While Padilla may be shifting focus from ensuring good academics and wanting to invest in the faculty don’t automatically think the Board is doing the same. I have it on good authority that there are Board members very unhappy with the strategic decisions being made by him and have been trying to ensure the faculty are listened to and there concerns are being acted upon. However this is difficult with a charismatic president who is very strong willed.
I have been a broken record on this board in saying that Valpo is missing a marketing opportunity that actually bridges two great qualities that some have regarded as being at odds with each other: Values and Vocation. In other words, a Valparaiso education can deliver both the liberal arts/values element and the preparation for a professional career/vocation, thus providing a fuller grounding for a life after college.
Jake Diebler, the highly regarded VU point guard and now Ohio State basketball coach, basically said as much during his post-game remarks after the two schools played last night. Here's a snippet of what he shared, drawn from Paul Oren's post-game takeaways in The Victory Bell:
Diebler continued to share his thoughts about Valparaiso during an all-encompassing 20-minute postgame press conference that included some tears from the Upper Sandusky native. Diebler talked about his playing style and his love for Valparaiso while Homer Drew sat in the back of the room with a wide smile on his face.
“I think it was very easy for me to play as hard as I played because I love that place,” Diebler said. “I love the people that I played for. I also know I wouldn’t be where I’m at without them.”
Diebler proceeded to tell a story about how calling his father, Keith, during his freshman year at Valparaiso (2005-06) and telling his dad that he didn’t believe Homer Drew liked him. Diebler, who had originally committed to West Point, wasn’t sure if Valpo was the right fit at that time.
“First off, if you know Homer Drew at all, you know he doesn’t not like anybody,” Diebler said. “That’s how messed up I was as a freshman…I think all of this was ordered. I believe that and it’s not any surprise that when I got there and had to fight through some adversity, that led to believe in Christ. That put a passion in my heart to go into coaching. I didn’t go to college, I didn’t go to Valpo wanting to go into coaching. My parents were lifelong educators. My dad coached forever. I thought I want to go home and own my own business. The whole course of my life was changed when I ended up at Valpo and I believe Valpo was a launch pad for the rest of my life. Thank goodness I had a coach who actually loved me and he didn’t hate me like I thought as a freshman. He forced me to grow and get better. I’m just so forever grateful for that place and for that man (Homer Drew) back there.”
https://www.thevictorybell.com/p/five-storylines-from-ohio-states
(Paul, apologies for the liberal cut & paste that probably violates the fair use rule!)
How many alums of the school they just beat by 22 points would give that kind of a testimonial to their collegiate experience and the people who were part of it during their post game?
So that's my point once again, with a hat tip to Coach Diebler. Valpo, and schools like it, can provide a well-rounded, life-relevant education with a personal quality. I can't imagine that there aren't a couple of hundred more college applicants every year who wouldn't benefit more from this opportunity than the choices they're making.
Valpofan and VUIndiana - There are 24 members of Valpo's board of trustees (excluding Pres. Padilla), which creates opportunities for factions within the board. If the board is making statements of support for Pres. Padilla, it is far more likely that there is a majority who support him and his strategies and a minority (probably small) who are against him. Further Pres. Padilla (like any senior executive) would be very foolish to implement strategies that run contrary to the views of the majority within the board.
To the comment by David81 and the second part of the comment by VUIndiana: Many of the things that make Valpo great as an academic institution are still there. For instance, there are great professors and leaders in the professional colleges who truly care about students and helping them succeed in all facets of their lives (not saying that this is not also true in liberal arts - I just have less familiarity there). To David81's point, Valpo needs to create a vision for prospective students, using recent evidence, that they too can follow the path to success.
Okay, enrollment now is on the clock for year-over-year statistics. No matter what internal or PR issues plague Valpo, the key issue is strategy and execution. Where do we stand YOY?
We are mired in discussions of the "root causes" of the steep enrollment decline. Yes, the paintings, the teacher morale, and loss of identity are big issues. We have belabored the in both this "enrollemnt" string and the "news" string. But the school still delivers a product that can be sold.
Bottom line: What are the YOY statistics at this point? What changes in strategic targeting of prospects have been executed? At this point i don't care if the Lutheran high school social fabric is the target even though that seems like a no-brainer starting point. Just tell me that there is some type of adjustment of the focus that differs from 2019-2024. Do not buy the idea that "everyone" is a prospect or we need to broaden to everyone.
So...calling out for YOY statistics. I guess though, due to the FAFSA glitches in fall 2024, it is probably more meaningful to compare our fall 2025 data points for residential freshman classes in fall 20201-2023. All of the other stats beyond residential freshmen and net transfers are just shiny objects, Ivy Tech transfers, hispanic goals, and graduate head counts are just noise.
Okay, enrollment now is on the clock for year-over-year statistics. No matter what internal or PR issues plague Valpo, the key issue is strategy and execution. Where do we stand YOY?
Latest message I heard in a campus conversation is not optimistic. A recent discussion with a couple VU staff before last week's home basketball game included estimated figures, which I will not repeat here, that suggested a need to pick up the pace of recruitment since the current enrollment rate is running 10% or more under last year at this time, which is not heartening when you consider 2024's numbers started slowly due to the FAFSA confusion.
II'm sorry to hear that, but not surprised. I have to think that YOY early enrollmen stats were the final straw in Padilla's retirement. Indeed, he faced a lot of the headwinds that we've mentioned several times.
But, even though the whole industry is in trouble, Valpo's acceptance, enrollment, retention, and grad rates are ALL lower and trending downward faster than our peer schools. That data was in the ION analytics data published in November 2024. Hard to find a diamond in this rough.
Need something for people to sell-we should be hanging our hat on the Phys assistant program and engineering. Its truly all that's a selling point
You have quite a few programs that are marketable
Engineering
Phys assist
Heck even the sports management program is a program that is worth marketing. However, high turnover in that department has led to a lack of marketing being done it seems. New pres needs to establish departments without revolving doors
You have quite a few programs that are marketable
Engineering
Phys assist
Heck even the sports management program is a program that is worth marketing. However, high turnover in that department has led to a lack of marketing being done it seems. New pres needs to establish departments without revolving doors
The Meteorology degree is one of the most visible as we have TV anchors all over the country including The Chief at ABC.
At this stage of the game, the president of Valpo needs his first, second, and third job to be enrollment. He's gotta stop picking fights with every constituent. He's gotta hire competent people to run the ship. And at this point, this president has gotta step back as soon as the new president is identified.
Under this president, since March 2021, we're coming up on our fourth vice president of enrollment. Meanwhile, according to the university's own published statistics, the student body has shrunk from 2,939 (Fall 2021) to 2,444 (Spring 2025). And if we're just looking at undergrads, that's a drop from 2,522 to 2,030.
If I'm doing my math correctly, that's a 16.67% drop in the overall student body, but a 25% drop in the undergraduate base. With both Padilla and the enrollment VP leaving, does anyone expect Valpo to post numbers over 2,000 for the fall? This is obscene. No matter how charismatic a president is, the board has to see these numbers and sweat.
(For what it's worth, graduate enrollment remained pretty much unchanged, from 417 to 414. And those folks generally don't get much in the way of aid, so kudos to whoever is running the graduate enrollment team in these choppy waters! Maybe we should look in-house for the next enrollment bigwig.)
Some other breakdown points from the last five years:
- Arts & Sciences has lost 300 (27%)
- Business is only down 11 (3%)
- Engineering and Nursing each lost about 100 (21% and 12% each).
- Male/female ratio is largely unchanged -- 57/42 to 59/41. This seems to be due to an uneven decrease between genders; Valpo lost 14.6% of its women but 20% of its men.
It is silly to expect any turnaround in enrollment. The university simply does not take itself seriously as a university. This e-board has largely confirmed what we see on campus too.... lots of focus on stadium/conference talk and pointing to programs like sports management, as if these 'selling points' are going to somehow make the university as a whole seem like a decent prospect for a 4-yr residential private college education. It is kind of like if a sit-down restaurant with sit-down restaurant prices were most excited by 'investing' in the street sidewalk chalk art and decided maybe (wait for it!) french fries could be a really unique/pragmatic selling point.... all while utterly refusing to deal with the reality that prospective guests who would come into a sit-down restaurant actually do care about the menu meal and its quality. Sorry, but your target pool is just not going to pay $40/plate to be served a microwaved Jimmy Deans sandwich and some french fries they could have gotten from any shop on the street. Sure, we're all salt addicts, but if the prospective guests wanted a fast food meal and non-existent service, they would have just gone to McD's. In this race to the bottom, there is no reason to expect a turnaround in enrollment when the university and its alumni don't even themselves take VU all that seriously as a university, and all the chatter is just about how to sponsor sidewalk chalk art, which next dinner dish to chop off the menu, and how to source the french fries for cheaper. Sorry but I am just tired of the 'strategic planning' conversations that really only consist of trying to make the core operations of the restaurant suckier, while everybody wrings their hands pretending to be confused: "But wHy Are oUr ResERVaTion nUmbErs DOWN?????? wHY AreN't DinERs cOMing????"
The more time Valpo wastes focusing on trying to figure out how to be a joke school, the more we should expect to see exactly what we're seeing... falling enrollment and falling retention.
Great points-Padilla being a sports enthusiast and thinking our athletics programs will be a driver for enrollment is sadly mistaken-unless we had a sweet 16 run (which will never happen again) no one is talking about coming to Valpo because of sports-
Invest in promoting our "unique" programs or ones that seem to resonate with todays' consumer.
