I won’t get into the athletic side of this debate, but academically we are better than Nebraska. Just as with the gratuitous self-love that is the Cornhuskers football team, Nebraska’s public university suffers from no real competition.

The three major institutions, UNO (Omaha), UNK (Kearney), and UNL (Lincoln) are all simply campuses of the same university, instead of separate institutions like Iowa and Iowa State are. The result is a massive amount of in-fighting and a low level of academic value.

Several years ago, for example, UNO threatened to become its own institution when UNL tried to get the newly acquired hockey program moved to Lincoln.

An education at Iowa State will be of much more value to you than one from Nebraska’s system – the only exception being UNO’s top-ranked medical program.

The hard sciences are definitely better here, and I would argue the humanities are much better here as well.

For “proof,” simply visit the two institutions, talk to the instructors and check out college rankings such as the kind put out by U.S. News and World Report. The Nebraska system is fine as a medium-level Midwestern institution, but you will not get the education you’ll receive from Iowa State or even other regional institutions such as Kansas and Iowa.

And don’t think I hate Nebraska. My parents are from there and I went to a college in Nebraska for my undergraduate degree. Thankfully, it was a private college where the standards were higher than UNL, UNK or UNO.

Jeffrey Arp

Graduate student

English