Well if anything, the traditional push by some to emphasize Valpo being a German Lutheran school will lead to its downfall.
My sense is that it is exactly the opposite conclusion - at least part of the the downfall in enrollment is because a lack of emphasis and outreach to its traditional core of students and families who no longer come to VU.
President Harre was well-respected in the LCMS circles and made a point to maintain as well as possible VU's traditional LCMS constituency. Harre was an ordained LCMS pastor, and also hired people like William Karpenko as director of church relations.
President Heckler was the first non-LCMS president in VU's modern history, and during his tenure VU moved away from that model model. President Padilla is obviously not Lutheran. Students are voting with their feet - to put some numbers to this, in the Fall of 2009, there were 496 LCMS students enrolled at VU, and in the Fall of 2024, there were 51 LCMS students enrolled.
Absolutely. Why was the original demographic discarded and then shifted? Why couldn’t the base demographic be kept firmly in tact and just be expanded to include others like us Pelagianistics? It should never have been a binary thing. You guys have nailed it. Valpo lost its way. But it has an opportunity to right the ship with a new president. Hope they hit a home run in the search
We will respectfully agree to disagree here. Be faith based for sure. Be LCMS or ELCA or Lutheran. But don't limit yourself to being German Lutheran and make decisions based on tradition. I have asking for awhile why the German degree major should not have been dropped since only a handful major in German. I never got an answer.
More than anything, find an identity, get collaboration, get to work and carry it out.
So it's not at all unreasonable for a small private university to still hope to get 3,000-5,000 undergrads who have some positive value expectation for attending a private university where founding in the Christian faith tradition is part of its distinctive offering.
Precisely. Healthcare, Engineering, Education, Business, Liberal Arts, etc. in that tradition. It is doable.
So it's not at all unreasonable for a small private university to still hope to get 3,000-5,000 undergrads who have some positive value expectation for attending a private university where founding in the Christian faith tradition is part of its distinctive offering.
Precisely. Healthcare, Engineering, Education, Business, Liberal Arts, etc. in that tradition. It is doable.
To my mind, that's exactly where VU should aim.
Adding to what @vuindiana mentioned in his excellent post, the long-term demographics clearly show a decline in the number of Lutherans in the US (hence fewer college-age Lutherans). The percentage of Lutherans at VU had been going down for some time, yet fell dramatically after Heckler took office. The other macro factor facing VU is the demographic cliff of flat or declining college-age populations, especially in the Midwest and Northeast.
Much has been made about the fact that the number of Lutherans is declining in the United States. And it’s true that active church membership is declining. But I think there’s more nuance to this fact.
The way I see it, you have the religious part Lutheranism and you have the social/cultural aspect of it. (I think this also applies to many religions). The number of religious Lutherans is dropping, but that doesn’t mean the social/cultural ties have dropped at the same rate.
Valpo has never been a Concordia. It’s a Lutheran school in the social/cultural sense. Religion is present and faith is a part of the school. But it wasn’t the defining characteristic. It’s why it was able to attract people from all over the world.
Valpo’s mistake has been seeing the declining number of active church members and deciding that they needed to completely shift their enrollment strategy. Although there was some overlap, generally the Concordia prospective student pool and the Valpo prospective student pool were different. But Valpo tossed the baby out with the bath water.
The enrollment strategy of the past 15 years has failed.
@mj08 From the time I attended VU to now, I always thought of Valpo positively as what I called in my mind “The Only Universal Lutheran University.” This concept of social/cultural Lutheranism — the commonalities shared by all Lutheran denominations outside of doctrinal differences — is a much better way to look at it.
No issues with VU maintaining the faith tie as a core part of its mission, as that will hopefully never change, even though I am not religious. However, someone mentioned that a large portion of prior athletic alumni considered Valpo because of its religious ties. I am sure that there were a decent amount during my time 20 years back, but there was also a large portion of student-athletes that never stepped foot in the chapel, unless it was a class requirement. A large amount certainly didn't behave as though they were actively religious lol.
Churches are also social institutions. They create connections between people and groups that continue outside of the physical church building.
Let’s say you have an older Valpo grad who’s active in the church. They have grandchildren who aren’t really religious. Those social/cultural connections can still influence the grandchild’s college choice. Instead Valpo has decided to abandon those advantages.
Also, there are large Lutheran communities that exist outside the Midwest, such as California and Texas. Valpo has completely abandoned those markets.
