Iowa’s success in the global marketplace strongly depends upon having high-impact public universities that are competitive with the best universities in the world.

These universities educate the professional, business and government leaders who determine our course, power our economic engine and help improve lives.

Iowans should be proud that they have built high-caliber universities.

In a recent report for the Capital Crossroads visioning project, Market Street Services Inc. noted the value of Iowa State University in economic development: “The presence of one of the nation’s top agricultural research institutions in Central Iowa is a key competitive asset.”

Iowa State is leading the way in such key areas as bio-based products, sustainable agriculture, alternative energy, animal and human health, and new materials and technologies for industry, communications and national defense. But our leadership and ability to provide the kind of service that has helped make Iowa such a great place in which to live and work is in jeopardy.

During the past two years, Iowa State’s base-budget state appropriation has been reduced by $62 million. If the budget proposals currently being debated are adopted, the cuts will climb to $72 million or more.

These are huge numbers, and they come on top of unavoidable cost increases. Tuition increases during this time have averaged about 4.5 percent − half the national average − and these increases have covered less than half of the cuts in state appropriations.

We have done our best to manage these reductions without severely damaging the university. We reduced our work force; held most faculty, professional and scientific staff salaries nearly constant for two years; implemented mandatory furloughs last year; and held the line on benefit cost increases.

Our many operational efficiencies and cost-saving measures include administrative and program reorganizations; eliminating and downsizing research centers and institutes; new processes in information technology; and streamlined administrative functions. No other statewide Iowa government reorganization matches the scope of our restructuring of ISU Extension in 2009.

Despite our best efforts to insulate students from these cuts, they have been affected. We are educating the largest student body in Iowa State’s history, but with fewer faculty and staff. In the past two years, per-capita state support for Iowa resident students has decreased by 21 percent.

The continuing erosion in state support is jeopardizing our ability to carry out our mission at the level Iowans expect and deserve. At a time when Iowa needs the contributions of its universities most in order to compete globally, why are we crippling their ability to do so? We ask Iowans who care about the future of this state to call for an end to these severe cuts to Iowa’s public universities.

Gregory Geoffroy is the president of Iowa State University.