Go big, Iowa governor candidates. Build a University of Western Iowa
In 2006, Iowa Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gregg Connell, then the mayor of Shenandoah and one of the more innovative and effective rural economic development leaders in our state's history, backed an idea, a big one, that office-seekers 20 years later should embrace.
A Western Iowa University. Or The University of Western Iowa.
Build it.
A fourth state university in our part of Iowa — an idea that had drawn attention at various points in the last half century with the Board of Regents delving into location studies — even factored tiny Audubon in the mix with my hometown of Carroll. The Legislature decades ago went so far as to approve funding for the purchase of land. The plan died and is largely lost to history as few people recall it.
The city that makes the most sense today for a four-year, Regents-backed Western Iowa University is Council Bluffs because of its proximity to the rapidly growing and economic robust Omaha, Nebraska.
Yes, small colleges are challenged in some parts of Iowa, and our former state senator, Republican Mark Segebart of Vail, once suggested Iowa might be better off with two, not three, state universities.
So why now for a fourth university?
Look at the corridor of growth in Cedar Rapids-Iowa City, and the explosive exponential development in the suburbs ringing Des Moines, Blink once and a new subdivision sprouts in Grimes, blink twice and a hotel pops up in Altoona.
We need a big economic driver in Western Iowa, a part of the state that has sent billions of dollars to the Iowa City and Ames and Cedar Falls areas with the matriculation of hundreds of thousands of students. We are, and I don't use this term lightly or often, owed a state university here in western Iowa.
Many western Iowa cities can summon arguments for why they should be the site of the school. I’ve landed on Council Bluffs.
Robotics and artificial intelligence and advanced agriculture and other innovations are coming at our culture and careers and way of life with hurricane-force winds.
Newly formed college majors, approaches to academics, can take shape at the modern, free-thinking University of Western Iowa.
Democrats can say they will repurpose the funding from the worst legislation in Iowa history in terms of impact on rural Iowans, the small-school-crushing education vouchers, to a Western Iowa University. It’s a way Democrats can show defining support for western Iowa without alienating their base.
Republicans can say the faculty-lounge culture of Iowa City is too deeply ingrained there, that unhinged virtue signaling pollutes in Ames and pollinates in Cedar Falls, and that university education in Iowa deserves a fresh start, new terra firma from which to mold and advance reasonable-minded future leaders who are more interested in discussions about tech start-up funding sources than stare-downs over gender identity politics and language.
Twenty years ago, Gregg Connell went one big-footed step beyond former Charter Oak State Rep. Clarence Hoffman in pushing for a university presence in western Iowa.
Hoffman, a Republican, advocated language directing the Iowa Board of Regents to study the possibility of developing a state-funded graduate school in western Iowa.
Connell agreed with that concept but said he would go further.
“I think we should have a university in western Iowa,” Connell said in an interview with me in 2006. “I think it would be more than well-received and I think that that’s the right track we need to take and not forget that Iowa doesn’t end outside the city limits of Des Moines.”
He said all communities in western Iowa should have the opportunity to promote themselves as the home of “The University of Western Iowa” or whatever such an institution would be named.
“Regardless of what the name is, it’s what it would mean to western Iowa, it’s the message it would send to western Iowa,” Connell said. “I think you would be astonished at the popularity of that. I think you would also attract a lot of people across the river in Nebraska or in Missouri.”
Iowa does border six states — Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota.
That’s a lot of tuition dollars and research flowing out of the state.
“You know what the presence is today?’ Connell said of the university system in western Iowa. “It’s Maryville if you live in southwest Iowa. It’s a sad state of affairs when our university in southwest Iowa is Northwest Missouri State University and I’m not taking anything from it, it’s a fine university.”
In the end, the idea for a graduate school, much less a full university here, is a Gordian knot made up of scores of political trip wires, territorial fights, Ivory Tower-sized egos and a generally dismissive attitude that eastern Iowans and the effete residents of Des Moines’ suburbs have about us.
But Connell, for a time, before tragedy ended his campaign, made a physical university presence in western Iowa part of the discussion in the 2006 governor’s race.
The idea deserves, even demands, life in 2026.
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(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers' Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )
Council Bluffs has Iowa Western Community College. Some of the students love it so much, they wish it was a four year university. They have a diverse population from all over the world, plus students from Nebraska. I think it fits perfectly into your suggestion.
Yes, that’s still a good idea, Doug. Let’s make it part of an “Iowa Higher Education Initiative,” like the group “Iowans for a Better Future” proposed in 2005. Expand all three state universities, as well as the private colleges & universities, and the community colleges, too. Then recruit students from across the nation and around the world, as well as increasing incentives for Iowa’s young people to stay here for college. Link all students with Iowa businesses. And with all that, we’d be using higher education as a new form of economic development!