Do we have information that they aren't recruiting all Lutheran schools across the country?
No, it's not clear to me where the Admissions Office recruits either through email/phone/mailer communications to high schools or through physical visits to high schools around the country. It's not like the Admissions Office publishes a list of their recruiting travel schedule to the rest of the staff or to the faculty, so I'm not sure who actually knows. I looked on the website to see if I was just missing something. But although there are various options for website visitors to register themselves for an on-campus visit, there's no indication of a schedule for VU's outward recruiting to college fairs and high schools. Mystery.
True. All you can look at is results. The trend in Lutherans is DOWN 80% to 120+ last fall. I may be off by a bit. But the drop is massive. We have anecdotal comments on Fort Wayne and from another big former feeder high school of 5-8 students where VU has whiffed.
True. All you can look at is results. The trend in Lutherans is DOWN 80% to 120+ last fall. I may be off by a bit. But the drop is massive. We have anecdotal comments on Fort Wayne and from another big former feeder high school of 5-8 students where VU has whiffed.
Well, when it comes to recent year-over-year trends, it's hard to say. Sure, we might conclude that Valpo lost a bunch of Lutherans this last year or few because of not trying to recruit them hard enough. But we don't know for certain that Admissions didn't try.... and there seem plenty of other possible reasons, like the strong possibility that Lutheran (like non-Lutheran) parents just feel leery of sending their kid to a private university that's been obviously struggling and cutting student support services and academic programs left and right for the last several years.
Well, now we talking in a more general way about higher ed enrollment. I suggest we take this important but well-worn topic to the enrollment thread. It's certainly not "Valpo News" anymore. See you there.
Sad. Just sad. With already sky high tuition. The school is now increasing that tuition. This will have a negative affect on the already declining enrollment. Current students may also look elsewhere as well
What was the tuition increase? I can’t get the article.
@usc4valpo I can’t get the article but here is what I do know:
Students were informed of the tuition increase by email on November 7. The increase is a 4% increase to $48,820 per year. Housing and meal plans will have increases between 1% and 3%. Graduate programs have increases in the general fee but most per-credit rates will remain the same.
At a 4% increase, this is the same percent increase as last year. When that increase was announced, I was told the administration was anticipating a 4% increase for each successive year. However looking back on my old emails I cannot find official communication about that so maybe that was just word-of-mouth news that seems to be confirmed with this increase now.
If you can't read the Chicago Tribune article, here is the Valpo Torch coverage: https://www.valpotorch.com/news/article_d323fb56-b385-11ef-9e83-237b0e873be0.html
Its exactly what I have been outlining multiple times here. Students are way more interested in where their money is going. I expect a decrease in enrollment on top of the current decrease as a response.
@rezynezy I would not expect a markedly significant decrease in enrollment since this is the reality for the vast majority of private schools (even some public schools) across the country. National tuition increase annually has been 3.63% since 2010-11, very close to this 4% increase from Valpo. This tuition is still about $17K less than Notre Dame for example…people are not gonna go away from Notre Dame for the pure reason of cost alone. While I agree that students care about where their money is going, the onus is on Valpo to create a holistically viable option for higher education that creates an attractive experience regardless of what students are paying for tuition.
Is 4 percent that significant? Did it go up 9 percent under the previous 2 to 3 years? Valpo is in the red and they need revenue.
Are tuition hikes common, sure! Valpo's hardly alone in doing this, as most universities have kept raising tuition most years for the last 20 years.
Is it wise? I dunno. I generally think it is another example of short-term revenue extraction at the cost of long-term community and revenue/donation stability.
Most contemporary college students who've scrambled through the stress of try to make up the difference between year 1 vs year 3 vs yr 4 costs have a pretty sour taste in their mouth considering the tuition itself is so high. It's not good to have students leaving school resentful. I suspect it's different at places like Notre Dame where 1) the parents are often just in a totally different echelon of finances, so the students may not themselves be on the hook for the loans (so will themselves look back on their educations as a time when life invested in them), and 2) where the intense school pride and cache of being Fighting Irish builds up a lot of donor loyalty (even if tuition was sky high).
For most non-elite private universities like VU, students are much more on the front lines of financial challenges. (I've known many Valpo students from modest or middle-class backgrounds who took out loans for yr 1 or yr 2 and then dropped out under great stress because they though tuition would stay the same, realized they'd have to take out another layer of loans to cover the 3 or 4% or whatever increase to stay enrolled, and decided to just cut their losses.) I suspect the era of middle-class students who'd go on to build careers and become alumni donors thirty years later actually closed a while back (maybe with the generations graduating in the 90s or early 2000s before the 2008 financial crisis, and before at least a major chunk of the tuition increases?), while the more recent grads are going to be loathe to donate. Most millenials and genzs just sort of scoff at the notion of giving to schools they experienced as mostly extractive when it came to tuition indebtedness and fee hikes.
The uni is probably aware of this, so the Finance people are probably just trying to eke out the last drip of alumni affection donorship out of the pre-2000s crowd, while realizing that they've got to get any desired money out of current students up-front in more tuition charged, since these current students fundamentally resent the institution when it comes to financial issues and they ain't going to be giving in 15 or 20 or 40 years.
My major issue is with the changes to tuition for current students. These are students who are either going to drop out, or find other institutions that will treat them as students rather than a pay piggy. I understand that a VU education offers more than just a price tag, but to a student. I feel as if their feelings are going to lean more towards the pay piggy mindest. This only further drives down the grad rate.
Valpo students concerned about the cash crunch and want leave also have to consider how many credit hours will transfer over to another college/university. Theology classes usually will not transfer, which can be up to 9 credit hours - a little over half a semester.
I wonder what the tuition increases at Valpo were from 2016 to 2024 and how much it was over the federal inflation rate. Also, someone has to pay for Heckler’s ever important cathedrals.
@usc4valpo which of Heckler’s “cathedrals” is Valpo still paying off? Meanwhile the current president is banging on about new dorms, a new gym, and an unnecessary academic restructuring that will cost even more money.
But don’t worry — he got a flashy new electric sign.
