Albright auctioning off their art collection to raise capital:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/06/26/albright-college-plans-auction-artworks

Quote from: ronk on June 25, 2025, 10:23:55 AMSomebody said recently that in the past 100 years we've gone from taking Latin and Greek in high school to remedial English in college.

It's from about 2010 and a Conservative Anti-Semite know as Joseph Sobran, it just became popular again as a meme as certain people have been attacking colleges lately.

Sobran, of course, was going for a splash, and didn't account for the fact that most high schools require at least some foreign language to graduate. So yes, not so much Latin and Greek and more Spanish, French, and Chinese. As for remedial English in college, given the "fog a check" nature of a huge swath of college admittance requirements, that's probably true. Back when there were fewer college admittance slots and not every job required a college degree to apply, there probably were fewer students going to college who weren't academically prepared.

Pre-Covid almost 70% of high school graduates enrolled in college. That number has since dropped to closer to 60%. In 1950 it was about 30%. Given that only 50% of students can be "better than average" at English, if you are enrolling more than 50% of high school graduates in college, some are going to be below average and require remediation.

In other words, it's a fun sound byte, as so many things are these days, but it's an easy statement for anyone with a decent college education to put into context. It's not that students are dumber, as the quote is trying to point out or that college is failing, it's that the environment has changed.

Sadly many schools are... not good... at fundraising. FLO provides a solid, dependable (provided Flo stays in business), small revenue stream. For many schools, that is probably attractive. For schools like those in the UAA? Yeah, I don't get it at all.

Personally I hate this model. Monetizing D3 sports is a bad idea. Not only is it a bad idea, it's a loser of an idea. These aren't scholarship kids. They are paying to play. Now parents have to pay to watch? I just want to grab these admin heads and bang them together and point out how stupid this is.

Either your athletics department makes money because you bring in student athletes that pay tuition, adding numbers to your student body, or it brings in prestige because it brings in student athletes that otherwise would have gone elsewhere for a better experience. Either way, the school benefits from the athletic department and shouldn't be nickel and diming these kids and parents to squeeze even more blood from the stone.

If your athletic department does neither of those things, if it costs you money or doesn't add value to your student body, and you feel the need to nickel and dime student athletes, then it is time to give up on your athletics department.

Higher education needs to realize their value proposition is getting thinner and thinner. Small, expensive, not highly regarded liberal arts schools, the type that make up a good percent of D3, are especially vulnerable. Nickel and diming students and parents even more is not going to fix that, and only makes it more expensive. Stop betting on losing models.

As for the UAA schools, which are some of the cream of D3 institutions, you are just cutting off your nose to spite your face and no amount of justifying how much they will make can change my mind on this. There is 0 reason to put your sports behind a paywall. You are some of the best, and most expensive, schools in the country. You choose to associate with a very expensive, geographically diverse, conference, for prestige purposes. This is a pathetic slap in the face to student athlete parents and the few alums that support and love student athletes.

And when the ODAC takes this path, as I suspect most D3 conferences will eventually, I will be just as scathing about W&L, though far more understanding, even if I think it's still a bad idea, for other schools in the ODAC.

Quote from: Kuiper on June 20, 2025, 01:03:06 PM

Quote from: ziggy on June 20, 2025, 12:47:42 PMThe genie is out of the bottle, it's just a matter of seeing down the line if there will be total holdouts (there are programs out there keen to do what they can to self-monetize) and if the conferences that do go this route all end up on one platform of are fragmented between multiple.

The interesting part of UAA going with FloSports is that Rochester already had its own paywall for streaming of their games.  So, either that wasn't very successful (or revenue was too volatile to be helpful for budgeting) or, assuming the UAA needed unanimous consent from its members to go this route, FloSports offered a better deal that got Rochester more than they were getting in their best years from their own streaming fees.

Maybe. Or maybe it just wasn't enough of a difference to stand in the way of something all their conference mates want and possibly cause problems or resentment in the future. While UAA schools could join other conferences, they benefit from the association they currently have, and being known as the problem child is probably not a good idea.

Sadly the pebbles are starting to push bigger rocks down the hill. I suspect all of D3 will go this route over the next couple years unless FLO goes belly up.

Quote from: CNU85 on June 02, 2025, 08:22:17 AM

Quote from: jknezek on May 31, 2025, 11:22:11 AM

Quote from: y_jack_lok on May 31, 2025, 09:32:50 AM

Quote from: jknezek on May 30, 2025, 02:30:33 PMODAC has some problem children between Averett and Guilford. There are a few others that I would look real closely at before writing a check for my kid.

It was this past fall, I think, that there were some posts on the ODAC boards about financial issues and personnel discontent at Lynchburg. Are you thinking of any others?

I think Lynchburg will be ok. Thinking more of Sweet Briar or EMU. Schools very dependent on tuition and relatively small endowments.

I found some info on EMU. In this report is a graph that provides a Financial Strength Score from the Council of Independent Colleges. Based on that one metric, they seem to be stable.

EMU President's Report 2024

I wasn't able to look at the link, but I think EMU more due to the type of school. Smaller religious schools seem most at risk right now. While EMU is not strictly Menonite, or even a majority Menonite, it does have strong ties. It's a small school, under 1000 undergrads, possibly as low as 800, charges almost 50K a year on the sticker (I suspect the real cost is closer to 20K per year), and has a 40MM endowment. The school, as far as I can tell, has limited national reputation.

It's exactly the business model that I think will come under the greatest pressure, with the lone exception that there are about 200-300 graduate students on campus.

Having an actual soccer coach will probably help TCNJ as much as anything else.

Quote from: y_jack_lok on May 31, 2025, 09:32:50 AM

Quote from: jknezek on May 30, 2025, 02:30:33 PMODAC has some problem children between Averett and Guilford. There are a few others that I would look real closely at before writing a check for my kid.

It was this past fall, I think, that there were some posts on the ODAC boards about financial issues and personnel discontent at Lynchburg. Are you thinking of any others?

I think Lynchburg will be ok. Thinking more of Sweet Briar or EMU. Schools very dependent on tuition and relatively small endowments.

Quote from: Ron Boerger on May 30, 2025, 06:14:21 PM

Quote from: IC798891 on May 30, 2025, 02:49:44 PMWhile this was not the point of the post:

According to that audit, Averett's endowment was worth $24.7 million. Of that, $24 million was restricted to certain purposes based on the instructions of donors, while just $637,000 did not have such restrictions.


I know most of the money in all endowments is restricted, but I've seen like 75% to 80%, not 97%. That seems like a big time failure of the philanthropy people to generate gifts for the general fund.

Agreed; however, equally (possibly more) likely is that they already spent all the unrestricted money because they could do so.

This has got to be the most likely case. Every year W&L, and every other D3 school my family has undergrad or grad degrees from, calls looking for money from alumni. Those donations are always for the general fund.

You can't tell me that Averett essentially raises nothing every year and always has. They must have spent it. Likely the crux of the legal filing.

ODAC has some problem children between Averett and Guilford. There are a few others that I would look real closely at before writing a check for my kid.

It's more an issue for the future as students decide the risk and hassle isn't worth it. There are a lot of schools that rely on those international, high tuition, students. Not for sports, for survival. The more unwelcome the U.S. appears, the more knock-on effects, from tourism to international influence. All those students 20, 30, 40 years ago who have great memories from their school days in the U.S. and hold the U.S. in a positive light? All that goes away in the future.

On the other hand, things that are announced have a stunning and blindingly fast turnaround time for being "postponed" or reversed lately, so who knows if anything will stick?

It wasn't posted with the original schedule, but W&L filled out their 9/20 open date with a home game against Regent University who is reclassifying from NCCAA. They are in their first provisional year and went 5-7-1 last year in an exploratory year that featured a 3-3-1 record against DIII teams and a 5-7-1 record overall. They went 0-3 against ODAC teams, Va Wes, Guilford and R-MC, but beat Greensboro, Gallaudet, and Mary Baldwin with a tie against NC Wes.

No schedule is yet posted for this year, but I believe they are affiliating with the C2C conference, so they have to find a lot of games.

Quote from: DagarmanSpartan on May 20, 2025, 02:26:33 PMSo it's supposed to hit next year then?

I guess I'll have to see how many applications CWRU gets over the next two years.

If it keeps going up.......then I can only assume the effect on my alma mater will be negligible.

If you read what people are writing, schools like Case are unlikely to be overly affected. The more prestigious the school, the less likely it will be to face any significant problems. The problems will be felt at tuition dependent, local draw, low reputation, low endowment institutions. None of that describes CWRU.

That's what I was referring to by tactically limited. They are very good, but all they were doing was desperately trying to feed those two. Other than that, they didn't seem to have much else to try.

I get it, you ride your stars, especially that point of the season. But if the other team closes down those lanes, you need something else. I just didn't see it, but that was also the only Red Devil game I watched so not exactly a legitimate sample.

Quote from: Kuiper on May 15, 2025, 02:16:50 PMDickinson released its 2025 schedule on Instagram, which annoyingly means you have to try to interpret all the athletic logos of its opponents to know who they are playing.  From what I can tell, they've upgraded the strength-of-schedule a bit, adding away games against Virginia Wesleyan, Christopher Newport, and Widener, instead of Rosemont, Goucher, and DeSales.

That should be good for them. I understand they bring back a lot of the core that made the tournament run last year. Having watched them lose to W&L, I thought they looked tactically limited in that game. Upping the competition will be good preparation, though you'd think just playing in a strong CC should generally be enough.