Yes, ENROLLMENT is the crucial element. And the income related to enrollment headcount is an even bigger factor.
1) Net tuition revenue: You could see a rise in headcount but a loss in net income (.....or vice versa.)
2) Decreased income from "room and board" if the residential count decreases.
@valpo95 Yeah, I defer to your understanding of these endowment payout processes, since you probably know more about the precise operation than I do! I do heed what you're saying about the annual payout being perhaps only $1 Million less and how that's not huge in the scheme of the overall endowment total. But I guess what's not clear to me is whether VU can actually weather 1 million less in its annual budget when we were already at an operating deficit.... Doesn't it make all the difference whether the hit is to operating money you do have vs. operating money you don't have? Its like situations where the poor person 'only' needs to take a loss of $500 bucks to repair their car, but the smallness of the amount basically doesn't matter because they don't have it either way, so they're just out a set of wheels and can't get to work regardless. The whole reason VU has had to cut so fast and dumb a lot these past few years (with pretty terrible implications for reputation/enrollment!!!) is because the uni couldn't make payroll during COVID. So though $1 MIL doesn't sound like that much in the realm of higher ed endowment finances, my sense has been on the operating budget side that we are essentially in the inefficient crappy position of not being able to repair the car for want of $500 or not being able to do this week's load at the laundromat for lack of quarters!
This should be an interesting week since the full tariffs are scheduled for implementation on Wednesday, although negotiations with the European Union and many other countries may already be underway by that time as well. Coincidentally, this coincides with Valpo's Day of Giving on Wednesday. Curious to see if there will be any impact due to all the volatility.
On a related note, today's Torch article welcoming the new Dean of Nursing notes the $80M 7-year campaign for the nursing building is expected to begin soon and to last until about 2032-33, followed by a period of construction. If so and the logical plan is not to have two fundraising efforts competing, possibility of a campaign for any new athletics center could be put off until after that time span with earliest beginning of construction sometime in the 2040s.
Of course, those current projections probably are optimistic and dependent upon future enrollment or endowment developments, as well as no unexpected inflationary cost increases to the nursing project during the 7-year interim.
That's a good analogy. Seriously.
Those people have my true sympathies. It's a sociological tragedy. The country can withstand the loss of a dozen or four dozen colleges or universities. Many families can't withstand auto repairs and inability to get to work. But I digress.
Seven-year campaign? Just to raise the $80M before even starting to build in 2032-2033? Wow. That's a really long runway. Yes, it hedges against failure publicly.
But wow, I would guess that key donors are being presented with the more urgent scenario to pledge it all by 2027 or 2028. Padilla made a good call to leave. It's a zero hour urgent need like the dormitories. And of course it has the same enrollment issue and Catch-22. Do you renovate quickly the dorms you may not even need for 3-4 years?
This should be an interesting week since the full tariffs are scheduled for implementation on Wednesday, although negotiations with the European Union and many other countries may already be underway by that time as well. Coincidentally, this coincides with Valpo's Day of Giving on Wednesday. Curious to see if there will be any impact due to all the volatility
Well, hopefully VU's endowment is invested internationally and not too much domestically. At this point, it seems like most the "negotiations" that offer some kind of upside to global markets are the ones cutting out the US.... Canada-EU and Canada-Latin American negotiations are stepping up, and lots of chatter about a (pretty remarkable given their antagonistic histories!) friendly meeting between the chief economic ministers of China, S Korea, and Japan who met to discuss joint economic dialogues and tri-lateral regional resistance to the US tariffs.
The US is obviously a huge buyer whose consumer clout won't easily be replaced, but all these other countries/markets are definitely going to do their best to find a ways to work together around the economic bully and built alternative negotiations and trade patterns. If there's an upside there in international markets in the mid-term, hopefully VU and other universities are diversified enough to benefit.
Yeah, I do hope all this instability makes any existent rich alumni out there to take stock and decide this is the moment to make some big gifts on Day of Giving. Who knows... but I guess we can hope and wish, right!?
‘On a related note, today's Torch article welcoming the new Dean of Nursing notes the $80M 7-year campaign for the nursing building is expected to begin soon and to last until about 2032-33, followed by a period of construction.”
So, we’re looking at about 2035, 10 years from now. Meanwhile, Valpo has lost 43% of its enrollment since 2018 and is currently operating at a $9M annual deficit. Reportedly, next fall’s enrollment could be down as much as 10% from this year’s, which is down 10% from last year’s. Some quick counting with fingers and toes tells me that at the current rate of decline, the 2035 grand opening celebration will be shared with a student body of approximately 50.
Yeah, I expect a lot of precarious schools to go under. It was dicey for many institutions before, but Trump has been pretty clear he's actively trying to destroy higher ed as it exists, and he's being quite effective between the federal funding cuts, disruption of international/green card student applications, and crashing of university investments. Whether you like him or not, he said he was going to destroy universities, and he *does* follow thru on his promises and get done what he says he's going to do!
Though I hope for personal reasons VU survives the enrollment/endowment crash, I am definitely not holding my breath. Too much of VU's operating budget was dependent on positive endowment returns, and I just don't see any way for things to bounce back quickly like they did after COVID. I was listening to a podcast over the weekeend, featuring some American business owners and they were not optimistic... for instance, there was a guy whose family business has made audio speakers here since the 1940s -- and he was lamenting that while the Trump's first-term tariffs on China did mean they had to readjust, at least that time there were other non-China countries they could source parts from; whereas this time around the tariffs are so widespread basically on the entire globe, that there is not going to be any clear path for finding way alternative sourcing for parts they need but cannot get in the US. He did not think his company would survive let alone rebound anytime soon. Anecdotal, of course. But it just drove home the point that this seems pretty different and a much wider/deeper kind of structural disruption to industry than COVID, so I doubt universities can rely on any kind of quick bounce back of their endowments like we saw after COVID. It may be years before this all re-stabilizes into reliably positive territory, and in the meantime schools like Valpo who were relying on positive returns for a huge chunk of the day-to-day operating budget are not going to survive easily. For some schools, the endowment is a nice cache helping to cover extras - but at places like Valpo, a good chunk of the spinoff was necessary for just keeping the lights on.
It's a good time for everybody to plant their vegetable gardens and plan to live off the land, haha!
I thought politics was banned from this forum. You know you opened up the door here don't you?
the $80M 7-year campaign for the nursing building is expected to begin soon and to last until about 2032-33
There is so much wrong with that sentence. The last campaign raised twice as much in half that time. They’re *planning* to raise only $11.5M a year?
Assuming corporate sponsorships - which a building like this *should* include - that’s only about $40M from alumni/community? $40M in seven years? What have they been doing for the last four years?
A competent campaign should have banked at least half the cost by *now*. If they don’t announce that the building is already halfway funded, the incoming president needs to audit the development office pronto.
Yikes...7 years to raise $80m...it may be an honest timetable, based on anticipated fundraising capacity. But it's not exactly a momentum builder.
The way I see it is that is how long its going to take for it to get completed under current/previous interest in donations. He may be out of the picture now, but Padilla said it best when he said that if the timetable wanted to be moved up, donors needed to come forth. Dont see how the donor situation improves anytime soon with the recession
@joker Yeah, sorry if that crossed the line! I guess it was political and maybe too much so, though I do find it hard to separate from the shop talk... Higher ed (in addition to carrying a educational 'vocation' and all that jazz), is a kind of domestic 'industry,' and it's an industry on the receiving end of both very direct federal/state policy and funding changes as well as the more indirect enrollment/endowment challenges. There's no way universities' financial viability won't be affected by politics and any possible greater recession regardless of who induces it. But I get your point, and sorry!
@rez I think maybe the university may hope on more alumni aging into the older donor category? It's possible that there are some prospective donors who didn't contribute the last time around since they were still in the thick of life a few years ago still working or putting their own kids thru college - but may now in the next few years be ready to shift into end-of-life legacy thinking? Who knows, but perhaps VU can hope on some 'Great Wealth Transfer' still to come. I've heard that term bandied about in talking about just how much of the US money is sitting in Baby Boomer bank accounts, and there's a debate about whether it will all be soaked up by astronomical nursing home costs or whether those ~80 trillions of dollars might eventually trickle down to their kids and/or institutional beneficiaries like alma maters. Then again, they may just take my own Boomer Dad's approach, which is currently to neither save it for elder care or for any future gift-giving, but just to blow it all on steaks and cars and 'die with zero,' lol. But for VU's sake, I'm hoping there are some VU alumni waiting in the wings to give.
Donors of huge $2-5 million+ gifts toward that big $80M goal will very rarely "come forth." Clearly advancement is clueless on timing of announcements as David81 notes. Or Padilla is frustrated and forcing them to publish numbers to show that he created the right case and plan for nursing, but donors didn't give.
The weakness in confidence for the nursing pace also blows up any perception that the big campaign under Heckler raised much actual cash beyond what was already expected yearly without a campaign. If you strip out the really old 2011 gift of $15M to build the chapel addition, there wasn't much real new cash raised by Heckler.
Prove me wrong.
Donors of huge $2-5 million+ gifts toward that big $80M goal will very rarely "come forth." Clearly advancement is clueless on timing of announcements as David81 notes. Or Padilla is frustrated and forcing them to publish numbers to show that he created the right case and plan for nursing, but donors didn't give.
The weakness in confidence for the nursing pace also blows up any perception that the big campaign under Heckler raised much actual cash beyond what was already expected yearly without a campaign. If you strip out the really old 2011 gift of $15M to build the chapel addition, there wasn't much real new cash raised by Heckler.
Prove me wrong.
Realist77, I do disagree with that characterization of Heckler and fundraising. The Forever Valpo campaign was a successful one, and many comparable universities (mine included) would be unable to raise $250m+. Going back, Presidents Schnabel, Harre, and Heckler each completed successful fundraising campaigns.
Only President Padilla is likely to leave without a notable fundraising achievement. (Sorry folks, I cannot call the art sale an example of successful fundraising.) Granted, he came in before we started climbing our way out of the pandemic (Dec. 2020). But I heard more promising talk than concentrated fundraising strategy and implementation. Nothing seemed to get off the ground. When it comes to raising money, I think he sorta died on the hill of Mount O'Keefe.
Today is Valpo Day so I took a Quick Look at what they have planned. It appears that there are over 500k in matching challenges across the board which is great. There are also activities on campus, and some benefits if you donate a certain amount to specific organizations. Seems like the buy in from everyone involved has been pretty good. Yeah yeah yeah not everything has been perfect, but it’s nice to see some effort from everyone. Here is the link: https://alumni.valpo.edu/s/1347/21/1col.aspx?sid=1347&gid=1&pgid=3668
