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One thing that I wonder about is how Colleges have moved into a situation where now, not only do people what highly specific majors focused on  career based areas but colleges themselves are meant to be little self-sustaining eco-systems.

It used to be that majors mattered less than just being educated: Knowing how to read, write, think, be exposed to new ideas and personal growth. Some areas obviously needed to be more skills focused than others but the idea that there needs to be highly specific curriculum in all these areas is probably a stretch. To be honest I think Business is probably the biggest offender in this as I'd imagine that class inflation that occurs to create a major curriculum does mean a lot of classes aren't really "useful" that said, i don't think the answer would be to just say change some majors to two years. I would love to see an embrace of a study what you want and you'll obtain the skills needed. My guess is there are more people in business with a random liberal arts degree than with just  straight business degree and that's because the basis needs are the basic things I mentioned before that most majors as well as working with others would give you. The other issues is the inflation in what students expect/need/want on campus: so many community sponsored events, all their services right on campus, activities and entertainment. Things that students used to provide for themselves. I get times change and I don't think you can put that much of the genie back in the bottle but I do think the expectations of what a college should do for a student are both too wide in some areas and too narrow in others.

Right now we had one 2024 scholarship to give which McNair has as we have only 12 scholarship members currently with one left that was never filled(this is what I'm assuming is McNairs spot as I doubt we get a midseason transfer). Any further scholarships will be open due to transfers/not taking the extra year. I highly doubt Connor returns for a fifth year. I also doubt Edwards leaves because I believe he would have to sit a year(right?). Biggest transfer risks will be end of the bench(most likely Sepp) and if Cooper continues to grow and gets the big offers.

My general assumption is that this consultant is being brought in to do a full scale assessment of academic programs and what they bring to the university as well as a general audit of the way departments are run.  Some of this will be a passing the buck: ie they get to say X program is continuing to show diminishing returns etc vs administration, but I also think that some of it is because asking faculty and Admin(many of whom were probably faculty somewhere) to do the cutting is going to be hard because everyone will argue about the intangibles and want to protect all programs.

Also, if I remember from other posts from past members: one of the biggest issues after the last blood letting was that the cuts seemed arbitrary, didn't factor in things like Grant money and didn't think about the future and where growth could also occur. I doubt there'd be any more trust for the administrations making these decisions over a consultant company just based on what some faculty/staff have said on here.

There was a color ad for the game in this Sunday's paper as well

Selling immediately would not be a great move just because 1. people will assume they can low ball us out of desperation and 2. You've probably already missed your deadline to get it done when you wanted so you should take your time and both try to sell it for the most and to the most ethical seller. I'd imagine a lot of museum are wary to be the one to immediately buy it and will want a deal if they anticipate a black mark for doing it. Leaves you with private collectors who will definitely want to low ball you.  Odds are we will not get what they were valued at prior to the debacle until some time passes.

"My thought.  Be the absolute best you can be NOW with who you have NOW, cuz the transfer portal always hovers menacingly over every program these days."

While I get the thinking, if the coaches are trying to build a program that asks the players to be patient and build something they have to coach like they're not thinking about the portal. red shirting a freshman to invest in their development for a year or being cautious with an injury is that exact time of decision. To say we're not just thinking of this year but of all our futures sends a message to the players that everyone is making sacrifices and decisions based on the longer term vs right now.

Their social media accounts are very active for this type of stuff. You will get some of it in the newsletters but you need to follow them on facebook or other sites to get all of this stuff as it comes in I feel

I feel like we did what I expected us to do. Play hard and fast, make mistakes, and eventually win. I also don't imagine that all of the things we saw will be representative of a true game plan from the coaches. This felt a lot like a "let them play it out" game and I might expect a bit of a tighter leash/neater play in the future. That said, they were much more fun to watch and I'd expect many of these mistakes to improve over the season as well as for them to gel more and a real rotation/clear roles to be more obvious as we move toward conference.

Per Paul's twitter it sounds like they had one this weekend. Unsure where/against who.

https://untappd.com/b/off-square-brewing-victory-ale/5534379/photos

Some of this I think falls down to wording in the poll.

I think most people would say full stop: Terrorisms etc is not good. BUT I  can see how those questions are designed to get the exact emotional reaction we are getting out of it vs pulling out what is most likely much more nuanced views. It seems like a poll based on enflaming social media arguments than anything.
I know many people who feel that 1. what happened in early October to Israeli Citizens is horrible but also 2. The Palestinian people have been treated poorly and unfairly and 3. the way Israel's government manages the situation has enflamed tensions, made things worse and is perhaps partially to blame for dynamics that make terrorisms flourish. I think also , from my own personal perspective that it moved so fast that before a lot of people even had time to absorb the horrors of what happened the bombing had started and the dynamic was that the most horrifying images coming out were what was happening in Gaza.

From what I have heard. There are students who are organizing the student section themselves and finding different ideas and structure to make it more fun and engaging. I believe they are part of some fraternities on campus and were a part of planning this event.

I don't feel like my assumption excluded any of those things which would be included under cost, majors and opportunity. But the reality is also that Valpo is not a top 25 university and is in fact a university of good standing surrounded by many other universities of good standing, most of whom have either better dorms, sports, location or college atmosphere. My point was that sometimes are marketing ideas focus on highly specific things that are important to us when at the end of the day bread and butter will always be most important to the meal.

I think this is a topic that has higher salience to those that work in higher ed or have a vested interest in how it's run and how it interacts with the world. My guess is most college students are still looking at the basic things: Cost, majors/opportunities, feel of the college, size/location, some sense of prestige for certain groups.
That's actually colleges are such a hot bed for certain things. Most of them really aren't thinking about those things until they get there and get to try on ideas and behaviors much like they try different majors and organizations.

For example at the end of the day part of the reason I think I picked Valpo over other schools was I went in summer and it was nice and I knew my tour guide and so my tour was rally nice and fun. Since it was on par educationally with the other schools I applied to those things carried the day.

Now this was before the age of the common app and applying to schools all over. So you only applied to schools you were actually interested to and often within the same parameters: size/location etc

VULB,

That's just the extra curriculars which are usually student run/non-credit. They do have a jazz and orchestra if you look under Ensembles

https://www.valpo.edu/music/ensembles/

A CC professors has an article in our local newspaper building on what David Brooks said about the program.

https://www.nwitimes.com/news/thomas-howard/article_3d0c61c0-48fc-11ee-8d6d-4be9f9883278.html

To reiterate what VU48 has said, I have heard that the gap between those that are ready for college and those that aren't feels a lot deeper. Either due to low preparedness due to large differentiation in High School Experience as well as what seems a tendency to "give up" easier. IE way more people just stop going to class/turning in assignments, than struggling along trying to keep their head above water.

I'd imagine that grade inflation also becomes a bit more of a difficulty to navigate in regards to how many students have GPS buoyed by less onerous work over the past few years. I also feel like this is something that will hopefully decrease as an issue as things "normalize" back to high school students having the more usual experience of full slate of activities, social experiences, and school expectations.

Yeah it's pretty clear the optics were: remove the paintings quietly now or wait until the sale goes through and risk removing them with a large protest outside. I believe that, especially how the potential sale was blown up by someone catching wind to the exploration of it and telling people, there's probably not a lot of trust that they would have been able to be removed quietly with the directors cooperation.

You can't both be a rebel and demand civility in dealings. I don't have issues necessarily with the protests anger law suits et al. Hiding messy stuff under the rug isn't a good way to do things either and ironically, it feels like this threat has caused faculty and others to actually seem to embrace and promote and use the museum in more public ways than I had every seen. But....no one has really "fought fair" in this, the choice is: to sell or not to sell and both sides are acting based on what they believe the best move is right now.

I am on team sell just because the state of our freshman dorms is absolutely abysmal and falling compared to competitors and renovating is much cheaper than rebuilding.

I do wonder if some part of it is a psychological component of getting "some" aid.

So maybe most students only pay around 25,000. How many will get mad if they apply and get no aid even on 25,000. Better to discount to feel like they are getting a deal/wanted or valued vs the sense that having to pay full price means you are less desired. I think that's why they focus on tuition aid and large scholarships, Plus one thing that I believe has been proven is that the more expensive a school is the more people assume it is "better" and are more likely to want to go there. It's the same reason some schools love to chase the "acceptance rate" game. Those perceived as highly selective are more desirable because it's believed they clearly "offer more"

I think the biggest problem is that as college has gotten more expensive the perceived gap in quality and "worthiness" of an institution has widened to really make a big gap between haves and have nots, at least in the private system. It's like they often say, the hardest thing about many Ivies is getting into them vs the actually academic challenges once you're there.

One interesting piece about the student loan debate is that it lumps a lot of separate complaints into one conversation.

Generally people who go to and graduate from  4 year accredited higher education university are able to pay their loans off but the interest sticker shock and time it takes to do so can feel like a slow grind on people who are first starting off and feel like the loan payment does effect their ability to hit certain "adult" goals faster.
Loan repayment programs have, until recently, been riddled with bureaucracy and paperwork that made them almost unworthy of utilizing. That has change significantly and will hopefully continue to happen. This will encourage people to work for lower pay in more well deserving areas to aid in loan repayment instead of all trying to grab the highest paying jobs in the highest paying cities (which are usually also way more expensive to live in)
A lot of community colleges/certification courses etc are the most likely to have a student take out a loan that they cannot pay back or discharge bankruptcy. In fact, I believe that 20,000 of forgiveness would fully discharge a lot of the this type of loan because they tend to be lower amount but the people who took them out tend to be the least likely to even pay those back. These schools also tend to maybe have the least scruples on who they encourage to enroll and apply for loans.

I think a lot of students and parents hear the general talk about student loans and fears of not "using your college degree" (which is an interesting metric when so many things a college degree provides you may  lead to way better career outcomes down the line even if you start off as, say, a barista) that they are way more risk averse in general.

I agree we need to focus on being a school but good town and gown cooperation, especially if it leads to increased donations/funds/grant opportunities outside of the alumni base/what faculty can find and attain helps the school but helping with things we know matter to retention and enrollment on the surface without taking money that could go to faculty. If you think an arena or new nursing school are needed but both are expensive than finding other ways to pay for the structures so that the learning and student experience can thrive is a good idea.

I think academics have an understandable distaste/instinctive reaction to words like business and investment but an immediate rejection of them can lead to a refusal to deal in the reality of money needs in a more demanding climate.

Yes they got new scoreboards, a new center video board and new shot clocks plus the painting of the walls, and new lights.

It definitely looks much cleaner and less neglected than the old color.

One thing that I think is key is what has been touched on regarding productivity and how it is measured. I know plenty of people who sit at a desk for 8 hours in an office who have said that they discovered that when working from home they could get that same amount of work done in 5 hours. Some of it is because when you have a "I am here until x time no matter what" the incentive of getting things done faster isn't there like it is if getting all your work done means getting to relax on your couch and keep an eye on your email for the last few hours. What I have seen happen is that in work cultures where someone coming into your office can lead to a whole bunch more work WFH can feel freeing on one end but, for those who got used to being able to just pull people in or assign duties in the moment and demand immediate response (which can be an unfortunate habit of management) not having immediate access to employees gets frustrating (although they seem to love work from home when it means asking their employees to answer emails and work on things after hours).

I am sure there are a lot of jobs where WFM is not conducive or less "productive" but there are lot of ways that the traditional structure can make work unnecessarily difficulty or more taxing and many people realized that after COVID.

One thing i have found is that there's work I'd rather do from home vs that which I'd rather be in the office for. So if I have a project that I need to focus on and get done working from home is preferable because I can start work on it right away and limit distractions or getting pulled into other meetings/convos so I will finish it a  lot faster. If I have meetings though I prefer to be in the office because I can only take so much zoom.

I do think that the difference is in the middle. Flexible schedules/work from home days/four day work weeks etc are the real future. Commuting 5 days a week can get old and the flexibility of working from home because a kid is sick, or like my furnance guy is coming or I have a drs appoint in the morning, Would be nice. Let me take an 8 am meeting on zoom and then come into the office after etc.