A while back, I wrote a letter criticizing Iowa State University, Inc.’s attempts to become the number one land-grant (research) university.

Professor Peter Orazem from the economics department wrote a letter critical of mine. He made a good point about my not speaking for “most of the citizens of Iowa,” but I am not sure he read my letter very carefully.

In my letter I stated “in reality most of the citizens of Iowa would be strongly opposed to it [the goal of being the number one land-grant university] if they knew that it really meant a university where research was much more important than undergraduate education.”

My mistake was not preceding the sentence with “I believe.” That is my belief, which is based on conversations with quite a few people and my own reasoning, but that, I will admit, is not an unbiased estimate and is hardly proof.

As Professor Orazem’s letter continued, he seemed to feel that I did not think ISU should strive for excellence.

Rather, he implied that I might prefer to be at a university that “strives for mediocrity.” In my article I made the following statement: “ISU could be the number one land- grant (teaching) university …”

I didn’t say ISU should try to do it, just that it could be number one (excellent) in teaching if it wanted to be.

My problem with our striving to be the number one land-grant university is that ISU is making research considerably more important than undergraduate education in order to achieve their goal.

I believe most of Iowa’s citizens would not feel they were being served well by a state university (one of only three state-supported universities) that worked to achieve such a goal.

As I stated in my previous letter, many of the students who attend the “best” land-grant universities (University of Wisconsin, Madison; the University of California, Davis; and Cornell University) are among the top high school graduates in the country. Such students are better prepared to succeed at those universities than many of the students accepted by ISU.

I think ISU should strive for excellence in something. But what we are striving to excel in was apparently decided upon by a major fund-raiser for Terry Branstad, aka Marvin Pomerantz, while he was president of the state Board of Regents.

As far as I know, there was no attempt made to determine the interests and needs of the citizens of this state when the decision for ISU to become the number one land-grant (research) university was made.

I won’t try to guess in what area ISU should try to become excellent, aside from serving the needs of Iowa. Until a meaningful assessment is made and pursued, I’ll continue to criticize our “quest to become the best” because it seems just plain stupid to me.

As a taxpayer and employee of ISU, I would be negligent in doing anything else.

Carl W. Mize

Associate professor

Forestry