University abandons dream of top-tier status

Editorial Board Staff Column

A glaring difference exists between a flagship school and a top-tier university.

A flagship school is a term reserved for public universities known for their notoriety, enrollment numbers and years standing. It lowers standards and decreases the value of our degrees.

A top-tier university, on the other hand, possesses the correct combination of criteria - not just test scores and GPA, but also alumni donations and graduation rates - to be nationally recognized not for its history, but for its impressive ability to educate and graduate the future workers of the world.

LSU's Board of Supervisors has decided to fight for the former and eliminate previous attempts at the latter.

The Board is reviewing our admissions policy, venturing into community colleges or other universities to interview students previously overlooked by the University.

Astrid Merget, executive vice chancellor and provost, advocated a balance between higher enrollment while not sacrificing standards.

This argument is not just flawed. It simply won't work.

This call from the Board, in retrospect, makes former Chancellor Sean O'Keefe look very good.

O'Keefe stressed his belief in standards, deviating from the enrollment philosophy of current LSU System President John Lombardi to the point that it factored into his decision to resign.

O'Keefe is "of the mind if you're chasing after a number, you don't care as much about standards. You start driving after numbers, and all of a sudden the message to the institution is all about body count," according to a Jan. 30 interview with The Daily Reveille.

Lombardi is directly opposed to this message.

"The number of kids force the world to pay you for more faculty," Lombardi said during a Jan. 23 meeting with the Faculty Senate. "You have to do things that force people to respond."

When the students of LSU depart into the working world, our degree should be a representation of the benefits of higher education, not a notch in an arbitrary number of students meant to emphasize the prominence of our school.

LSU will always be a prominent university. Thanks to the Board, it seems our dream of becoming top-tier is slowly fading away.


Originally published in The Daily Reveille...