Quote from: Patrick Coleman on August 24, 2026, 09:54:35 AMRight, and for St. John's and UMHB and a number of other similar programs that don't limit how many people can be on the team, the additional question is: How many people stay at your school once they stop playing football?

That's not as easily divined in a search.

I'm fascinated by this, because in 2024 UMHB made an announcement that their overall university retention rate was 69%, which is lower than their stated goal of 76%.

If the football team is retaining a significantly lower percentage than even the 69% (and to be fair, as Pat points out, we can't know this number for sure just by looking at a roster page), you have to wonder how the rest of the university feels about that. Because obviously, one-year retention affects your graduation rate, and you certainly don't want to get a reputation for doing poorly at that.

Is a higher incoming football class worth it for possibly lowering important long-term metrics? One thing you can be sure of, parents of prospective students care about outcomes. Will my child graduate? Will they get a job? Those numbers send a message about how well a college does that, and no one is going to be saying "Well, you gotta exclude football players from those figures, obviously"

And hey, maybe everyone in enrollment in UMHB is fine with the way things are. But those look like there could be some STARK differences.

FWIW, at Ithaca, the student-athlete retention and graduation rate is higher than that of the overall student body

The ironic thing about Ithaca's 1988 team in particular was that they needed 4th quarter comebacks to beat New York's based Wagner and Cortland, in Rounds 1 and 2 -- frankly, only boneheaded coaching by Wagner allowed Ithaca to get out of there with a win -- but then had zero trouble with southern and midwest based Ferrum and Central, winning by 24 and 15 points respectively, (in games that were not as close as the scores would indicate)

Agreed completely.

I used to be really anti-autobid, and all about the "best" and "most deserving" teams getting into the playoffs. And maybe I'm just wiser in my old age, maybe working at a college has changed my perspective on how athletics should be emphasized at an institutional level given all the other challenges, but...yeah

Win your league. Try, if you can, to schedule OOC opponents that benefit your entire institution, not just your football program. Trying to engineer something to beat a computer -- when there are a whole bunch of things you can never control for -- is just a fools' errand.

Quote from: Bartman on August 12, 2026, 10:02:30 PMI don't understand how Vicente Lyon, Punter for Hobart missed this 2026 pre-season team, after having been an actual 2025 third team selection .Perhaps the voters didn't know he was returning for a GRAD season.

There are four All-American teams announced during the postseason. There are three in the preseason.

Lyon was the odd man out

Three LL preseason all-americans

Ithaca safety Joe Spirra was 1st team
E.J Taylor and Billy Brosko from Hobart were 2nd and 3rd team respectively

Something that's unclear to me in all these conference-specific ones, including the GLVC one.

Do you get access to non-conference road games that might be behind a different paywall? I'd have to think that the host institution's paywall preferences would take precedent, and admittedly, I'm biased because I'm one of the very few fans whose rival institution is in different conferences.

But still, I think part of my cognitive difference is feeling like some of these are just giving me half of the schedule.

Right, too often, adjunct is code for "We're just not going to pay you benefits or give you job security"

What it should be is "You may not work in academia, but your work experience in the field would make you an excellent instructor of the material."

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 August 08, 2026, 11:40:05 AM

Quote from: IC798891 on August 08, 2026, 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.