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Messages - PMelanchton

#1
I would guess the university will do something to mark the centennial of VU as a Lutheran university in 2025. And soon it will be a hundred years since Kretzman's speech in 2040 so the history should be marked if and when that milestone is reached too.
#2
General VU Discussion / Re: Valpo Strategic Plan
April 01, 2023, 09:11:12 PM
Two observations:

Where Lutheran education has survived internationally, it has been within state tax-supported public institutions as in Germany and Denmark. In such Northern European countries, the state funds public universities, often including a Protestant and / or Catholic theology unit, and sets all public employees in higher ed across the country on roughly the same pay scale and benefits (ie, W-3, W-3 class, etc). In the US, however, the Lutheran presence in higher ed is instead in private Lutheran institutions that have neither the state's financial support nor the state's regulations on compensation.

In the US, the ability to hire adjuncts cheaply depends mainly on location and proximity of other institutions. Many Concordias are located in places where they are more easily able to find adjunct workers than Valpo can, though access to dirt-cheap labor has not saved the CUS institutions from financial straights. Although Lutheran institutions have long underpaid faculty relative to the rest of US higher ed, they are in varying degrees of precarity, so Valpo's endowment puts it on the relatively more secure end of Lutheran institutions today.