Daily Columnist

University: an institution of higher learning providing facilities for teaching and research and authorized to grant academic degrees.

Business: usually commercial or mercantile activity engaged in as a means of livelihood; a commercial or sometimes an industrial enterprise.

(Source: Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 2000)

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think there was almost nothing in common between the two words.

Both a business and a university exist to provide a service; that is true. But a business’s primary function is to make money. The university is around to elevate learning and further knowledge of the world. Its goal is not to turn a profit.

Or at least it didn’t used to be.

During the past two decades, Iowa State has merged the two distinct worlds of business and academia. Fund-raising is at all-time highs, and ISU is well on its way to becoming the best darn land-grant college in the world.

But in the midst of this successful business of a university, there is a large, mute segment of the population that has been ignored.

Students.

In countless ways, students have been relegated to last place at Iowa State University. From the petty — such as students being moved to the balcony at basketball games in favor of rich boosters — to the serious — such as professors turning over their classes to TAs — students are getting shortchanged, all in the name of business.

The bottom line is this: If a university conducts itself as a business, students will suffer.

Period.

Corporate interests and student interests just cannot coexist. It’s impossible.

The first and foremost goal of a corporation or business is to make money. The ever-important cash flow comes from two places — inside sources, i.e. student tuition, and outside sources, i.e. grants, donations and such.

The university doesn’t have to worry about tuition. Tuition rates will keep going up every year. And regardless of the level of service we receive, students will never stop paying tuition. Unless we’ve transferred from other schools, we have nothing with which to compare Iowa State. And even if we know we’re being shortchanged, we’ll just live with it and graduate, because our degrees are the same regardless of whether we’ve actually learned anything.

So since tuition is a lock once admissions convinces students to come here, all the university has to worry about is marketing itself to potential students.

And Iowa State does that. Extremely well.

Commercials and catalogs show the campus as some paragon of perfection, with beautiful buildings and well-manicured grounds. Students are shown interacting with professors, actively engaged in learning about exciting topics. What high school seniors wouldn’t want to go here?

Not many, apparently. According to Iowa State’s “Points of Pride,” more Iowa high school graduates enroll at ISU each year than at any other higher education institution in Iowa.”

So with student money virtually guaranteed, the only thing to worry about is money from outside sources. And guess where that money comes from.

Research. Grants. Donations.

So the university prods its faculty into conducting more prestigious research, being published in better journals and attracting more grant money, all the while holding tenure as a carrot in front of them.

And donations come in by the handful. Wouldn’t you like to have your name on a building or a school? The going price is only about $7 million, and if you give less, ISU can probably still reward you in some way. How about a McDonald’s in the Union, for example?

And everybody’s happy. The Board of Regents is overjoyed because the university is meeting its “strategic plan.” The rich ISU alumni are all thrilled because their names will now be remembered with Charles Curtiss and Anson Marston and Helen LeBaron, even though they’ve done nothing to earn the honor of having the latest building named after them except make a lot of money.

And the students? Well, since their money is already in the bank, the university doesn’t have to do much to keep them happy. It’s too late for students to get back the money they’ve already spent on tuition, so who cares if they’re satisfied with the level of service given them?

Of course, there are still plenty of faculty and staff who are committed to making Iowa State a great place for students. But with so many of the faculty focused on bringing money in so they can keep their jobs, guess what happens to the students.

Iowa State is aiming for 90 percent of its tenure-track faculty to have “at least one scholarly work published/creative work exhibited or performed during the last three years,” according to its strategic plan. And, the target amount of sponsored funding per full-time equivalent faculty member is $120,000, although that figure was at $143,000 during 1998-99.

Maybe that’s why during the 1998-99 academic year only 53 percent of introductory courses were taught by senior faculty.

That fact is one of thousands that emphasize what’s wrong at Iowa State. Students are being used for their tuition. Faculty are being used for their research. No one is learning anything.

The business of our university gets an A. But the very definition of our university has failed.

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Sara Ziegler is a senior in journalism and political science from Sioux Falls, S.D. She is editor in chief of the Daily.