Buena Vista University President Brian Lenzmeier, speaking on behalf of Iowa’s private colleges, last week tried to educate legislators on why it’s a bad idea for community colleges to offer four-year bachelor’s degrees. Lenzmeier joined college lobbyist Gary Steinke to testify before a legislative committee on a bill sponsored by Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, encouraging baccalaureate programs at a cost of at least $20 million.
It will of course hurt private colleges. Some will close. They are already under tremendous pressure. Legislators also are trying to tax endowments so they can harm places like Grinnell, Buena Vista and Drake. That tax will help to kill colleges like Graceland or Upper Iowa. So will offering four-year degrees at community colleges.
It will cost taxpayers a lot of money. Legislators claim we can barely afford the Regents universities. How do we afford an entirely new tier of education when property taxes, which feed community colleges like Iowa Central, already are going through the roof? This bill is bad fiscal policy. It certainly is nothing close to conservative. It will increase taxes and tuition.
Lenzmeier tried to impose some sobriety on those drunk with power. Nobody understands the market for bachelor’s degrees in Fort Dodge, Ottumwa and Mason City like Buena Vista University, which offered the first “2+2” bachelor’s degree program on community college campuses.
Lenzmeier said: “We have transitioned away from offering face-to-face instruction at most of those community colleges, and it's not because we're not serving those students. Between 2017 and 2019, we transitioned out of teaching face-to-face, not because we didn't want to continue that investment, but because we were losing students.”
BVU switched to online.
“Why aren't we doing face to face? There's not a demand. And so I would implore you to survey your students. Because we ask all the time: How do you want to receive your education? How do you want to work with us? And the percentage of students who say they want to come to campus face to face for us is zero.
“I don't think there's much of a market for face-to-face bachelor's degrees at these sites. And I'm saying that with the caution that if you go down this path — if you build it — it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be there.”
Collins and the community colleges insist there is a pent-up market across Iowa for more higher education. That suggests that Northwestern in Orange City and Briar Cliff in Sioux City are not doing their jobs or fail to understand the rural education market. Steinke responded: “There are no such things as education deserts. They don't exist. And if they do exist, I have never seen it. I've never seen students being underserved in any geographic location in the state. And how can I say that for certain? Because our institutions are student-driven. Our institutions spend an unbelievable amount of time surveying students and understanding what students want and what students need.”
Legislators think they know better and are playing with our money. They also think they know which veterinary drugs humans should take for Covid when bleach doesn’t do the trick. They should consult the Drake Pharmacy College before they starve it to death.
Second Amendment absolutists believe that you must have guns to defend yourself when the government turns against the citizens. That handgun kept by Alex Pretti didn’t do him much good when the agents of the state bear down. If the 50,000 protesters in the streets each had an assault rifle it would be no match for the overhead strafing from fighter jets, drones and helicopters.
The federal government laid siege to the Twin Cities because it can.
Citizens can do very little about it.
They can vote but the vote is not more powerful than a tank. They can protest and get shot 10 times by a gang of armed stomping monkeys. The president approves. The US attorney general said that the goons would be reined back when Minnesota turns over its voter rolls, presumably to dictate how the midterm elections play out. This is how Hitler and Stalin and Castro played it: Fill their heads with propaganda, crack heads among a despised group like Somali Muslims, lie, lie, lie, and legitimize it with a kangaroo election. This is really happening. Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst assent with their silence. Rep. Randy Feenstra is complicit and says that these extra-judicial killings are “incidental” to fulfilling the commander’s mission.
We have lost our way. This is not freedom. It is state terrorism.
We have always believed and preached that markets and innovation combined with government-supported research and regulation can solve our water pollution problems. Imagine our delight to speak last week with our long-lost friend Roger Underwood of Ames, an investor and philanthropist (Go Cyclones!) who points the way to a solution to our nitrate problem and farm profitability.
Underwood made a fortune in turf, agronomy and seed inoculation, sold his company to BASF and since invested in a science company called Pivot Bio. The company, launched by scientists from Berkely and MIT, produces microbes that fix nitrogen to root systems. The product can cover about a quarter of a corn crop’s needs. By fixing to the root, nitrogen does not leach as water-bound nitrate. We currently lose about a third of our applied nitrogen to air and water. Underwood says that the Pivot Bio microbial solves that problem, and thus saves the farmer money. It also enhances yield because nitrogen is always available when the plant needs it.
Underwood believes that the science will advance the product to the point where anhydrous ammonia can be eliminated from the equation. Microbials combined with manure can supply a full retinue of nutrients.
Adaptation is the problem. We would not know about it but for the good graces of Jim Spooner, who hosted Underwood in Storm Lake. Such a product could revolutionize the ag supply chain. Underwood says more product moved this year than last year. The company is young. He is an eager salesman and investor. He also is a farmer and conservationist who well understands the impact of nitrate on our surface water and drinking water treatment.
Of course, a lot of chemical money is stacked against a biological solution that could save the farmer money while boosting yield.
If you combine such a product with permanent native grass plantings you are making a real difference in a field that otherwise is farmed conventionally. Add cover crops and you further reduce the load to the Gulf of Mexico — and you can cut your herbicide costs by 50% or more (that is our pitch, not necessarily Underwood’s).
If you put livestock on the land the soil scores another win, and so does the Northwest Iowa economy. Small towns get a little stronger. More independent businesses survive with more independent livestock operations.
Our point is that we can solve our environmental and economic problems if we choose to. All the know-how needed resides in Ames, Iowa. The research is in the books. That was research funded by the public that could serve the public if we choose it. We know that native grass plantings can reduce nitrate outflows by 90%. There are products that do not poison the soil or put it to slumber but bring vigor to it. Combined with sensible conservation practices, we can have clean water.
It’s a long row to hoe for adaptation. Think of the years it took us to quit using a moldboard plow in the fall. Attempts to convince farmers to quit applying anhydrous ammonia in the fall obviously have not worked. You should know that help is on the way from good science, properly funded, if established interests will allow for clean water and farm profit. That is a complicated question involving the corn/soy/ethanol/livestock complex that gets sorted one strand at a time, perhaps not quickly enough to save us from our own machinations.
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