Just to clarify, I was an adjunct for 7 years. I wasn't trying to bash them, just going off my own experience/observations that they tended to be used for the introductory level courses, not the upper level courses -- which tended to go to the professors with tenure

Quote from: WUPHF on Yesterday at 11:40:05 AM

Quote from: IC798891 on Yesterday at 10:18:48 AMSo I stand semi-corrected...

Intentional, but for unexpected reasons beyond what the institution could have predicted.

My only correction would be that many masters programs are taught by adjunct faculty. 

IIT certainly has some degrees that are a rigorous as those offered by Chicago, but has others that are a relatively low-rigor cash cows meant to support the real work of the institution.

Huh! Man, you learn something new everyday. I would have thought the exact opposite, but to your point, and in fairness to me, I was assuming that the courses were reflective of being part of advanced degree pursuit, not merely low-rigor cash grabs. If they're the latter, that makes sense that they could hand them to adjuncts.

So I stand semi-corrected...

Intentional, but for unexpected reasons beyond what the institution could have predicted.

Yeah, that sounds like an intentional cutting of 1/3 of your programs.

My guess is that the cost of the professors vs the money brought in by the students is drastically different at the grad level, especially a masters'. My thought is that not only are the masters students there for fewer years (thus bringing in less money) but that the professors are less likely to be the adjunct/lecturer/visiting types, and you need to pay them more.

Article is paywalled, but my immediate thought is that a drop that big had to be planned, because I there's no way that unexpectedly missing your yield by a few percentage points would cause a decrease like that of 1,300.

Quote from: AndrewB on August 04, 2026, 11:33:22 AMIf a school can't afford to pay maintenance on equipment for the classes they offer, maybe just drop the classes. 
To ask somebody, who has just given money for a specific purpose, to pay for day to day general shortcomings is embarrassing.

It is unfortunate that it has to happen, yes. Ultimately, that falls on the shoulders of you philanthropy department. They have to convince donors that the money spent elsewhere will be put to good use.

But donors on the outside don't always have the best sense of what it actually takes to keep the lights on at a college. Overfunding specific certain areas of the campus, while others get neglected isn't a recipe for long-term sustainability. And it's how endowment numbers become misleading.

It's similar to something you often hear from admissions people. There are certain majors where you can  absorb an increased number of applicants, and others where you can't. So you can't just say "How could you miss your enrollment target? College-wide applications were up 10%! But those applicants may be concentrated in majors that have hard caps on the number of students they enroll.

It's like how new parents are overwhelmed with sleep deprivation and keeping the house clean, and when they they ask for help, 10 people come by, each drops off a casserole and tells them to just return the pyrex dish when they're done.

Colleges are absolutely inefficient with how they spend their unrestricted money. But restricted giving comes with its own pitfalls.

Yup. This is why I'm always so annoyed when people just blindly bring up endowment sizes when talking about an institution's financial struggles.

There's an episode of Bluey where the Dad takes the kids to the pool, but he forgets the bag of important, but boring, stuff (sunscreen, towels, water shoes) and it basically ends the day -- until Mom shows up with the right stuff*

*And although this wasn't Dad's best moment, it's not one for the incompetent dad trope. The Dad's actually major parent goals.

I think about that episode a lot when philanthropy gets talked about. Donors are, of course, free to use their money how they see fit, and certainly, colleges are not always the smartest with their unrestricted money.

But ultimately, there's a lot of "boring" things that need to have money spent on them every year. Campuses are like small cities, and there's a lot of stuff people don't see and don't typically like to spend their money on. (*Coughs in deferred maintenance*)

As an example, it may not be a challenge to get some alum to donate money to buy say, the latest in cameras and lights for your film students, or new instruments for music students. But what about say, the salaries of the people who repair and maintain those musical instruments, or the resources needed to manage all that film equipment?

So while I don't condone taking money that has been restricted for other uses, this is the frustration colleges have when dealing with giving

Quote from: WUPHF on July 29, 2026, 02:02:35 PMHere is my pitch to Albright.

Develop a plan to develop an on-campus retirement home.

Book an appointment with Senator Fetterman and ask for USDA and other funding.  Bring a box of Albright Football hoodies.

Build an institution that is 50-70% traditional undergraduates, 30-50% retired baby boomers interested in campus life, life long learning programs, etc.

Develop or expand programs that serve the elderly including nursing, physician assistants, etc.

This is a really good idea but...probably far too late if they're at the stage described.

Ithaca College did something kinda similar to this, though the senior living community they help build and that they have developed a partnership with is across the street, not on campus. You can read about the partnership in depth here.

https://www.ithaca.edu/news/taking-longview

But the short version is, they came up with the idea in 1989, and didn't cut a ribbon on the new facility with all the programming until 2000. Now, I'm guessing your plan would involve the campus using their existing infrastructure and outside funding, which could cut down on the timeline. But, even some of the other things you're proposing take time. To wit, IC's person who was in charge of developing the academic/learning partnerships said:

"I spent three to four years talking to faculty and staff from across the college—including those in the humanities, music, and [former] allied health programs—about the educational opportunities they wanted to provide. The goal was to help our programs meet their educational objectives by including interactions with the residents as part of their curriculum."

Again, it's not apples to apples. (The residents of the living community in Ithaca aren't actually an official part of campus, etc.) But it's a good framework for how intensive/time consuming something like this can be. Does Albright have that kind of time, and those resources?

Because while Ithaca's then-president had a great vision, he also had the luxury of implementing it at a time when the college was thriving and growing and you could devote resources and efforts into something that would not bring an ROI for awhile.

Homer shoutout to an Ithaca College player I thought I might see on the list:

Starting pitcher John Prendergast: 33-3, 288 IP, 2.56 ERA, 45 BB/215 SO, 1.05 WHIP

to answer the "over whom?"

Maybe Bill Synder: 19-10, 208 IP, 2.27 ERA, 75 BB/267K, 1.01 WHIP

Exactly why I bailed.

If I had to justify it for upper level coaches, I could possibly do it on salary. I've got a buddy making mid six figures in another field, and he's not working the M-F, 9-5 schedule. There are times where you make that tradeoff.

But for a lot of people who work in athletics, and too many coaches, the expectation is 60-70 hours a week for, honestly, the same amount of money (or less) that plenty of people make working that 9-5.

There's always going to be some fresh-faced 22-year old without kids used to pulling all nighters in college who really doesn't mind working the insane hours for little money and the ****ty free pizza provided. Because heck, they were probably just doing it as a student for even *less* money and no benefits. So it feels like they're getting a lot more.

Quote from: AndrewB on July 28, 2026, 11:01:25 AMThis from a coaches perspective makes absolutely no sense to me.  I think of Coach Walker for River Falls.  He constantly did interviews with local networks in the Minneapolis area, Pat Coleman and even Pat McAfee.  Maybe he still gets the job at Drake, but it didn't hurt that he could act like a higher level coach and give good interviews. 

Coaches are insanely busy and there's only so many hours in a day. You can't say yes to everything.

I once wrote a story on advice coaches would give others on maintaining a work-life balance to avoid burnout, and basically every college coach said "There really isn't any way to balance it. At best, you find a way to take some time to yourself."

But you'd ask them how they made time, and it'd be these insane things like "I try to take a 20-minute walk around campus during lunch" or "I don't start a new task after 10 p.m." or "I schedule a two-hour meeting once a week that's just my time to read a book, or get a haircut, or send personal emails"

It was never "I go home for dinner every night with my family" or "I never miss my kids' recital". It was basically "Yeah, I work 70 hour weeks, but I sure as heck don't work 80!"

I spent about 7 years as a writer for a trade magazine called Coaching Management. The concept was "Here's advice from experienced coaches to inexperienced coached on how they develop [whatever] on their teams."

You'd think coaches would be more than willing to share strategies for like, growing leadership, or improving communication, or facilitating team building with their fellow coaches.

Take it from me. My interview request to success ratio was not 1:1. It got worse as you went up the ladder from high school to D3 to FCS D1 to FBS D1 and then again up the FBS success ladder. So D3 was the best of all the colleges. But we needed 5-7 interviews for each feature story, and I was routinely sending out at least 20-30 interview requests per story.

Quote from: jknezek on July 28, 2026, 08:23:02 AMNothing is going to grow D3 football past the small audience of alumni, parents, and people close to the schools. It's up to the schools to maximize their athletic teams for alumni connection. The schools that do it really well have outstanding game day atmospheres and more connection, the schools that do it poorly have what they have. But nobody, on a Saturday afternoon, is going to be flipping around the internet with the chance to watch LSU vs Ole Miss grudge match and instead decide on W&L vs Bridgewater without a baked in reason.

No, D3 schools need to learn from the places that do it best in D3 and try and make that a regular thing across the division. Get your own people invested and it will pay dividends. That's the best that will happen.

This is so perfectly stated

So, story time. Feel free to skip.

The largest individual gift in Ithaca College history was given in 1995. It was for $17 million, from a man named James Pendleton.

James Pendleton was not an Ithaca College alumnus. He was not a faculty or staff member. He was not a parent. In fact, in his entire life, James Pendleton never even set foot on Ithaca College's campus. So why did he give the school $17 million?

Well, in 1976, he happened to meet an IC professor when both of them were vacationing on a Greek island. They got to talking, became friends, and in the early 1980s, the professor told him about how the juniors at the college produce films for their coursework, but often needed financial support. Pendleton agreed to create a competitive cash award for student filmmakers. The dean at the time worked with him to take half of Pendleton's annual contribution and create an endowment while using his discretionary budget to bring the award money back up the the original amount.

Every year, the dean and the winning students hand wrote thank you letters to Pendleton. When he died, his lawyer called the dean and, essentially told him

"James was putting away money to give to you and one other school. Every year, he gave to both of you, but you were the only ones to thank him, so every year he took some of the money out of their pile, and added it to yours. You ended up with almost all of it."

That story has nothing to do with athletics. Or paywalls. But it is how affinity works. And that's why your goal is to create as many pathways to affinity as possible. Because you never know what chance encounter, what fleeting moment, can turn into the kind of affinity that changes an institution.

Now, I know some of you may be saying "IC798891, that gift took 20 years to materialize. Not all institutions have that kind of time!"

To which I would respond with the following:

1. Specifically, I would suspect, that most people, saving up to give an eight-figure sum to a college upon their death, would be willing to give that money a few years earlier if they knew the institution was in dire, dire straits.

2. In general, while we are all dealing with the current challenges in the higher education landscape, most of our institutions are not one or two or even five years away from closing. Yes, you need to start changing things now, but you also have time to plant seeds, cultivate relationships

Problem 1:

Framing this $30,000 a year as some sort of financial lifeboat is insane

Frank's a Union guy, so I'll use Union as an example. They're dealing with a budget shortfall right now. In its 990 from 2024, they had an operating budget of $251 million.

Expressed as a percentage, that 30 grand is 0.011% of Union's annual budget. That's a rounding error. You could do what American Airlines did in 1987 and eliminate a single olive in every salad you sell and recoup $30,000. There's no world in which FloSports' $30,000 is what's standing between a major educational institution and solvency.

Problem 2:

I just went to my departmental retreat, and the main theme was "How do we develop an affinity between the college and our constituents?"

Well, if colleges at large knew how to do that, they wouldn't be in this mess. But you know how you don't do it? Putting your athletic content -- or really any content -- behind a paywall.

All that does is reduce the points of contact between parties. You want to go in the opposite direction. You want to show more of your institution to more people. You may not know what will work, but you still want more bites at the affinity apple, not fewer.

Problem 3:

Division 3 is comprised of state-run public universities or private non-profits. Professional sports leagues and teams are neither.