, and smaller.

The biggest reasons for WVU’s poor performance in academics, compared to other flagship universities, are low retention and graduation rates.

I think we lose too many bright young West Virginia high school graduates to more prestigious universities in other states because we lack a university prestigious enough to keep them here. We have small universities prestigious in their categories (Shepherd included), but no “national” one. I don’t think we should expect WVU to equal Penn State or the University of Maryland, which are flagship/land grants of states larger and economically better off than West Virginia.

But Maine, Hawaii and Wyoming? Come on!

John Doyle is a delegate for the West Virginia District 67. He can be reached at johndoyle@wvhouse.gov.