RE: Off Topic - USA Today Article on Liberty's FBS Dreams
Liberty's growth has been a bubble funded and sustained by a massive influx of federal student loans used to pay for the cost of online education. See this quote: "We've grown so fast that we can't spend it fast enough," LU Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. said."
Those statements do not comfort University presidents, who I would speculate are fairly conservative decision-makers and value long-term investments over short-term growth. The fact that Liberty is just now beginning to build an endowment would be even less comforting to a fiscal conservative.
Also, consider that lenient federal requirements on lending for online degrees and a lack of federal review over default rates, graduation rates, and post-graduation success by Liberty students has made it all possible. Whether the growth is sustainable or not will be a political question, and will largely be outside of Liberty's control. Federal loan requirements have already increased on for-profit colleges, and I know dozens of Liberty MBAs and JDs who have sterling transcripts but have received no interest from companies or firms outside the Lynchburg area.
I'm a Lynchburg native, and while Liberty has made strides toward respectability in their academic programs (Liberty graduates fill a large number of nursing positions in Central Virginia, for example), Liberty's uniquely hierarchical structure and mission (unlike even the more evangelical Baptist universities like Baylor, academic development is a secondary consideration to proselytization and conversion) have also hindered the University in pursuits like this. The conferences are wise to take a "wait and see" attitude.
Liberty has also tended to a "build it first, then improve it" model in many academic programs. For example, Liberty's law school remains mired in the fourth tier a decade after its founding, and Liberty law graduates have an abysmal bar passage rate. The beautiful facilities and generous financial incentives have yet to attract many top-tier students. The same is true for many Liberty undergraduate programs.
The article points specifically to Baylor as an example, but Baylor's academic programs are guided by a traditional governance model - Liberty doesn't even grant tenure and many professors lack the credentials to compete for positions at JMU, W+M, UVA, Richmond, etc. Liberty is actually much closer to Regent or Oral Roberts than to Baylor as an academic institution.
I give Liberty all the credit for having the financial wisdom to buy the policy on Falwell's life, and I also recognize their saavy in taking an existing correspondance curriculum and leveraging that infrastructure to capitalize on the growth of online education and the loose regulations governing federal student loans. However, my bet is that until Liberty adopts a more traditional governance model, enhances its academic profile and focuses more on growing their endowment than on building sparkling facilities that require massive long-term upkeep costs, most conference will say "thanks but no thanks."
(This post was last modified: 08-21-2014 09:23 AM by ttgwm02.)
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