Valpo Strategic Plan

[crusader05]

I don't know how far 10 million would stretch when we are talking about full scholarships for 4 years. and what happens when that money is gone? you stop offering the scholarships and are in the same boat? Endowments are where good strong scholarships can come from, otherwise you offer too much of a discount in a tuition based school and you are eating into  your operating budget which is where salaries come from. Even firing upper admins might help with some salaries but short of increasing enrollment I don't see how Valpo can improve on some of those things without shrinking a bit to be sure that the programs they do offer are fully funded and dedicated.

I also think the difficulty is comparing what students on campus are upset about vs what keeps students from attending. Those are two different subgroups that both matter. Increased enrollment helps improve facilities and resources but satisfying current students is also important for retention. I do think making the classroom experience more rewarding for students in the arts and sciences in particular is probably a thing to really focus on. Is CORE Still a thing? That was viewed as a "waste of time" when I was there. I recognized the writing value afterward but surely there's a way to incorporate it into the Arts and Sciences in a way that allows for more variety and maybe investment by the professors.

[ValpoDiaspora]

Yeah, true. I understand it is not sustainable to use operating budget to fund the sort of merit scholarships that other private universities do. I imagine most the non-Ivy schools that do this (Rice, Rochester, Duke, Villanova, USC, Vanderbilt, Emory, Wake Forest, Fordham, Boston College, etc) must have endowed funds to make it sustainable. I guess I still don't really understand what exactly Valpo's pretty hefty endowment is actually earmarked for, since it doesn't seem to include these kinds of operations for sustaining the sports or academic quality. Maybe too much of it is just tied up in donors wanting benches with their names on them or something? Not sure.

[crusadermoe]

In reply to a recent post a few back, I don't think the names of colleges Carnegie-Mellon and Brandeis were random choices.  They are three pretty notable guys in history.

I know Misery loves company, but "Misericordia" kind of puzzles me more than those two schools above. Good luck with that.

[crusader05]

https://www.valpo.edu/forevervalpo/

This gives an idea of what was being looked for in the funding as well as some of the larger donations and what it takes to fund. One thing that stuck out to me is it takes an endowment of 850,000 to fund a single 4 year scholarship. and up to 5 million to fund a Dean position. Also, as has been noted all of the money is not money in hand. I know for a fact that large scholarship fund of 15 million is in an estate plan and the individual is still middle aged.

I think the endowment is important and should be a constant focus, especially for faculty and scholarships but it is a long game funding strategy. I also think, looking at donation sizes it really is one of those things where Valpo Alums just aren't giving at the high rate. Other schools also get big donations from local business and others for naming rights and things. Butler got a 25 million donation once from someone who didn't go there. I dont know how many Northwest Indiana people have pockets that big.

[crusadermoe]

If the Misericordia University "shoe" fit as a peer chosen by Valpo in their peer studies, I guess that's fine.  Doesn't seem like a public comparison I would welcome.

Ok, I will let it go. 

[usc4valpo]

Those selections of peer institutions are not good - Valpo should be compared to Butler, Evansville, Creighton, Drake and Bradley. Comparing to these tiny liberal arts schools make little sense.

[crusader05]

https://www.valpo.edu/institutional-effectiveness/files/2022/10/Peer-List-for-Web_101322.pdf

All those schools are on the list as well. My guess is the other school has some specific thing that connects it to Valpo that puts it on the list. Also your peer institution list should be broad and slightly aspirational at times. There was a chronicle article out before that showed how odd the institution lists are and how few schools have "mutual" connections where they both view each other as peers.

[vu84v2]

I find the peer lists to be odd as well...though I would probably include Butler and Bradley as peers (not so sure about Creighton since it has an entirely different level of graduate students, graduate programs, and endowment).

The most important list to determine is comprised of "what schools did students choose over Valpo?" and "what other schools did current Valpo students seriously consider?" That is the way you assess advantages and disadvantages. When we did that as a university, the list was very different than the peer list.

[David81]

OK, this may sound odd, but I don't want VU to look at its academic future as one of trying to compete with more elite universities.

As I mentioned above, its current averages are 3.7 gpa (OK, it's an age of rampant grade inflation, but still...) and 1175 SAT (very respectable). However, it's admitting 89% of its applicants. So yes, it would be good if the yield was higher and more students with strong credentials enrolled.

However, I don't see a need for VU to be chasing elite status, as schools like Wash U have done. Lost in that obsession are plenty of students who may lack the shinier numbers going into college, but who take advantage of what college gives them and plant seeds for a good future. I and many of my VU friends fall into that category. I now teach at a university that serves much the same purpose, and in many ways it's more rewarding than teaching at a school where paths to success are already assured unless the student screws up royally.

[historyman]

In reply to a recent post a few back, I don't think the names of colleges Carnegie-Mellon and Brandeis were random choices.  They are three pretty notable guys in history.

I know Misery loves company, but "Misericordia" kind of puzzles me more than those two schools above. Good luck with that.

My favorite is Case Western Reserve University. When Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University merged on the east side of Cleveland the group from Western Reserve had it written into the merger agreement that the words Western Reserve would never be taken out of the name of the university. Most people in Cleveland call it "Case."

[ValpoDiaspora]

OK, this may sound odd, but I don't want VU to look at its academic future as one of trying to compete with more elite universities.

As I mentioned above, its current averages are 3.7 gpa (OK, it's an age of rampant grade inflation, but still...) and 1175 SAT (very respectable). However, it's admitting 89% of its applicants. So yes, it would be good if the yield was higher and more students with strong credentials enrolled.

However, I don't see a need for VU to be chasing elite status, as schools like Wash U have done. Lost in that obsession are plenty of students who may lack the shinier numbers going into college, but who take advantage of what college gives them and plant seeds for a good future. I and many of my VU friends fall into that category. I now teach at a university that serves much the same purpose, and in many ways it's more rewarding than teaching at a school where paths to success are already assured unless the student screws up royally.

David, I think you're reading me slightly wrong. I actually agree with you that Valpo shouldn't strive for elite status as an ultimate endgoal, since we need colleges that cultivate a humane environment for students to grow and for things like curiosity and kindness and experimentation to thrive. There's a lot not to like about the uber-competitive cultivation of selectivity and rankings.

I'm just saying that to survive, Valpo may need to at least be *aware* of The Kinds of Things Non-Desperate Schools Do to be solvent and successful. Valpo has been in very difficult straights, so the conversations (and my comments here about schools offering merit aide etc) are unfortunately the gritty ones about how you get students to come. As a strategy for survival, Valpo needs to get the desirability and yield up.

I'm worried that in the last few years, Valpo has gotten into a place where all the aspirations are going the wrong direction... I only every heard about how to raise the student-to-faculty ratio in the classrooms and how to reduce the scholarship discount to get more cash out of paying students. The university was only ever reducing the pay for its already very under-paid employees, and did cuts with no merit/performance/curricular considerations in mind but simply according to the hasty panic of whoever could legally be cut. The faculty often complained about the precipitously dropping abilities of the students to do basic reading, writing and math work, and by the time I left, faculty were leaving in pretty significant numbers. I think for a lot of us who left for whatever sad reason - layoffs, struggles to afford living in Valpo, worries about long-term stability of the school - the most depressing thing was that Valpo didn't even seem to be trying anymore. I remember when I finally went in to tell the Dean I was leaving, Kilpinen just said his typical lines about "Well, faculty are a dime a dozen" and "at least we're not losing faculty to Elmhurst." He'd said the same thing to some colleagues the year before who went to Princeton and other more stable places, and even in some public townhalls. So in my own last conversation with him when I told him I'd accepted another position, and sure enough the dumb anti-intellectual Elmhurst comment came out, I just kind of wanted to either shake him -- 'look up, be better, dammit! come on, I moved my entire family here actually wanting to strive for Valpo excellence!' -- or to just put my head down on the desk and cry for us and for Valpo. I just don't see how the institution will survive if the conversations are always aiming downwards -- 'How can we give less personalized attention to students? How can we invest less and extract more money out of them?' 'are there any more faculty around that the Faculty Handbook will let us cut or pay less'? -- and if there is never any consideration of performance or possibility for 'could we become better at X' or 'what could we do to strengthen the quality of the student body or the quality of conversation', 'what fields and parts of the curriculum do our faculty teach in that are worth investing in' etc. The last few years, Valpo hasn't had any positive means of control at all over the sorts of faculty and students they bring or retain. On the contrary, the administration was was very clear that all the chopping and reorganizations *don't* take into account performance quality or even specific curricular area of teaching/research -- it's just a matter of chopping 'labor costs' and reducing overall program sizes. They have pretty steadfastly refused to do anything meaningful with financial aide to entice strong students to come; in contrast, even here on this board everybody seems to think the main goal is just to sell more seats and offer less scholarships to reduce the aide discounts. To me, this seems the exact opposite of how successful schools think and operate, and my worry for Valpo is that if everybody really takes this as normative, it will only send the university faster into a negative desirability tailspin which is, practically and economically, a recipe for enrollment death.

So I promise my comments above were not aimed at trying to actually make Valpo into a WUSTL or an IvyLeague. I'm more just worried that Valpo doesn't have any conception of how stable schools actually think & strategize. At no other private university I've ever been at would the Dean be caught dead saying stuff like 'faculty are a dime a dozen' or 'don't worry, we're still not losing people to [insert community college].' At no other university I've belonged to did they think about Admissions as just a sales and marketing team meant to 'sell' the school to anybody who will come, having lost most any conception of selectivity or shaping the study body. So I'm not advocating for Valpo to actually become an uber-elite institution and don't think there's really a risk of that. I'm just really worried if Valpo keeps doubling down on general culture of 'we don't factor in merit or performance' and the 'sell to whoever will buy' logic, then Valpo is only ever imagining how to become more like Elmhurst, PNW or IvyTech.

I just want Valpo to survive.

[VULB#62]

I'm worried that in the last few years, Valpo has gotten into a place where all the aspirations are going the wrong direction... I only every heard about how to raise the student-to-faculty ratio in the classrooms and how to reduce the scholarship discount to get more cash out of paying students. The university was only ever reducing the pay for its already very under-paid employees, and did cuts with no merit/performance/curricular considerations in mind but simply according to the hasty panic of whoever could legally be cut. The faculty often complained about the precipitously dropping abilities of the students to do basic reading, writing and math work, and by the time I left, faculty were leaving in pretty significant numbers. I think for a lot of us who left for whatever sad reason - layoffs, struggles to afford living in Valpo, worries about long-term stability of the school - the most depressing thing was that Valpo didn't even seem to be trying anymore. I remember when I finally went in to tell the Dean I was leaving, Kilpinen just said his typical lines about "Well, faculty are a dime a dozen" and "at least we're not losing faculty to Elmhurst." He'd said the same thing to some colleagues the year before who went to Princeton and other more stable places, and even in some public townhalls. So in my own last conversation with him when I told him I'd accepted another position, and sure enough the dumb anti-intellectual Elmhurst comment came out, I just kind of wanted to either shake him -- 'look up, be better, dammit! come on, I moved my entire family here actually wanting to strive for Valpo excellence!' -- or to just put my head down on the desk and cry for us and for Valpo. I just don't see how the institution will survive if the conversations are always aiming downwards -- 'How can we give less personalized attention to students? How can we invest less and extract more money out of them?' 'are there any more faculty around that the Faculty Handbook will let us cut or pay less'? -- and if there is never any consideration of performance or possibility for 'could we become better at X' or 'what could we do to strengthen the quality of the student body or the quality of conversation', 'what fields and parts of the curriculum do our faculty teach in that are worth investing in' etc. The last few years, Valpo hasn't had any positive means of control at all over the sorts of faculty and students they bring or retain. On the contrary, the administration was was very clear that all the chopping and reorganizations *don't* take into account performance quality or even specific curricular area of teaching/research -- it's just a matter of chopping 'labor costs' and reducing overall program sizes. They have been very clear they're *not* trying to entice strong students to come, but even here on this board everybody seems to think the main goal is just to sell more seats and offer less scholarships to reduce the discount. To me, this seems the exact opposite of how successful schools think and operate, and my worry for Valpo is that if everybody really takes this as normative, it will only send the university faster into a negative desirability tailspin which is, practically and economically, a recipe for enrollment death.

I just want Valpo to survive.

Wow. 

[crusader05]

That article also mentions that they did head counts and looked at usage rates and that as more late night spaces have opened less students have used the library therefore making keeping it open a waste of money.

I think there can be a danger now of looking at anything the university does to change things up or adjust as "bad" and what worries me about that is that means any change is going to be criticized short of "spending more money" which is how you get into a place where you are pressured to over spend.

[vu72]

I remember when I finally went in to tell the Dean I was leaving, Kilpinen just said his typical lines about "Well, faculty are a dime a dozen" and "at least we're not losing faculty to Elmhurst."

It is more than ironic that Jon Kilpinen is now the Provost and VP of Academic Affairs at a place called Black Hills State University in South Dakota.  BHSU is ranked by US News in the 127-166 range for Midwest Regional Universities.  Elmhurst?  Ranked #13 in the same category.

[therevev]

There is an article in the Detroit Free Press about Albion College. They are being investigated for misusing the endowment to hide the growing debt crisis the university faces.

I am not allowed to post external links yet, but check out the story.

Two alumni filed a complaint with the Michigan Attorney General with claims that the university is hiding its financial crisis through inappropriate uses of the endowment.

I share this article as a reminder that Valpo's Strategic Plan that looks forward to a changing academic environment is not happening in a vacuum. Small liberal arts universities and colleges are driving towards a cliff.

[crusadermoe]

Wow, the Albion endowment funds are obviously serious legal terms! I would guess the deception aspect made it worse than the actual usage. Many schools have "borrowed" from or against their endowment, realizing however the unsustainable trend.

On the more typical trend, Marymount University in Virginia today said they are cutting some majors. Two were shocking; religious studies at a Catholic University and math.  The first one undercuts their founding and the second one is odd because it seems like an easy by-product major from more technical studies.

This is an absolute financial tidal wave. Yes, we are not alone.

[crusader05]

yeah the whole Elmhurst insult seems weird to me as an insult. I do think though that it can become easy for people to detach from the reality of the academic landscape if they've been at one school for too long. I've met a lot of people who don't keep up with trends in their industries and are caught flat footed when they try to find a new job or have to deal with new hires that have way different experiences/expectations

The struggles are real out there. I've even heard people in the area make comments about the main Purdue satellite campus out here that it's struggling and a lot of their recent hires in the past few years have jumped ship. I've heard both that they tried to "become something they're not" and also that under Mitch Daniel's they just were left out to dry as he focused on the main campus and dismissed the extensions. Not sure which is true but be curious to see if their struggles impact us through increased local students.

[ValpoDiaspora]

Yeah, I'd never even heard of Elmhurst until it started getting invoked as comparison or some kind of justification for the program cuts/faculty turnover, so it was extremely weird and I still don't understand whether I was supposed to be consoled or insulted by it, haha!

That's interesting about the Purdue satellites maybe struggling... I had thought the PNWs were doing well enrollment-wise and eating our lunch on that end of pool because the publics are perceived to be more affordable. So as terrible as it sounds, I hope this could be good news for Valpo if it is possible to inherit any of those students.

[crusader05]

The main Purdue and IU campus have been growing significantly, partially due to many state schools increasing the amount of Out-Of-state and therefore full paying students they can enroll.  Meanwhile ISU is down to under 10,000 students I believe. It seems that we are in a place where certain schools are doing really well and others are struggling. Butler had one of it's largest classes ever this year while University of Evansville is, I believe, lower or close to the same size as Valpo now.

One piece of news I remember coming out years ago and making a decent splash was that those that Graduated from Purdue Northwest used to have a degree that just said "purdue university" now they changed it to identify it as northwest and people were really upset. There were a lot of people went there because it was a "purdue" degree. That may have led them to lose students who felt like it didn't matter if they went to Lafayette or not and it was cheaper to stay home because the degrees were the same. The question is did they just migrate to the main campus or did they go elsewhere? Valpo has saw it's commuter population continue to increase so who knows.

I think it's going to take a few more years for things to really come into focus. I think some schools will disappear, some schools will end up a lot smaller than they were at the start of this and some schools will look completely different.

[crusadermoe]

Looking for more on the Marymount Unversity story in Virginia I stumbled into the Calif. version.  It closed in August 2022.

Copied from the article:

Marymount California officially closed in August 2022. The small Catholic university attempted to stay open by merging with St. Leo University in Florida, a long-running effort that was rebuffed by accreditors in April. Shortly thereafter, Marymount California announced plans to shut down.

Marymount California officials cited shrinking student enrollment, exacerbated by the pandemic, as the reason for its closure. In 2014, about 1,000 students were enrolled at Marymount; by its final year, that number had fallen to 500.

[David81]

OK, this may sound odd, but I don't want VU to look at its academic future as one of trying to compete with more elite universities.

As I mentioned above, its current averages are 3.7 gpa (OK, it's an age of rampant grade inflation, but still...) and 1175 SAT (very respectable). However, it's admitting 89% of its applicants. So yes, it would be good if the yield was higher and more students with strong credentials enrolled.

However, I don't see a need for VU to be chasing elite status, as schools like Wash U have done. Lost in that obsession are plenty of students who may lack the shinier numbers going into college, but who take advantage of what college gives them and plant seeds for a good future. I and many of my VU friends fall into that category. I now teach at a university that serves much the same purpose, and in many ways it's more rewarding than teaching at a school where paths to success are already assured unless the student screws up royally.

David, I think you're reading me slightly wrong. I actually agree with you that Valpo shouldn't strive for elite status as an ultimate endgoal, since we need colleges that cultivate a humane environment for students to grow and for things like curiosity and kindness and experimentation to thrive. There's a lot not to like about the uber-competitive cultivation of selectivity and rankings.

I'm just saying that to survive, Valpo may need to at least be *aware* of The Kinds of Things Non-Desperate Schools Do to be solvent and successful. Valpo has been in very difficult straights, so the conversations (and my comments here about schools offering merit aide etc) are unfortunately the gritty ones about how you get students to come. As a strategy for survival, Valpo needs to get the desirability and yield up.

I'm worried that in the last few years, Valpo has gotten into a place where all the aspirations are going the wrong direction... I only every heard about how to raise the student-to-faculty ratio in the classrooms and how to reduce the scholarship discount to get more cash out of paying students. The university was only ever reducing the pay for its already very under-paid employees, and did cuts with no merit/performance/curricular considerations in mind but simply according to the hasty panic of whoever could legally be cut. The faculty often complained about the precipitously dropping abilities of the students to do basic reading, writing and math work, and by the time I left, faculty were leaving in pretty significant numbers. I think for a lot of us who left for whatever sad reason - layoffs, struggles to afford living in Valpo, worries about long-term stability of the school - the most depressing thing was that Valpo didn't even seem to be trying anymore. I remember when I finally went in to tell the Dean I was leaving, Kilpinen just said his typical lines about "Well, faculty are a dime a dozen" and "at least we're not losing faculty to Elmhurst." He'd said the same thing to some colleagues the year before who went to Princeton and other more stable places, and even in some public townhalls. So in my own last conversation with him when I told him I'd accepted another position, and sure enough the dumb anti-intellectual Elmhurst comment came out, I just kind of wanted to either shake him -- 'look up, be better, dammit! come on, I moved my entire family here actually wanting to strive for Valpo excellence!' -- or to just put my head down on the desk and cry for us and for Valpo. I just don't see how the institution will survive if the conversations are always aiming downwards -- 'How can we give less personalized attention to students? How can we invest less and extract more money out of them?' 'are there any more faculty around that the Faculty Handbook will let us cut or pay less'? -- and if there is never any consideration of performance or possibility for 'could we become better at X' or 'what could we do to strengthen the quality of the student body or the quality of conversation', 'what fields and parts of the curriculum do our faculty teach in that are worth investing in' etc. The last few years, Valpo hasn't had any positive means of control at all over the sorts of faculty and students they bring or retain. On the contrary, the administration was was very clear that all the chopping and reorganizations *don't* take into account performance quality or even specific curricular area of teaching/research -- it's just a matter of chopping 'labor costs' and reducing overall program sizes. They have pretty steadfastly refused to do anything meaningful with financial aide to entice strong students to come; in contrast, even here on this board everybody seems to think the main goal is just to sell more seats and offer less scholarships to reduce the aide discounts. To me, this seems the exact opposite of how successful schools think and operate, and my worry for Valpo is that if everybody really takes this as normative, it will only send the university faster into a negative desirability tailspin which is, practically and economically, a recipe for enrollment death.

So I promise my comments above were not aimed at trying to actually make Valpo into a WUSTL or an IvyLeague. I'm more just worried that Valpo doesn't have any conception of how stable schools actually think & strategize. At no other private university I've ever been at would the Dean be caught dead saying stuff like 'faculty are a dime a dozen' or 'don't worry, we're still not losing people to [insert community college].' At no other university I've belonged to did they think about Admissions as just a sales and marketing team meant to 'sell' the school to anybody who will come, having lost most any conception of selectivity or shaping the study body. So I'm not advocating for Valpo to actually become an uber-elite institution and don't think there's really a risk of that. I'm just really worried if Valpo keeps doubling down on general culture of 'we don't factor in merit or performance' and the 'sell to whoever will buy' logic, then Valpo is only ever imagining how to become more like Elmhurst, PNW or IvyTech.

I just want Valpo to survive.

Diaspora, thanks so much for your response and its, well, downright sobering, content.

You are right that Valpo (and other schools that are struggling) can benefit by looking at other success stories in higher ed. Wash U is certainly a prime example of the latter. I think what I find dismaying in the VU context is that academic institutional success stories tend to be more along those lines, i.e., schools taking dramatic, bold steps to move up in their perceived standing, as opposed to those of regional universities somehow finding better ways to be what they are and to serve their core constituencies.

As we've discussed, I was stunned at your earlier ballpark salary figures for full-time VU faculty. Those numbers suggested to me that even though modern-day VU has managed to attract a lot of excellent faculty (due, I'm guessing, to a combination of the highly competitive academic job market and a genuine attraction to Valpo's perceived mission), it still regards faculty as it did during the 1950s-70s: Self-sacrificing educators whose missionary-like dedication to the university should overcome the stunningly inadequate pay in return for monster teaching loads.

And now, the comments from the dean that you shared reveal a disturbing absence of any sense of mission for the school other than staying open.

FWIW, when my university had its awful round of bloodletting ~8 years ago, a similar lack of care about quality came into sharp display. Among other things, they didn't care if our strongest or weakest faculty were taking the buy-out, or what those departures meant to the stability and balance of our curriculum. It was just about numbers. While more care was exercised with decisions over involuntary layoffs, the results left us a diminished institution in terms of teaching quality.

I wish the central administrators and board would scroll through the many threads in this "General VU Discussion" portion of this board. Amongst the variety of perspectives shared -- including healthy, respectful differences of opinion -- I think they'd be able to discern some very promising priorities and themes in terms of where to go from here.

[crusadermoe]

I can see the morale effect on Deans and faculty when the ERIP comes equally to all on a numbers and seniority basis. It is logical for HR reasons that the same voluntary departure packages needs to go out on an equal basis. But sadly the ones most marketable and capable of leaving can often be the ones who depart and take the package.

But on the morale side my reading of Valpodiaspora implies a double effect. The most dedicated, long-serving, and perhaps most talented faculty might be the ones going away.  And incentivizing the longest-serving faculty to leave also risks diluting the sense of culture, cohesion, and continuity that those faculty give the university. The human factors just aren't quantified so they don't enter the financial calculus. Sadly there are faculty whose own marketability is high but their spouse careers argue in favor of staying or leaving.

[ValpoDiaspora]

I can see the morale effect on Deans and faculty when the ERIP comes equally to all on a numbers and seniority basis. It is logical for HR reasons that the same voluntary departure packages needs to go out on an equal basis. But sadly the ones most marketable and capable of leaving can often be the ones who depart and take the package.

But on the morale side my reading of Valpodiaspora implies a double effect. The most dedicated, long-serving, and perhaps most talented faculty might be the ones going away.  And incentivizing the longest-serving faculty to leave also risks diluting the sense of culture, cohesion, and continuity that those faculty give the university. The human factors just aren't quantified so they don't enter the financial calculus. Sadly there are faculty whose own marketability is high but their spouse careers argue in favor of staying or leaving.

Sort of, though I guess I would tweak it just a bit. Basically, in these kinds of crude cutting measures where they're doing surgery with a backhoe, it is the oldest and youngest professors who are most forced to leave but also most capable of leaving. The old ones may be offered ERIPS and already have enough in retirement to just finish their careers and retire. The newest tenure-track professors are on the one hand the most vulnerable to slash-and-burn cuts since they're contingent, but they may still be 'fresh' enough from their PhDs that they can still be viable on the tenure-track job market for assistant positions at more stable institutions. It's all the people in the middle --- who are past tenure so no longer eligible for asst jobs elsewhere nor old enough to get offered the ERIP --- who are the most locked in. Of course there are a few in that middle-age who are superstars famous enough to leave... Valpo lost one of its more well-known psych professors to become a founding director of a new center at PNW and lost a notable historian to Duke Divinity;  a few other tenured/associate professors found jobs at Notre Dame or the Ohio State U or a couple others. But for the most part, the middle-age folk are in a really tough position, since they don't have either the ERIP payouts nor really much chance of getting other academic jobs unless they're really stellar teachers/scholars, since it is just so much harder to move institutions once you are associate level. Very few associate or open rank positions are posted each year. So I know a couple asst profs at Valpo who were intentionally delaying going up for tenure so they could stay 'assistant' and stay more eligible for a lateral move for another year or two of job cycles to try to get somewhere more stable. There are ways you can stop the clock in higher ed, like covid clauses or parental leave, etc, - though the decision to delay tenure is a balancing act of both risk (if Valpo does another mass cutting  across the tenure-trackers, it is better to be tenured) and other risk (if Valpo cuts your whole program, its easier to get a job at another university if never tenured.) But that's a terrible sort of calculus, and these are the kind of patterns that really worry me for Valpo's sake, since good program and curricular development really requires long-term investment and continuity of teaching/admin personnel. Morale matters so that people both can stay and want to stay.

And it is not all exit strategies. As you say, sometimes there are other factors too, like caring for elderly parents or a spouse's career. And Valpo has a lot of great people trying really hard to carry the torch!

[VULB#62]

This evolving scenario is increasingly depressing me (please look at my avatar).  Now, can anyone conjure up out of the myriad puzzle pieces scattered on our dialogue table an alternative universe with a positive outcome? My buddy Swami was quoted on the coaching decision thread presenting a different outcome that was kinda radical, but maybe that's what's needed.

[David81]

This evolving scenario is increasingly depressing me (please look at my avatar).  Now, can anyone conjure up out of the myriad puzzle pieces scattered on our dialogue table an alternative universe with a positive outcome? My buddy Swami was quoted on the coaching decision thread presenting a different outcome that was kinda radical, but maybe that's what's needed.

Admissions/applications turnarounds are eminently possible. It's not like VU doesn't have its genuine positives. However, as we've discussed here, it's not clear that the school has known how to integrate the reality with the message. Hopefully, someone who gets the relationship between substance and marketing can figure that out.

Put aside, for now at least, the art/dorms controversy, the fate of the MBB program, and the ongoing hurt from the big rounds of cuts. What do you have left? A school with strong, even excellent academic programs, in both the arts & sciences and professions; a good overall academic reputation; a sense of tradition, including being a place where values still count; a genuine, walkable, residential campus; and a surrounding town much more hospitable to a college campus than back in the day.

And although the financial challenges are real, they no more acute than those facing many comparable institutions. (That said, they could get worse absent effective leadership.)