Negative Reddit reader comments:
Notable among the comments is how Valpo ran away from its Lutheran identity under a Lutheran president, and now a Roman Catholic president is trying to restore it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nwi/comments/1bhv6as/decline_of_valparaiso_u_a_tragedy_for_american/
Same topic, different thread, different comments
Yeah, kinda negative, but actually a good read that prompts more thought. Some valid criticism there, as well as some ideas that have been advanced in our own posts on our forum.
The comments that followed, unfortunately, had an even more negative tone - almost a general indictment of private education. The other theme was the disconnect between VU and the city. And, OMG, a Lutheran university has a Roman Catholic president!
Yeah, kinda negative, but actually a good read that prompts more thought. Some valid criticism there, as well as some ideas that have been advanced in our own posts on our forum.
The comments that followed, unfortunately, had an even more negative tone - almost a general indictment of private education. The other theme was the disconnect between VU and the city. And, OMG, a Lutheran university has a Roman Catholic president!
Valpo has a decent amount of catholic followings. I am a roman Catholic myself. Ultimately Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism are very similar religions. I would be fine having a Catholic president as a Lutheran, but I cannot speak for everyone
Kind of sad that the local community commenters are comparing against PNW and IUN. I know that you receive Purdue and IU degrees through those schools, but I wouldn't have thought of either school as a true competitor for a quality education in NWI.
Kind of sad that the local community commenters are comparing against PNW and IUN. I know that you receive Purdue and IU degrees through those schools, but I wouldn't have thought of either school as a true competitor for a quality education in NWI.
YOu dont recieve purdue and IU degrees from them anymore. Only satellite that offered those degrees was IUPUI. Your degree from PNW will say PNW. Its just cost of attendance at VU is really high because its not a public school. Not a lot of people in NWI can afford those prices. Hence why the admin is making addressing the high cost a top priority with their rebuild plan.
To be fair, reddit is a fairly dated social platform. I barely even use it anymore. The comments share some of the same sentiment I and USC shared here a few weeks ago. A lot of religious institutions are still holding religious values, while cutting theology degrees because they are just not desirable anymore in the modern workforce. Ultimately high school graduation rates being down across the midwest and high private sxhool costs doesn't help. Much is shared within the comment section on this reddit post. I'd implore all to read through em a bit.
Valpo announced that Senator Todd Young will be the graduation speaker. Interesting how a progressive President Padilla saw the need to reach out to a Republican Senator, recognizing that getting on the good side of a sitting Senator is good for Valpo.
These types of letters are amazing bordering on bizarre. One of the three actions demanded in the letter is:
"to halt their plan to discontinue programs and strip faculty of tenure"
OK, I don't want anyone to lose their jobs...but where do they think funding comes from for their programs that are not financially sustainable on their own? After reading the letter, I would paraphrase the arguments as "we are so important that other programs that are financially sustainable should fund us at whatever level of subsidizing is necessary to continue all programs - regardless of the financial viability of each program". I would further paraphrase this as "we wish you the best getting the revenues necessary to sustain us first and then your College...though we will take action to stop any efforts that we do not agree with".
Yeah some of the choice wording in there is a bit off. Saying other institutions aren't doing this when that's not true, and the pointing to large well-funded state flagship schools as examples we should lead make me feel this is all unserious. I also struggle when these letters don't address the core issue: There are no students in the major. I'd imagine that if the engineering school was massively shrinking in enrollments there would be an outcry if they kept the same amount of faculty and resources while other areas of campus where kept on shoe string budgets.
It never feels good to lose a job and it sucks when an area you find extreme value in is not viewed that way by others but I don't know what else you do. If there's a sudden increase in interest in Theology or German I'd imagine they'd bring the majors back no problem but you can't hold on to them if there's declining interest.
The discussion about "cutting majors and minors" and only "impacting about 3%" is misleading information on the part of the university. Simply eliminating major or minor degrees does not lower expenses a cent or reduce administrative costs. Instead, the program cuts are merely an end-run to eliminate faculty or replace full-time professors with less expensive adjuncts who also receive no health or pension benefits.
I know for a fact from conversations with key individuals that the proposals to cut majors and minors are intended as a loophole way to avoid language in the university handbook preventing termination of tenure positions and to withdraw tenure from professors in those departments or push them to leave the university by early retirement or employment elsewhere, to be replaced by low-cost less experienced one-year renewable lecturers, who will conduct the remaining gen ed classes with heavier teaching loads, even as research support is discontinued and the scholarly reputations of these departments (and the university) disappear.
https://twitter.com/ValpoU/status/1778074985640198337
Saw this on twitter. May just be a puff piece by the school, but it is still worth acknowledging that we may have our premier status back sooner rather than later, albeit not for law. Nursing is a hot market and expected to grow. Valpo is positioned around a ton of hospitals and practices. Maybe marketing nursing more is the play for the future?
I mean I think I understood that eliminating majors and minors would lead to faculty reductions in some way. I think the point of the 3% comment is to reinforce these areas are not being utilized by a large contingency of students...
