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I took a look at Allegheny College's website. The striking thing here is that they have very few majors that can directly be tied to jobs/careers. Computer science is the exception. For "business", it is really just economics branded as business - no faculty or courses in accounting, marketing, supply chain, finance, etc. Bottom line is that they are a pure liberal arts + sciences college. Allegheny may do this very well, but that is not where the market is. Students and their families value these areas, but if they are going to pay a significant amount for college they expect a clear path to meaningful employment after four years. Thus, Allegheny is different from Valpo as Valpo has a meaningful and accredited College of Business, engineering, health sciences, nursing, etc.

84, all good points. Allegheny is not the same as VU, though there are few direct comparisons to VU that map across all dimensions. However, historically VU's largest program has been the College of Arts and Sciences - this is the same "pure liberal arts" focus you mentioned above. The challenge is the market and interest is moving away from those programs, even as the pool of eligible students gets smaller.

One of the continued takeaways for me is how difficult the job is for VU's leadership to navigate all of those factors. 

Here is a recent story about Allegheny College, showing their declining enrollment trends and recent S&P ratings cut for their debt. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/longtime-pennsylvania-liberal-arts-college-204417049.html

Allegheny has a good reputation as a small, quality, private liberal arts university located in western Pennsylvania. I have had several colleagues who have kids who graduated from there, and they generally thought it was a good school. Allegheny has 1,353 students, but this is down 37% from 2012. It also has an endowment of $264M (or about $198K per student per the NACUBO report;  VU has an endowment per student of $110K per student). The report highlights some of the same enrollment headwinds that have been discussed elsewhere.

My recent posts seem to be negative, instead I am trying to share some facts about the situation facing VU and other, similarly-sized private institutions.

The 2023 NACUBO study is out - a full version is available here https://www.nacubo.org/Research/2023/Public-NCSE-Tables.

This is for fiscal year 2023, which runs from July 2022 to June 2023.

It shows that VU is #287, with a total endowment market value of $315M. This is down from $326M in FY2022. This is a decline of 3.4. Note that this is not the investment return; this is the net impact of additions to the endowment, withdrawals from the endowment, and investment gain or losses. (For reference, Harvard had the highest endowment value of 49.5B, a 0.1% increase from 2022).

Compared to some of our similarly-sized private peers, VU had a larger decline. Bradley was up 1.6, Belmont up 6.7, Gustavus Adolphus up 4.8, Butler up 5.6, Drake up 8.8. Of course, if they had large contributions to their endowments, that would be reflected in their increases.

Will be interesting to see what happens at Ohio St. and Jake at seasons end.     

The fans are not happy and they have fallen mightily.

https://www.si.com/college/ohiostate/basketball/ohio-state-ad-gene-smith-reveals-stance-on-future-of-mbb-coach-chris-holtmann

Well, looks like part of the story is complete.

Holtmann is fired, and Jake Diebler is the new interim coach.

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/39525180/sources-chris-holtmann-ohio-state-basketball-coach

I posted on the planned cuts at Bradley University that were announced in December. Here is another recent look at the financial situation.

https://www.wcbu.org/local-news/2024-02-12/we-had-a-bad-year-how-a-covenant-violation-led-bradley-university-to-make-13-million-in-cuts

There are quite a few parallels with the situation facing Bradley and the situation facing VU (similar in size, student body, endowment, location, etc.) though to my knowledge, VU has not breached its debt covenants.

A few quotes:

"Bradley University will pay a higher interest rate and need to have more money on hand to cover debt after violating the bond covenants on some $17.1 million worth of borrowing last year."

(S&P Ratings Analyst) "Radhakrishnan said Bradley's overall balance sheet remained solid even through fiscal year 2023. The university has a $350 million endowment and more than $700 million in assets. But she said operating performance has been an offsetting factor for the past several years."

S&P Global's 2024 outlook for higher education is bifurcated, or mixed. Selective, higher-rated universities have a positive outlook, while smaller regional schools are expected to continue facing financial and enrollment challenges.

"Bradley in particular falls at sort of that lower end of the rating curve where we are seeing more operating pressures," said Jessica Wood, managing director for education at S&P Global Ratings.

As you already know from our offline chats, 16, my vent wasn't that the kids didn't get offers.  It is that at no cost to the coaches, except for a little time sending an form email invite to an evaluation camp which the kids would have paid for) or just an invitation to visit campus, these kids might have had a shot to impress (beyond Hudl clips, which, in their case, were graphically of poor quality and got posted late in the recruiting cycle). Why ignore a QB who was ranked in the top 5 in the state of WI regardless of HS size classification?  Or a  6', 200# RB that has rushed for over 5,000 yards? Both, BTW, are high 3.0 students. Shoot, at least say, hi, is what I'm sayin.

I've heard from a few graduates of VU from the mid 1980's that when their children were athletes and looking at colleges they asked if the current coaching staff (different sports than football) would please have a conversation with potential student athlete. Crickets for most. Turned a few potential donors off. I wonder why VU lost a law school and is currently in some financial/attendance problems. The Christian notion of being nice to one another is lost at VU.


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I've only done this once, yet observed this sort of behavior myself - my neighbor (well, my neighbor's son) was a very good football player who wanted to study engineering. He was second team all-state, and a team captain for his HS (on team that made the state semi-final in the highest division) - he knew he would not be getting a D1 football scholarship, yet was looking for a top-quality academic school in the Midwest with an excellent engineering program.

Several years ago in the offseason, I sent the position coach and the offensive coordinator my neighbor's hudl link, his address and cell phone number. I received no reply from either coach, and my neighbor got nothing from VU.

Fast forward, and my neighbor is playing at a top D-III football program. Last season, my neighbor appeared in all ten games as a sophomore, and was on the dean's list in electrical engineering (at a school with a national reputation higher than VU).

Are the coaches so busy they can't have an office assistant send out some info to a potential player? Even if they decide not to recruit my neighbor, couldn't they send a quick reply to me as VU alum? Those coaches have moved on, yet it was not a great look.   

It isn't exactly about VU basketball, yet Bryce Drew has GCU playing well. They are currently 20-2 and on the #11 line in the current ESPN bracketology. Their schedule isn't great, yet GCU has wins against San Francisco and San Diego State. The two losses are to South Carolina and Seattle U.

Contrast that with Jerry Stackhouse at the other VU - they are 5-15 and winless in the SEC. (Bryce Drew got fired after his third season at Vandy after going 9-23.) 

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/39364266/five-star-junior-jeremiah-fears-commits-play-illinois

Valpo is not in the mix for too many five-star players.

OK, so it isn't directly about VU enrollment, yet elsewhere on this topic we have discussed the situation at Bradley University. To my knowledge, this hasn't been posted as yet - it shows how Bradly is cutting 15 majors in response to low enrollment and a $13M budget deficit. The announcement is as of December 11, 2023.

https://www.centralillinoisproud.com/news/local-news/the-latest-on-degree-programs-being-cut-at-bradley-university/

The market has come roaring back in 2023. The S&P is up 20% YTD.  It has nearly gained back all the 2022 losses. I sure didn't see that coming in the face of high interest rates on fixed investments. 

Perhaps an extra distribution in 2024 can help bridge us to a better enrollment.

I think it helps, yet let's not get too excited.

In round numbers, if VU's endowment was at $350M and it went up 20%, it would be an increase of $70M (to $420M). Assuming a 5% payout rate on the endowment, that would translate into $3.5M of additional spending from the endowment for the year. VU has an annual budget in the range of $120M of spending, so an additional $3.5M of revenue is helpful yet not a game-changer. Note however that the endowment is not all invested in the stock market, so probably the growth in the endowment is less than the 20% of the S&P 500.

The downside is that VU has about $150M of structural debt. Much of that is long-term construction debt which stays at a fixed rate. Yet there was about $21M borrowed on a line of credit - the terms of which went from approximately 2% interest rate in 2022 to I'm guessing about 5.7% for 2023. So, that would result in additional interest costs of about $800K assuming the line of credit borrowings stayed the same.

Net-net, nice to see the endowment grow which helps secure the future of VU.  In the short run, the additional revenues are more than the additional spending, yet probably not enough to make a huge difference in one year.

(Most of my numbers come from the 2022 audit report, so perhaps things have changed.)

A lot of university presidents actually have very little experience in tough leadership situations; they advanced up the ladder as successful professors who then went into academic administration. In scenes like Congressional hearings, they're also not used to facing tough questions in situations they cannot control. The presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn basically fit that profile.

At least they're not as bad as those who commit career-ending, reputation-killing, inexplicably bad lapses of judgment, as the presidents of Michigan State and Penn State universities did in the aftermath of sex abuse crises in their athletics departments.

IMO, some of the best training for a high-profile university presidency is serving in high-profile elected office, so long as we're not talking about patronage-reeking political hacks. They know forums like this and are less likely to have a tin ear when it comes to their own statements.

81, hold on here. Liz Magill, who just resigned, has an undergraduate degree from Yale and a JD from Virginia. She was a law clerk for the fourth circuit court of appeals, and the US Supreme Court. She worked for Sen. Kent Conrad. She then joined the faculty at UVA Law, before becoming Dean of the Stanford Law School, then Provost at UVA, then President at Penn. Someone with that background in law, politics and the highest levels of senior leadership should be able to speak with some clarity.

Maybe lawyers don't make the best witnesses? (wink)

It would be wise to dial back the outrage, and look at the facts as we know them.

1) We DO NOT know how much the consultants are getting paid, so it is wrong to speculate that they are unnecessarily costly. I'm sure they are expensive, yet VU is and has been in very difficult financial circumstances. VU has been operating under a structural deficit for many years. The Moody bond rating report says it in black and white.

2) The faculty and administration (whatever their expertise) has not yet been able to turn the corner on this. So, it seems reasonable to me to consult with experts who might be able to offer assistance.

3) West Virginia Univ. is a trainwreck for many reasons. I have a former student of mine who is a department chair there, and recently got some additional insight. There is a Wall Street Journal article from this summer that details some of their problems. Some interesting parallels: One of the big issues is their president (Gordon Gee) planned on big growth which did not occur. In 2014, Gee said their enrollment of full-time and part time students (which was 33,000) should grow to 40,000 and spent something like $800M on upgraded facilities between 2012 and 2018. As of the fall of 2022, they had 27,500 full-time and part-time students - basically WVU spent money it didn't have, and now the bill is due. This happened in West Virginia, a state where high school graduate numbers have been in a long-term decline. Mark Heckler could similarly forecast growth and spending at VU under similar circumstances, and the student numbers at VU have been in similar decline.

4) I have no personal experience with rpk Group. However, they have worked with Gallaudet, St. John's, St. Thomas, UVA, Kansas, St. Bonaventure, Missouri, Texas, George Washington and many others. Seems like they might have some insights worth hearing about. Naturally, it is up to the VU administration and board to decide what to do with those recommendations. 

Let's be real about the Pioneer Conference - it is D1 football in name only and more inline with D3. I know NDSU is a D1AA powerhouse, but Drake's performance is embarrassing for the Pioneer, and this is a down heat for the Bison.

I would not call it an embarrassment. Talent-wise, there is a bigger difference between Drake and NDSU than between NDSU and Georgia. The difference comes down to scholarships and resources, and the PFL is competing at the non-scholarship level.

It is not just the enrollment staff.

Historically, VU faculty and leadership had deep and longstanding ties to the LCMS. President Harre was an ordained LCMS pastor and was formerly the president of Concordia St. Paul before coming to Valpo. In 1990 or so, he hired Dr. William Karpenko to lead VU's Office of Church relations. Karpenko had previously led the DCE program at Concordia Seward for about 20 years. Between the two of them, they probably personally knew or had met more than 90% of the LCMS pastors and DCEs in the USA.

Of course, there are other Lutheran church bodies beyond the LCMS. Yet the relationships and respect afforded to people like Harre and Karpenko probably opened a lot of doors into continuing recruitment of Lutheran students from both Lutheran and non-Lutheran high schools.

Who among the VU leadership has those ties for VU as of today?

valpotx, your point about the demographic headwinds is well taken. I don't think anyone would suggest an exclusive focus on a declining population. Yet it begs the question why can Concordia Ann Arbor, Mequon and Seward be growing their undergraduate populations, while Valpo is declining or at best treading water? If VU's recruitment strategy is to focus on a different population, that doesn't seem to be working, either.

For a bit of perspective on enrollment numbers, the October issue of the LCMS Reporter (the monthly newspaper of the LCMS) just arrived. My wife is a Concordia Seward grad and a former teacher in the system, so we get a copy for free.

Concordia Mequon (WI) Fall 2023 new traditional undergraduate enrollment (new first years) was up 7% year on year.
Concordia Ann Arbor (MI) Fall 2023 was a record high, and new traditional undergraduate enrollment was an all-time record. New enrollment at AA was still only 370, yet this was up 60% since 2013.
Concordia Seward (NE) Fall 2023 had the highest new full time undergrads in 50 years

The article didn't list anything about the other campuses, yet it does show there is a potential market for Lutheran-affiliated undergraduate education. If I were President Padilla, I would be asking some hard questions about how those campuses could be growing enrollment while Valpo is not.

[part-time]

If the team is winning, band participation will tick up a bit, but the real numbers in the band are a result of not having an associate director of bands full time to run the pep band, bring back the marching band, recruit incoming Freshman. Both ensembles bring back revenue to the university. Game tickets and concession purchased by attending parents of band members etc. Offered as a class, rehearse 3 days a week get 1 credit, some stipend amount per game etc.. The university has it's priorities and things to budget for. Full stop

VU has not had even a part-time faculty director of bands in place since 1990-91. There have been some paid student directors.

None of these polls mean anything,  certainly preseason.  All speculation and no real insight on how any team will do.  It's silly to even read them. 

What I do know, and do not need to speculate, is we have a really good coach.  With a great background and a really really great staff.   One that we have not had in some time.  On top of that an AD that is strong.  Good things are going to happen and the program is moving in the right direction.   No poll needed.   

Given all of the turnover of coaches and players, getting picked last makes perfect sense.

I also agree with Chairback about the good coach, staff and AD. At this point, rather than the polls, it would be interesting to me to find out how good the coaching staff thinks the team will be. These are guys that have some experience evaluating basketball talent.

There is much that the Heckler administration did not understand, and it seems like they went out of their way to not understand.  This included attempts to grow the student body while reducing student selectivity in the face of a foreseeable demographic cliff. Trying to maintain the law school (and the reputation) by admitting more and more unqualified students, being utterly surprised when that didn't work and taking a hit to the reputation of the university. Building several new buildings funded only with increased debt (and debt service, see below). Alienating at least some of their traditional pipeline of applicants from LCMS high schools. Operating with annual structural budget deficits.

Part of the reason that President Padilla is in such a bind is that there is next to no borrowing capacity left. The June 2022 financial statements showed $105M of notes and bonds payable. In specific, only $2.5M of the $82.7M principle had been repaid from the 2014 and 2017 bonds (including none of the $42M 2014 IFA Educational Facilities Revenue Bond). There were two lines of credit (one expiring 10/31/2023) with $11M borrowed, and another expiring on 11/29/2022 with $10M borrowed. Both of the lines of credit were at interest rates of 2.05% (LIBOR + 60bp). Today, those lines of credit would cost the University 6% or so. To put it in perspective, the University incurred $4.3M of interest expenses in 2022 against $48.6M net tuition and fees, and I'm guessing that the interest expenses would be worse for FY 2023. So, when dorms need to be re-done to attract students, if the funds can't be raised from donors, there is little chance of borrowing more money. 

I'm sure President Heckler had fun spending the money, and dedicating the new buildings. It is like President Padilla is the one who has to clean up after the morning after a house party.     

Wow!! Talk about being a little verbose, saying that you were the main driver of the campaign. I think he was in charge of major gifts but he wasn't the VP of Advancement. The VP was Lisa Hollander, I wonder how she feels about him taking the credit for the 302 million.

Well, I'm not going to be too worried about it. He was asked,"What's a past campaign that you've done that you're the most proud of and how did you do it?" and that was his response.

As far as I can tell, Mr. Petrovich very well was the lead person in charge of the campaign. Clearly the VP would have other responsibilities including managing the entire Advancement office, just like the President (or Deans) would be involved with the campaign while doing other Presidential things. If you read the response, he uses "we" and "team" as well, even as the question uses the word "you" three times!

The big guys would never do that. Not on a neutral court. Not even on their home courts most likely. Would be fun, never going to happen. At most there might be a one year 4 team round robin featuring Indiana, Purdue, notre dame, and butler.

They would do it if there was enough money in the prize pool, plus national exposure.

Imagine a total prize pool of $2M+, the winner got say $800K, with appropriate payouts down from there. Add in that every other year, the big guys don't have to pay out say $95K for a buy game because it is included in the tournament. Would the big guys be interested enough to consider an in-state early season road game every other year? If not, how much money would it take to get them to do do it?

This is the slightly wrong place to put this, yet wouldn't it be great to have all 11 D-1 teams in Indiana do an early season tournament every year?

One could set up a bracket so the in-conference opponents would not possibly face each other until the tournament final, and do a play in bracket of the six lowest ranking teams face each other to get it to a workable eight team bracket. Do a home and home setting that alternates every other year.

All it would take is a company (think Lucas Oil or similar) to put up a prize pool, and it could be made to work. The expenses and logistics would not be that difficult. 

There is a nice piece in today's WSJ about a Notre Dame professor suing the school newspaper for defamation.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-notre-dame-professor-sues-the-student-paper-abortion-academic-freedom-catholic-3334c4f0?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The bigger part is how the writer addresses the conflict between religious freedom and academic freedom, and I thought some of it was worth sharing because it hits on many of the issues facing VU:

When the religious institution is one committed to education, there's the added complication of academic freedom. It would seem obvious that the person who teaches at a religiously affiliated school necessarily accepts qualifications to that freedom. To deny this would be to raise serious questions about what the school's religious affiliation means. No doubt this would be uncomfortable for some—but we live in a free country and nobody is required to teach at religious universities.

How can these institutions maintain both their clear religious convictions and their academic integrity while also remaining places that educate rather than indoctrinate? That question will always be difficult to answer as long as the focus is on the freedom of the professoriate.

A large part of the solution lies not with those who teach but with those who are taught. It's reasonable for professors at religiously affiliated schools to be required to teach in a manner that doesn't contradict the institution's values. There's no parallel demand for students. When they have the right to challenge their professors, the classroom welcomes fruitful intellectual dialogue—not groupthink.

This applies across ideological lines. A religiously affiliated school with open enrollment must protect the right of all students to question their professors' views. That doesn't mean it must formally recognize groups that are opposed to the school's religious commitments or allow defamatory or slanderous attacks on a professor's character. It does, however, mean that no student should live in fear of being disciplined—let alone being sued—for voicing divergent views or for subjecting a professor's beliefs to public scrutiny. This is basic to the kind of dialogue that is necessary in the classroom and on campus for the promotion of true intellectual engagement rather than rote learning.

I could be wrong, but I don't think wh was saying VU has become "radically liberal". (Edit - I missed wh's reply above!)

I think wh was pointing out that the ELCA has become increasingly "radically liberal" which was in the title of the article provided. It is also likely that the average ELCA pastor is far more liberal than the average member of the ELCA.

The demographic challenges also show a decline in college-age students in the Midwest and in all of the Lutheran churches. That said, as has been discussed before, Mark Heckler was the first ELCA president of VU and seemed to steer VU away from its traditional constituency, if not in practice at least in perception. It bears repeating that all of the prior presidents in VUs modern history were ordained LCMS pastors or had deep and longstanding ties to the LCMS. The result is that the LCMS students and families have voted with their feet and are going elsewhere. Just look at Concordia Lutheran High School Fort Wayne - they had 132 seniors this year, and as far as I could tell, NONE of them are going to VU.

78crusader has it right: VU is viewed too liberal for the conservative students and too conservative (or religious) for the liberal students.

Unfortunately, wh's analysis only includes Lutherans part of the Lutheran World Federation. The 3.5M Lutherans listed for the USA only includes the ELCA, and many of the "confessional" Lutheran bodies are not part of it.

In the USA, church bodies NOT part of the LWF would include the LCMS (about 1.8M members), WELS (340K), NALC (142K) and several other smaller denominations.