David Masciotra, a Valpo alumnus who writes for The New Republic, has published an article in the current issue of that national magazine: "A Georgia O’Keeffe Painting and the Battle for the Soul of a Liberal Arts College."
The article is given prominence at the top left corner of the homepage of the online version of the magazine: https://newrepublic.com/
In my judgment, Mr. Masciotra frames the issues in precisely the right way.
"What is the purpose of studying at a university beyond job training? How can schools like Valparaiso, which emphasize learning outside of vocational courses, survive when a corporate-consumer model has overtaken higher education and exerted a powerful influence on administrators and students alike?"
Masciotra writes: "Valparaiso University’s student body is shrinking and its dormitories are aging. But is selling the campus museum’s most famous artwork the right solution to the problem?"
As you can tell from the quotations by yours truly that he included in his article, I think Valpo can take a different, better path here.
(The university recently constructed a huge, expensive residence hall, Beacon Hall, which is only partially full--and partially paid for. Valpo has also recently built a couple of rows of sorority houses down the hill from our athletics building, and Valpo has recently made renovations to at least one of its freshmen dormitories. These expensive on-campus housing projects have largely gone unmentioned in the reporting. Valpo has been making capital improvements to its campus housing in recent years.)
A larger issue, at least in my view, is the expensive and oversized role that athletics plays on our campus. We are moving toward becoming an athletics institution that offers some college-level classes on the side. Toward that end, the university's administration wants to build a huge, new, very expensive athletics complex. In my judgment, that will be a mistake. We will be digging ourselves into an even deeper hole of debt--and then forced to make even more cuts to our academic programs (further weakening the liberal arts).
Meanwhile, in light of the reporting by Mr. Masciotra, one wonders, "From where will the funding come?" Part of the administration's answer to that question, at least so far, has been: "We'll sell off what we consider to be our non-essential assets to raise the money."
And that is how a church-related academic institution eventually loses its soul.
To read the entire article, go here.
P.S. I also encourage you to read another piece on the Valpo situation that came out today. John Fea is a former Lilly Fellow at the university. To read his article, "What Is Going on at Valparaiso University?," go here.
P.P.S. Inside Higher Education also ran a piece today on the Valpo matter. To read it, go here.
