Quote from: DagarmanSpartan on June 04, 2025, 11:33:59 AMNot sure exactly what went wrong at Clark, institutionally

I think you could argue that being defined as a tier-1 research university is not the sum total of the worth of an institution. As schools shift focus to undergraduate education, or away from the fairly narrow version of research that the AAU defines for its members, there are a lot of reasons you might shift away from research as an institution. I know Clark's graduate students unionized a few years back, which might have had an impact to some extent, but I think the cat was far out of the bag by that point.

The sizes of the graduate student body could also be a factor as to why they've gone down in Carnegie classification. According to the Carnegie website, Clark has ~1800 grad students, whereas CRWU has ~6000, Illinois ~21000, Houston ~9000, and CMU ~4400. Knowing that not all of those graduate students are going to be in fields that best fit with the AAU or Carnegie's research profile you could definitely see why they left the AAU a quarter century ago. Looking at the Carnegie site, Clark spends just 12M annually on research, whereas Illinois has 821M and CWRU has 553M if you look at those even as a percentage of graduate students that number is still much higher.

They're right in that geographic belt where we've seen a population shift/closures recently, which may also be a factor.

Quote from: DagarmanSpartan on May 28, 2025, 10:39:49 AMSo among my SIX alma maters, only ONE has seen a significant enrollment decline, and that one has been in decline for several years now.  As I said, it appears that "directional" state universities like Central Michigan, Western and Central Washington, etc., are the schools that are and will be most affected by this trend.

Large universities are somewhat insulated from the same troubles that smaller colleges and universities have. The big state colleges and universities get all the tax dollars, and are not having to slash majors or minors to survive. Every time a small college or university cuts a program, they're naturally cutting the pool of potential students, as well. Of your six alma-maters four of them receive tax dollar funding, one has a built in faith pool to insulate it and the other has a nearly 3 billion dollar endowment and 12,000 students.

If it helps, think of "the cliff" as a wealth transfer. As smaller schools go out of business, or cut programs that aren't bringing in the kind of money that are needed to fund themselves, those students go where programs are funded by tax dollars and so aren't going need to have to justify themselves in quite the same way- for example the D1 schools that most folks are aware of. As that happens, the smaller schools relying on those students close and then even more folks go to those D1 schools. It's a vicious cycle. It's not to say it can't happen to any large/expensive/prestigious school (look at Brandeis for example) but the margins aren't the same with them, and without looking at the small/poor/less prestigious schools at the same time you're only getting half the picture at best. A loss of 10% of a small school can close it, a loss of 10% of the University of Illinois brings it to 53,000 students. It's just not apples and oranges in the same way.

People will always continue to go to college, and in the future they're going to go to the biggest and least likely to close schools. But the options become more limited every time a program or college closes. Think of it as grabbing the smallest weakest wildebeest first. Eventually only the biggest and strongest are left, but the herd is much smaller at the end.

Quote from: Dr. Acula on May 21, 2025, 06:28:41 PMI assume Tanney was well liked at Wabash?

Maybe today, but as someone who was at Wabash with both Mitch and Matt Tanney, they were big ol' try-hard wet blankets of zero fun and even less chill. That's to say nothing of their professional careers, or Mitch's success at Monmouth after transferring. But as far as people go, I'd rather hang out with almost anyone than the Tanneys.

With that said, congrats to him, and hopefully 'Bash will find someone great to step-in.

Quote from: IC798891 on February 27, 2025, 01:00:44 PMAnd we need to re-think our processes here. I think, too often, the "College isn't the right path for everyone" gets bandied about when we talk about blue collar jobs, or going into trades, etc. But it doesn't go far enough, IMO. Not every professional career job needs to have a bachelor's degree requirement attached to it

I absolutely agree. There are a ton of jobs that can be done competently without a bachelor's degree, many that probably require one. In many ways academia is kind of a pyramid scheme, that admittedly I love and would buy into again. But as I said in an earlier post, I don't think that every degree has to have a real world job that corresponds to it exactly. When people ask me why I love the liberal arts, I always answer the exact same way. "The world moves pretty fast. And if you're not good at learning, you're not going to make it. The liberal arts isn't about facts, it's about learning how to learn - learning how to be curious, learning how to adapt and adopt."

The exact degree doesn't always matter, but the lessons you learn should. And that's not always something you can measure on a test. I'm sure you can think of people that embody that spirit though, and those are the kinds of employees people are often looking for.

Quote from: FiredCoachesPod on February 27, 2025, 10:09:14 AMthe value from an education standpoint

I would have to vehemently disagree with this.
 
https://educationdata.org/college-degree-roi#:~:text=Based%20on%20median%20salaries%20for,than%20associate's%20holders%20in%202025

https://www.aplu.org/our-work/4-policy-and-advocacy/publicuvalues/employment-earnings/

According to the above websites a bachelors degree, on average, nets you ~25K more a year than an associates degree, and a lot of other benefits. When I started working in the real world, my master's degree paid for itself in 2 years, based on the 5K more a year I got for just having it; and my bachelors paid for itself in just 4 years, as all of my loans were finished at that point.

The US still has lots of need for people without degrees of any kind, but to try to say that the juice isn't worth the squeeze, assuming you complete your degree, just doesn't hold up long term. It is 100% worth it from a financial standpoint, and probably at least 3 or 4 other ways as well.

It may take longer to see the impact if you've taken a ton of loans or taken more than 4 years to complete your degree, but the impact will still be there over the long term.

Quote from: judgetrainer on February 25, 2025, 01:32:38 PM. I have to observe, however, that Stevens Point went through a similar reduction process a few years ago. It is possible that not every college can or should offer every major

To be fair, Saint Norbert is a private college, and UWSP is public. If you think of public universities as public services, there should be no mandate to make money for them and they should be well funded by tax dollars. As a UWSP alumnus, a Wisconsin taxpayer, and a graduate of a liberal arts major (Latin and Classical Civ. at Wabash College) I'd have no problem funding programs in the liberal arts at pre-Scott Walker funding levels at all of the UW campuses. Mainly, because I believe that not every major or degree needs to have an exact real world job description to match it, and that the world is a better place with well rounded humans in it.

With that said, the ability to fund a college or university is a very complicated process that involves a lot of different moving parts. And I can certainly understand cutting programs that aren't getting much love or at least "right sizing", consolidating, or working with other schools to continue a program. But I think it's apples to oranges to compare any of the UW campuses to any of the private colleges in Wisconsin. The two sets of schools should have different missions and funding, and comparing what happened at the UW campuses to what is happening at SNC are very different scenarios that have very little in common for a dozen reasons.

Agreed, that went about as poorly as anything I've seen all year. That last drive was just something else. I thought there was a targeting call on the sideline on that incomplete pass, because it looked to me like the DB was leading right into the head but because it went so fast there was no time for a replay, so maybe not.

A great season for the Dannies with a brutal ending. It'll be interesting to see how they play next year in the new look NCAC, still a lot of talent in that program.

Quote from: Crawford on November 09, 2024, 03:37:33 PMWish we could have seen it. 

Yes, the video was awful, but the result is there. I'm hopeful for a good bell game, but on paper, it should be a DPU washout. Still, that's why they play the games - WAF!

0 yard punt! Don't see that too often.

Wittenberg's video feed is so bad.  That damn thing will not stop buffering for me. Meanwhile, I had Brockport vs Cortland, UMU and MC and Cornell and Penn on all at the same time with them all running smoothly.

Quote from: WLG Old Historian on October 30, 2024, 03:58:54 PMStanding room is no longer encouraged or allowed at all

Even if I wear my sphinx pot and overalls?! At 40+ I still look just like I did when I was 22, plus a few gray hairs here and there. 

Quote from: Pat Coleman on October 29, 2024, 09:52:23 PMt was done in 2004 (11,504), 2006 (11,669) and 2008 (11,423). I guess I'm just surprised to hear it isn't feasible.

According to a 2016 article from the DePauw: https://thedepauw.com/monon-bell-attendance-figures-recent-years/

"Attendance figures for the games played at Blackstock Stadium have remained steady, in large part because the capacity at DePauw is usually capped out at around 8,000, preventing any more people from attending.

DePauw's Athletic Director, Stevie Baker-Watson, mentioned that one reason for this decline has been the reconfiguration of Wabash's Hollett Little Giant Stadium, which she said drove the maximum number of people allowed into the game down."

I found a picture of LG stadium with all the extra grandstands and bells and whistles setup and it definitely looks about 3-4K people smaller than when I was there.



So, my guess is that it truly is a feasibility problem, at least if they want to host the game on campus. Now, Butler bowl or at Indiana State you've got some new possibilities. It would be interesting to know how open the two schools would be to that, because one of the things that will  get alumni (who donate) back to campus is the Bell game, and if they're hosting that somewhere else you may lose some opportunities that way.

Quote from: Pat Coleman on October 29, 2024, 08:18:49 PMAnd how about St. John's and St. Thomas? Or Ithaca, which brought way more of the 40,000 fans to Yankee Stadium and Met Life Stadium than Cortland did?

I think there is probably a critical mass of students and alumni that would attend a Monon Bell game no matter where it's held. At which point there has to be a more "general interest area" to have a crowd closer to 20K fans. If I remember correctly, St. Johns and St. Benedict had around 3,000 students, and St. Thomas had closer to 9,000 or so. Which are pretty good sized. I was thinking Ithaca is around 5,000 if I remember, and I'm pretty sure Cortland is around there as well.

Looking at that list of big games, there are clearly certain schools/rivalries that can pull a large number of fans (UWW with most other WIAC schools, St. Johns, Cortland and Ithaca, RMC and HSC, and Wabash and Depauw). But some things limit those. Clemens Stadium seats 7,500 with no extra seating, and the Perk seats 13,500 giving a little extra room for those big games. Little Giant stadium seats 3,500 and Blackstock is 3,000. So those Monon stadiums at absolute max capacity with extra bleachers etc. is still going to top around 10,000. Plus, at least on campus, I have no idea where you'd put that many cars at Wabash.

I think you'd need a strong presence of interested folks outside the core alumni/student base to justify a neutral site game. Indiana splits several d3 conferences, and only DPU and Wabco are in Indiana from the NCAC. We also could have IU, Purdue, Notre Dame, Ball St., Indiana St., Butler, and Valpo potentially playing games in state at the same time (from d1 only, not including other d3 rivalry weekend games from the HCAC), which really draws down the number of potentially neutral fans who might attend. The other thing is that for a while at least, the Monon Bell game was getting televised nationally, which would limit the number of in-person fans who just didn't want to deal with everything.

FWIW, I too would really love to see the Monon Bell game compete with some of the other big attendance games, but I also think realistically there are lots of reasons it's just not feasible at this point to be 10,000+. With that in mind, for two schools, whose total combined enrollment is less than 3,000, both located in the middle of nowhere Indiana, we put up a pretty good showing. I'd love it if everyone interested in seeing it in person could, but I can see why it is how it is.

Quote from: DePauwalum05 on October 25, 2024, 11:26:56 AMWelcome any thoughts on 2024 NCAC action

I'll be interested to see Witt vs. DPU this weekend, although I don't suspect it'll be close. It'll be interesting to see how things look headed into the bell week. Wabash has all of their toughest conference games on the tail end, whereas it's a bit opposite for DPU. 

The NCAC has tiered a bit this year, with a very bad bottom, a competitive middle section, and then a few teams near the top. I think we'll know a lot more after Nov. 2 about if anyone can push DPU, as we'll have Wabash vs Denison head to head results and Witt vs DPU results.

Quote from: Kira & Jaxon's Dad on October 25, 2024, 11:14:24 AMWabash is Male only also.  Most of the other schools are co-ed.

Not something I neglected. Wabash is just one team in the NCAC. Using the US News enrollment stats for undergrads, Wash U has 8267 which is still at least 2 times larger, and almost three times larger than any other coed NCAC school, with Oberlin being ~3000 it's close to 3 times larger and is about 5.5 times larger than say OWU at ~1500. So anywhere between 2.8 to 5.5 times larger than all of the schools in the conference(not counting Wabash or Hiram at all).

That's only counting undergraduates. Now, it's something that will go away eventually (I think next year), but all of the super seniors that have been around since the pandemic would also matter if you're thinking about the nearly 9,000 graduates at Wash U. and how most of the NCAC has very few graduate students and some with none.

No one ever said d3 sports are balanced, and I'm not going to pretend they are, or say they should be. They're unbalanced for multiple reasons, size of a school being one of them.

It just makes me chuckle a bit when you look at how colleges end up with associate members and how they otherwise do not fit the bill of the other schools at all. Northland College as an affiliate member of the WIAC for hockey, for instance. As a small liberal arts college with just over 500 students, they're 11 times smaller than UWRF (the smallest permanent WIAC school) and 29.5 times smaller than UW-Oshkosh the largest.