Reading Chris Seck’s Op-Ed on Jan. 31 [“Keep Stanford Small”] prompted me to reflect on the mission of our university. Is it, as Mr. Seck’s argument would suggest, to rank highest amongst the world’s universities? Is it to operate by the ethos that recast all other objectives as secondary to this one? To only ‘diversify’ by increasing the proportion of non-California students, thus ranking higher on lists that penalize ‘local’ universities? To insure that, no matter what other factors are at work, we do not increase our student population above that of the top 10 American universities? Better yet, to strive to have our student population be even smaller than Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Duke, Dartmouth and Brown?

Or, should Stanford’s objective simply be the most obvious objective of any university — to educate? Stanford’s mission is to provide an education to as many people as possible given its resources and limitations. That is, after all, what a university is meant to do.

If we attract the best undergraduates, perhaps it is because we offer an excellent education. Perhaps we attract the best graduate students because we invest in quality over quantity, and we guarantee the best environment for our faculty and students. Perhaps we attract Nobel laureates the world over because Stanford is the most welcoming and conducive environment for cutting-edge research. Should our student population be what it is because of the resources that Stanford has, and the genuine limitations by which it is restricted? Or should it be due to an artificially placed limit on the student population size, one that is there for a single-minded attempt to rise in college rankings?

We will not become the world’s best university by pandering to the whims of the latest rankings. Placing arbitrary and artificial restrictions will appease the more elitist amongst us, and may in the short term increase our standing. But it is not a strategy for long term improvement. We can only get better by being better. By providing the most students possible the best education possible. By addressing the social and economic challenges the world faces. By innovating our approaches to the study of law and the legal system. By researching the core scientific questions of our era, and by continuing to nurture the entrepreneurial spirit that gave birth to Silicon Valley. We are not Harvard, Princeton or Yale. We are Stanford. We have our own mission, and our unique place in geography and history in which to accomplish that mission. The Stanfords’ dream was to build a university that educates the children of California. I think that if Stanford can, it ought to educate all the world’s children.

But it cannot, and so we must settle for the next best thing. Educate as many as we can, without degrading the quality of the education we provide. This is not merely a question of whether the undergraduate class becomes bigger or smaller. It is a question of what drives us as a community, and what defines our purpose and sense of being.

Author Mohammed AlQuraishi is in the genetics Ph.D. program.