@vu84v2 Id have to disagree, sports still is an effective bargaining chip to boost enrollment and generate more revenue. Why do most schools run their football program at a loss then? Or get paid big bucks to get that preseason game against that P4 school. The answer being that just that 2 hours on fox sports playing a preseason game against ND or any other P4 team gets your name in people's mouth. Granted I am using breadwinner loosely here, but sports still generates revenue and gets people to put your school on their Common App.
If you want an example, just ask people who enrolled at VU in the early 2000s. A good chunk of them will say that they saw the school on tv in 98 and that was the reason for their decision. Even PO cites the increased ESPN coverage as a factor in why he attended the school
Grand Canyon University has invested $1.6 billion into its academic infrastructure in the last decade. They renovated and expanded the campus with new classroom buildings, 25 dorms, a recreation center, and a 7,000 seat arena. The school has its own golf course and is located in a thriving city. It has committed to expand their campus in the next four years with another $500 million investment. All of this has been done with a low and frozen on-campus tuition, where the in-person student body has expanded from 1,000 to 23,000, and is targeted to increase to 40,000. Online enrollment is at 90,000.
Critics can quibble about accreditations, and claim that it is not a superior institution by certain academic standards. However, an athletic conference is benefited by its addition, especially considering the quality and popularity of its basketball program. In fact, ask other MVC fan bases if they would trade Valpo for GCU, and I don't think you would be pleased by the replies from many.
@valpopal Right on the money here pal. Honestly that frozen 17k tuition really helps. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't that low tuition in large part due to the online Prescence of the degree. I think a lot of us can remember a few years ago seeing the TV ads for GCUs online school and Purdue Global. Could ne something VU could look into in order to mitigate tuition costs.
Yeah, great value proposition. We freeze our tuition at 17k...invest in pretty amenities, with no investment in getting good faculty (last time I checked, faculty were the most important part of getting a good education and building strong career prospects). Look at their faculty bios sometime - ratio of PhDs to total faculty is like 1:100, some people masquerading as PhDs with degrees from mail order PhD programs, few (if any) successful professionals who are leaders in their fields (you don't want a faculty base made up of all PhDs - you want to complement it with leaders from their fields). Their employment model for faculty is "if you have a pulse, you can teach for us". Grand Canyon is great at getting loans for students. Problem is that, despite the lower tuition, your employment prospects are bleak compared to others in your field (so yeah, accreditation matters because companies and organizations care about it). Best case (like health related fields) is that you get jobs not taken by graduates from the better schools. In other cases, you can't get a job in your field or you can only get jobs with pay well under the average for that field. So, good luck actually paying off that loan (that you should pay because you chose to take it out).
Online education is a bad move for most undergraduates. It is very unlikely that you will get ahead or reach parity with those who you compete with for jobs, promotions, opportunities, etc. For Valpo, like most established private universities, the business model does not work.
I'll agree that seeing a completely online program on your resume does ding your resume a bit, when considered against onsite campuses. As much as you may try to not hold such a bias, it is almost impossible to not view it in such a way at this point in time. I always pay respect to those that worked hard for their University of Phoenix degree, but it just doesn't read the same.
@vu84v2 Where did I claim that the school should model itself after GCU. THere are various problems with GCU, their lack of qualified staff is one of them. I know firsthand what a lack of qualified instructors does, considering a core class I took taught by a grad student had a class avg of 40%. However, including an online degree path is an effective method to curb enrollment costs. Sure it may be a less effective degree, but ultimately that is the student's choice to go down that path. What is wrong with having amenities? In my eyes, there are many amenities that Vu has but doesn't sell. The city is a great amenity that is very undersold by the school.
I'm getting constant notification on Facebook about lawsuits against GCU for issues concerning graduate degrees. Not what you want for an academic reputation standpoint.
Fair enough then. Just food for thought.
Mark Zeigler: West Coast Conference breaks with tradition with addition of Grand Canyon, Seattle
A interesting take from a San Diego sportswriter about GCU joining the WCC. Similar to my friends ‘72 and 84-2 he has a hard time hiding his implicit religious bias against GCU. A good read nonetheless.
This sentiment surrounding GCU is very interesting. It seems most believe them to be using the term "Christian School" as a tax benefit rather than holding Christian values. This is very much displayed in that article as the sportswriter constantly makes jabs at LOPES being a publically traded stock. And that the president of the university is really just a CEO in disguise. To my knowledge, a lot of schools have publically traded stocks as well. The schools I see being publically traded are mostly public schools in the P4.
@whvalpo Not sure where you implied that I (or vu72) are biased against religion. For the record, I am not biased against religion. I am biased against fraud and I am biased against fraudsters like the administration at GCU saying they are being religiously persecuted when people raise serious questions about GCU, GCE and the shady history of their senior executives.
In September of 2020 Valparaiso University was working with Grand Canyon Education to initiate online nursing and healthcare programs as a way of creating outreach and revenue, even going as far as establishing a memorandum of understanding. At that time, because of covid the university had experienced extensive and successful online learning with its faculty, and the decision was that such learning could work effectively. Eventually, Valparaiso pulled out of the possible agreement apparently due to the cost of the GCE cut, as well as some strong faculty resistance against GCE.
Now, four years later, Valpo has signed a similar agreement with Relearnit, another online program management firm, to operate fully-online graduate programs: Master of Public Health, Master of Health Care Administration, and the Post-Professional Doctor of Occupational Therapy. I am told the main difference is that Relearnit receives a smaller portion of the tuition. Otherwise, the process seems essentially the same as that explored with GCE, and there are no real ethical concerns or academic questions.
I believe the thinking is that this is a first step toward greater online learning programs and courses, which likely will follow. One wonders if VU had been more proactive and taken the initiative in 2020 would the development since then have generated potential income that allowed an avoidance of some budgeting cuts and enrollment drops seen since then.
Grand Canyon University has presented a model for financial and enrollment success, especially for private and religious universities. For various reasons, Valparaiso could never become as large as GCU, but that is just as well. However, borrowing some its methods while tweaking specific aspects would assist in economic and enrollment recovery at Valparaiso University.
In September of 2020 Valparaiso University was working with Grand Canyon Education to initiate online nursing and healthcare programs as a way of creating outreach and revenue, even going as far as establishing a memorandum of understanding. At that time, because of covid the university had experienced extensive and successful online learning with its faculty, and the decision was that such learning could work effectively. Eventually, Valparaiso pulled out of the possible agreement apparently due to the cost of the GCE cut, as well as some strong faculty resistance against GCE.
Now, four years later, Valpo has signed a similar agreement with Relearnit, another online program management firm, to operate fully-online graduate programs: Master of Public Health, Master of Health Care Administration, and the Post-Professional Doctor of Occupational Therapy. I am told the main difference is that Relearnit receives a smaller portion of the tuition. Otherwise, the process seems essentially the same as that explored with GCE, and there are no real ethical concerns or academic questions.
I believe the thinking is that this is a first step toward greater online learning programs and courses, which likely will follow. One wonders if VU had been more proactive and taken the initiative in 2020 would the development since then have generated potential income that allowed an avoidance of some budgeting cuts and enrollment drops seen since then.
Grand Canyon University has presented a model for financial and enrollment success, especially for private and religious universities. For various reasons, Valparaiso could never become as large as GCU, but that is just as well. However, borrowing some its methods while tweaking specific aspects would assist in economic and enrollment recovery at Valparaiso University.
I think you are on the money, but I believe there is an answer to the bolded. With the sentiment towards GCE displayed here, and online through articles posted by WH. It seems like this would only have been a short-term benefit to this. Just look at GCE's constant legal battles. GCU has gone as far as to lie about the cost of their Doctorate programs according to the article. The secretary of Education is in a constant struggle with the school as well. It is worth it to assume that in the near future, there is going to be a battle to decide whether GCU is really a non-profit schools, or just masquerading as one. Sure, we would have seen some increase in numbers and budget cut avoidance, but when GCE eventually falls, VU would have been caught in the crossfire. They are being very careful to avoid another Law School situation it seems. I have no doubt the Relearnit contract is most likely a better deal.
We can debate all we want whether online degrees actually generate jobs, but at the end of the day, it is the student's choice to go down that path. They accept all of the burdens associated with that choice. Here is the here and now, adding online options can appeal to prospective students across the country. Rather than just appealing to students in the local area. As mentioned by the article wh posted, a wide margin of enrollees at GCU are through the GCE online programs. THis allows them to keep their tuition as low as 17k. Are we going to get our tuition that low, most likely not, but going from 40k+ tuition to around 25k is a lot more manageable for prospective students. Though we can debate the ethical nature of this, no one can deny the facts, GCU's tuition is 17k and that is an estimate pre fin aid. Valpos tuition is 44k pre finaid. Offering online degrees is a market a lot of small private schools are going to need to look into to survive. THey generate enrollment, and help to lower tuition costs. However I don't believe the NASDAQ will start trading BEAC on the open market. That move is just silly.
@usc4valpo Funnily enough, satellite schools are under the umbrella of the parent. So their stock is directly tied to the IU stock. Well, at least for IU schools it is
