Board of Visitors member sets record straight
D. Gray Suggs
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The letter published Friday, May 16, (“Higher education in South Carolina not so high”) is based on a misunderstanding of Clemson University’s goals. Clemson is 27th among public national universities in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. The letter referenced Clemson’s ranking on a combined list of public and private institutions.
As a Clemson alumnus, I can attest that President Jim Barker has been absolutely clear from the start that the university’s goal is to reach the top-20 within its peer group: public universities. An explanation and a link to the list of top 50 publics can be found online at http://ww.clemson.edu/usnewsrankings/. The highest ranked public university is not even in the top 20 on the combined list.
In the 1990s, Clemson trustees adopted a set of public institutions against which to benchmark its progress. When President Barker was inaugurated in 2001, Clemson was ahead of only Auburn, Mississippi State and South Carolina. Today, Clemson has moved ahead of N.C. State, Iowa State and Virginia Tech and is ranked just below Texas A&M and Purdue University.
Clemson already has several top-20 programs among public national universities, including the architecture graduate program (no. 5 according to Design Intelligence/Architect magazine), civil engineering (no. 14 undergraduate, U.S. News), environmental engineering (no. 15 graduate, U.S. News) and the business school (no. 19 undergraduate, Business Week magazine.)
Clemson does not want to be Harvard or Duke, and it does not need to be compared to those wealthy, elite, private institutions. Clemson is South Carolina’s land grant university, and its mission has not changed from its founding almost 120 years ago. It serves the public good through education, research and public outreach to improve the economy and the quality of people’s lives here in South Carolina. With the demands we face from a rapidly knowledge-based economy, that requires increased rigor and excellence in higher education. And that is what Clemson University delivers.
Anderson resident D. Gray Suggs is a member of the Clemson University Board of Visitors. | 
