@david81 - disagree on your perspective of STEM. Yes, computer science degrees have gradually become less desirable in the past 20 years. However, employees with other STEM degrees are in high demand.
regarding a product, always verify its quality. If the quality is lacking, the experience is a moot point.
also, numericallly speaking let’s say Valpo had 3500 students in 2015, and now they have 2100. Has Valparaiso reduced enough employees close to proportion to accommodate this budget? If not, sad as it sounds, more employee cuts or major cuts may be needed. Increasing the enrollment back to normal operating numbers will take time, and Valpo needs to prepare for this.
@usc4valpo, the notion that STEM degrees are the closest thing to bulletproof is starting to loosen. Some remain a pretty sure meal ticket, but big layoffs in tech industries and stories of underemployment are becoming more common.
The computer science degree may be suffering because of AI:
https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/06/computer-science-bubble-ai/683242/
This doesn’t mean that universities should pull back on supporting STEM disciplines, which will remain generally viable as job sources. However, a quality comprehensive university is smart not to get too caught up in bubbles that can burst.
As for more cuts, my guess is that VU is operating in a pretty lean mode after multiple rounds of layoffs and retirement buyouts. These departures take a toll, with the survivors missing their co-workers and the place feeling like a ghost town.
In any event, if the next president starts their term with more rounds of cuts, we may assume that any enthusiasm and optimism greeting their appointment will disappear across campus in an instant. That’s not a strong foundation upon which to build momentum for the future. It’s more adding to a sense of inevitable decline and scares away prospective students and faculty from coming to Valpo.
@david81 - very good points! This is obviously a complex problem and you are correct that the next president has to have some empathy and cannot immediately pull a Jack Welch. My concern has been that Valpo has tried to keep everybody happy and this causes dilution in instruction and responsibility.
Has someone in the tech industry. AI is very similar to the.com bubble of the night '90s. There's a lot of investment going into it at the moment. But there isn't really a lot of output to that investment. Investors are already starting to back out and and and as that German Bank had pointed out the US economy is very heavily reliant on the AI market. The AI market is not a sustainable one. These companies are promising things with AI that they cannot cash. And have shown to not be able to cash. You've already seen issues revolving recent improvements in AI, not actually being improvements.
Whether it is AI or something else, there will always be advancements that disrupt the labor market. The best ways for students (and thus universities) to mitigate problems from disruptions is to focus on disciplines that are career-oriented and either driven by personal interaction (e.g., nursing) or foundational. In the latter case, the disciplines have many facets or require skills that are readily transferable to other disciplines (e.g., finance, engineering). I agree with David81 that this should be complemented with a good university core curriculum.
Again to my point from before, I can't see a scenario where the new university president comes in and has no difficult decisions to make. S(he) will need to deal with this and it is best dealt with transparently at the beginning followed by a clear since message that we (as a university) are past cuts and other hard decisions.
One challenge in re-building a future will be reckoning with what is basically a missing generation in the faculty at this point. Many Valpo departments are staffed by a remnant of 55-65 yr old faculty just hoping to make it a few more years to get to a place where they can financially afford to retire.
Because of the last 5 years of cuts/layoffs, both the older and younger generations are gone.
On the one hand, most really old ones (60-75) are gone thru voluntary buy-outs or social pressure to relieve the budget via goodbyes which were sad but (IMHO) worth the loss of institutional memory.
On the other hand, and more problematically for the future, most the young tenure-track and young associate faculty of the last decade (who would be in their 30s and 40s) are also gone thru involuntary cuts or to find better positions.
In higher ed, it is usually the late-stage tenure-track and early associate rank faculty who do most the active and energetic work in university life. You need folk who have been there long enough to understand the curriculum and its lacks in meeting incoming cohorts of student/alumni needs, have the initial hurdles of teaching under their belts, and be past the constant navel-gazing of being precarious new or contingent faculty; but who are also still young enough to still have a fresh sense of the educational and social world 'out there' before their life at Valpo to devote themselves to substantial curriculum tweaks and viable recruitment/mentoring of students. Unfortunately, that is precisely the generation that was either laid off or fled these last five years (giving up tenure-track and even tenured positions in many cases) so lots of units have nobody in there in the pipeline. The only ones left either have some kind of geographic/family tie requiring them to stay, or have not succeeded yet at finding another position in higher ed or whatever industry they could pivot to.
So even if Valpo decided tomorrow to try to 'rebuild relations with faculty' (a goal which I would generally support), we must keep in mind that in many sectors the question is 'what faculty'? The 60 yr old old burned-out remnant faculty member who has watched 20 years of institutional decline and watched senior mentor faculty AND junior mentee faculty leave the institution, so is just trying not to care anymore and get to Social Security age? Or the 27 yr old adjunct or VAP who hasn't even been hired yet and would likely face too many headwinds of professional hoop-jumping and institutional learning and job precarity to dig in and actually work for the institutional good?
I do want to see the university turn for the better, but we have got to be honest about how bad Valpo's situation is. In the chess game of university life, your tenure-track and early associate level faculty are the chess queens and rooks and bishops in terms of flexibility/energy to move and really change institutional operations and offerings for the better. But Valpo has mostly sacrificed all those very early in the game to protect the king; and the remaining other pieces, just trying their best to survive, are not those that can make significant moves to improve campus culture or curricular offerings or recruitment/job networking for students.
Or if you are a 55 yr old provost or dean, how are you going chart some plucky new path with the academic programs when you don't have the the fast-moving and adjustable bishops, rooks, or horses anymore? If you were, say, a 62 yr old faculty member and had watched the last 5-10 yrs of institutional self-cannibalism, how much effort would you put into now hiring and mentoring up some poor adjunct who can't take the reigns at any rate?
yes, there are some young-ish folk around who have somehow survived cuts or stayed for whatever reason, but we must be honest about the fact that this is a very graying university that is trying to somehow become desirable to today's 18 yr olds and be responsive to 2025 student & employment trends.
@VUindiana, you're right to flag the generational maldistribution of faculty, which I think is a problem at many universities right now.
However (and I realize it's a BIG however at this point), burned out senior faculty can rediscover their mojo under the right academic leader, the kind who first tries to get the best out of everyone before making decisions that may impact job security. There are universities with plenty of prima donna faculty members, but I've never thought of Valpo as being one of them. Although it wouldn't surprise me if morale has plummeted in some departments, it would be presumptuous to assume that spirits cannot be raised back up under better circumstances.
@Usc4valpo, agreed, there surely will be difficult decisions to make. But hopefully they won't be of a "let's blow it up" nature, as such approaches are not well-suited for academic institutions, where memories and grievances can run long beyond the tenure of any given president.
I will suggest that if Valpo has tried to keep everyone happy, then it obviously has missed the mark during the past 5 or so years. Among other things, the art sale proved as divisive among faculty as the mascot change did with alums. And it appears that lots of faculty found the administration to be aloof and non-communicative overall.
@david81 I don't think mojo is going to be enough for most units. My understanding is programs need to get or keep 25 majors in order to survive current discontinuance consideration or avoid falling into it in the next several years. So many programs from Honors College to physics, from history to religion, from English to chemistry, may not be able to meet or keep that in the falling enrollment environment. It is hard to imagine some of these faculty regaining mojo even under good leadership when they know they are likely terminal under that metric.
Unfortunately, a species goes extinct not when the last specimen dies, but actually some time before that when the last reproductive-age organisms have been killed or poached or sterilized or no longer have mates or are already facing the culling block.
@vuindiana - very good points, but faculty needs and focus is not primarily keeping the university financially. Of course leadership needs to listen to them and get feedback, and it sounds like the Humongous and his tribe did a poor job regarding that. As someone in that age range, I also believe older faculty needs to figure out finding their mojo and not rely on leadership to find it for them. You can be grumpy and pissed off for as long as you want, or you can be happy and make a difference in whatever you do. Don’t depend on the company, the college or the Humongous to do that for you.
The latest points in this thread raise another important leadership skill that the new president will need. Academia is unlike any company and most organizations in that a large portion of the employees (tenured faculty members) can just say no when asked to do something. I think Padilla lacked the ability to get tenured faculty to want to do things (and it is not a common leadership skill). The new president will need to communicate and inspire.
Right, I agree with you all about older faculty needing to get on board and keep trying anew, etc. I'm not saying that they can't or won't work for the positive common good, despite all the administration's past choices that have made it seem pointless or thankless to do so. I'm just saying enthusiasm is tempered because they've invested so much in curricular overhauls that then promptly got discontinued or spent hours and hours mentoring up junior colleagues that then got cut before they could actually be helpful in core work. So it does seem like it's on the uni at this point to prove that its not already put most the uni programs on hospice and that *this time* VU might be serious about existing as an institution? But how can the uni send that message if admin is already promising to cut anybody who can't produce 25 majors on the books (ie most the programs) and its clear huge swaths of the uni will yet be cut?
Anyhow, my actual main point was that there ought to be a whole batch of early-mid career faculty (still interdisciplinarily flexible, anxious to prove themselves as working for the institutional good, and more academia-active & industry-connected) who are simply MISSING as a generation.... literally gone from the uni at this point, sent packing or scared off the last 5-10 yrs. The uni has tried to rehire some lines in these last few years, but it is not a guarantee that even the new tenure-track ones will stay, as too often they've been leaving after a year or two for more stable institutions and thus don't even attempt third-yr review or applying for the supposedly coveted tenure. That turnover is a real problem, if we don't want to constantly be trying to convince the same aforementioned jaded 'full' profs, getting ever higher up into their 50s and 60s, to rally yet again the thinned troops (a kind of uneven roster of fellow fulls and green adjuncts and maybe some associates who never applied for full and didn't get cut). VU needs to get more folk to stick around up into the associate ranks, since the assoc. profs are at most universities constitute the core visionary and energy drivers of the day-to-day visioning and re-visioning work.
So, yes, it's a morale issue; but its more fundamentally a demographic issue. You can't persuade a faculty body to buckle up for the ride if they aren't there.
For what it's worth, I think US higher ed should have an age limit, since in too many cases Valpo has been paying buy-outs to 65 and 70 yr olds while cutting the very 30-50 yr old tenure-track and early-associate profs that are necessary for its survival, which leaves the 50-60 yr olds tired of doing all the work. A lot of this demographic generation hole could have been avoided if senior faculty had just retired at a reasonable age so that the uni could have afforded to keep its early-career faculty pipeline. But I can also understand why the old ones are reluctant to retire, and I don't blame them on an individual level for hanging on. A lot of the GenXers & Boomers have put in 20 or 30 yrs of work but are still just making in the $60K-$70K range here in 2025, so they literally can't afford to retire even if they want to quit either for their own relief or to help make space for junior faculty to take the reigns. In most cases, they just have never been able to save enough so do not have the option to retire and must keep working till they themselves are involuntarily cut.
@david81 I don't think mojo is going to be enough for most units. My understanding is programs need to get or keep 25 majors in order to survive current discontinuance consideration or avoid falling into it in the next several years. So many programs from Honors College to physics, from history to religion, from English to chemistry, may not be able to meet or keep that in the falling enrollment environment. It is hard to imagine some of these faculty regaining mojo even under good leadership when they know they are likely terminal under that metric.
Unfortunately, a species goes extinct not when the last specimen dies, but actually some time before that when the last reproductive-age organisms have been killed or poached or sterilized or no longer have mates or are already facing the culling block.
@vuindiana If all of these programs and departments are in a sort of ongoing, existential probation, subject to closure, then VU may as well say adios and aloha and be ready to close its doors, because it is no longer functioning as anything resembling its core mission.
That's why the new president must prioritize growing enrollment and fundraising. On enrollment, it's reasonable to expect that next prez to increase the fall entering class by 150-200 students within three years.
As for your other comment on faculty retirement ages, all things being equal, I think that 70 is a reasonable ceiling for full-time, tenured faculty. At 65, I opted to enter a phased retirement program at my law school that has me done as f/t professor by 68. I wanted to go out while I still had some gas in the tank, not after I had lost my fastball, to mix my images, because there are many other things I'd like to do.
But as you aptly suggest, all things are not equal. Finances will be a concern for those who have been modestly compensated over the years and haven't been able to build much of a retirement nest egg. Given VU's lousy salaries for many full-time faculty, this is a legitimate issue and a good explanation for why senior faculty may continue to stay around.
Correct, upper admin has made it clear VU is to expect more rounds of cuts. I think some CLAS departments who can't meet the metrics could be saved in part or all if the professional schools that rely on them advocate for some continuance (like if Engineering needs some math or physics courses to still be offered, or if Nursing needs some bio course offerings?). But in general, I do not really expect CC or CLAS to survive in substance, and it will probably become some kind of general studies unit just serving some limited gen ed type classes (basic math, basic writing) for the professional schools. Or if VU doesn't close its doors, perhaps there some structure where a couple professional schools continue to exist but just rely on IvyTech or something to provide something of a basic-skills curriculum even if there are few actual disciplines left? Then again, there are probably some non-professional subject departments (like psychology) that could furnish 25 majors even amid the shrinking pie, so who knows what admin will do.
OK, yes, a normative cap around 70 yrs old sounds reasonable, but the long-term financial structure has to be there. I do think the lousy salaries from the 1970s-2020s was a really stupid 'strategy' for cost-saving in the long run. Whatever VU saved in paying severely below-market salaries, the institution has certainly paid many times over by a) having constantly to run searches and fly candidates in to re-hire new, green faculty far more frequently than normal universities do, only to watch them leave for better salaries, and then do it all over again; and then b) in having to pay salaries and/or buy-out for the very oldest faculty who would have gladly retired except that they never could. As you say, in most cases its not a 'prima donna' issue of ego making them hang on, but just a financial issue that even a weary 70yr old faculty members won't retire if it means defaulting on the mortgage or risking that they'll have to turning to the soup kitchen in old age.
@vuindiana and others make so many good points; these discussions are well-reasoned, thoughtful and done with concern for the institution. We all can hope that senior leaders take a similar perspective, even if some hard decisions are on the horizon.
At my own university, we face some similar challenges with the composition of the faculty - right now, our College composition looks more like a barbell with many recent hires and some stalwarts nearing retirement. It happened like this: We had a core group of faculty (some big name researchers who were also excellent in the classroom) who all were brought to the College at about the same time a few decades ago. This created a virtuous cycle of many other scholars wanting to join, or who considering the possibility of joining, an esteemed group. In the last few years, several of those distinguished faculty have retired, and even more will retire in the next two years or so. Ordinarily, this would not have been a problem, yet over the last fifteen years or so, the College was poor at retaining the next generation of scholars who got attractive offers elsewhere. Sometimes, it was financial, yet often it was other universities reaching out with a promotion, a professorship or a research center, or the normal moves to a preferred geographic location. Sometimes, a competitor promised some funding that would last several years, and our College would have funded the same amount each year but did not offer a multi-year commitment. Sometimes, programs were re-organized leaving far fewer compelling teaching opportunities. The consequence was there was leakage of faculty who went elsewhere. This did not happen all at once, and failing to retain one or two top performers a a year is not a crisis that year. However, once the results compound, it is hard to reverse, and hard to re-create the ecosystem.
I have to wonder if simple demographics are creating the "barbell" problem. The youngest boomers are now 62 years old and its a huge cohort. Is it possible that a higher percent of that largest generation tended to idealism and felt free economically to chose a faculty career?
In any case, the competition is stiff to hire gen X. The elite schools and flagship state schools likely are plucking the brightest and best.
Please be careful in discriminating based on age. There are many in their late 60's and early 70's that are quite productive and important in their respective fields. As a late boomer, I still learn, produce and maintain value in my industry. In fact, I switched companies at age 58, and I am part of the team of late millennials and GenZers in a recent released patent application.
