I don't know much about CUA in particular, but IIRC, the trend in academia has been escalating administrative roles, to the point of some schools having more administrative than teaching staff. A cut of 12% there is probably good, but I'd be curious to know how much was there before and after the cut.
(I also see this in K-12 education in my area a lot, and while I think good administration is essential, I think there's a lot of non-essential make-work type positions that can hide out there.)
Spending on athletics programs and facilities overshadows administrative staffing in most US institutions.
Building and maintaining separate full-size facilities for every varsity sport, paying coaching and training staff, paying for scholarships (which get incredibly pricey if you want competitive recruiting)… these are all far more costly than hiring 10 random office staff.
That's a good possibility too that I had not considered! My tiny D3 school was not known for its athletics, though we did have some multi-use facilities. I don't know what the situation is like now, though.
Sorry - I missed it buried here: “and student services by 53% (this latter number includes not only student life and athletics expenses, but also enrollment management, admissions, and marketing and communications).”
Surely an SOS request for wire transfer has gone out to the Napa Institute by now, right?
Will the discontinued residence chaplains be replaced by an Ivy League-like Opus Dei Chaplain? Or will someone from the Catholic Information Center take on additional on-campus CUA duties?
The Dominican Province of St Joseph (opeast.org) was invited to take over the campus ministry at CUA before the previous President, John Garvey, left office. But I understand that, perhaps, in some people’s estimation, that could be just as unappealing as an “Ivy League-like Opus Dei chaplain”?
Several of the Ivy League schools also have Dominicans now. In some cases this is an affiliation of long standing. (I assume from your user name you know all of this already.) Not sure where the Opus Dei chaplains are, if anywhere.
This Commonweal article from 2006 is clearly out of date. It would need to be updated to current. The author is now an associate editor for the Jesuit magazine America.
Back then he reported: “It’s no secret that Catholic conservatives target elite schools. Opus Dei has set its sights on the Ivy League: in addition to its residence at Princeton, the group operates houses near Brown and Harvard.”
The Opus Dei chaplain at Columbia was recently promoted into a global missionary leadership role. Fr. Roger Landry, an Opus Dei priest and chaplain for New York City’s Leonine Forum Program, was Chaplain at Columbia university from 2022 through August 2024. No mention has been made (to my knowledge) of a replacement for Fr. Landry at Columbia.
Residence houses on or near campus obviously do not equate to episcopally appointed chaplains, but the Ivy League schools referenced are not Catholic universities. So Episcopal appointments of chaplains likely does not apply.
Additional past Opus Dei chaplains for Ivy League Universities included:
• Rev. Charles John McCloskey III at Princeton ca 1985 to 1990 then unofficial chaplaincy through 1998 from a numerary residence near campus
• Rev. Guillermo Porras, aka “Father Bill”, back in 1953 was appointed by Richard Cardinal Cushing as chaplain of the Harvard Catholic Club. Fr. Porras quit in June 1960.
That’s all the sparse history I have. Current info may not be so easy to come by. That’s why we subscribe to The Pillar. 💪
As someone who was actually a grad student at Brown at this time this article was published and still lives in Providence to this day, I did hear occasional rumors that there was an Opus Dei house in Providence, I never saw any presence on campus.
ETA: Their website seems straight out of 1998 but does mention 2024 events. Maybe it died and has been reborn. (For real PVD inside baseball, it seems it likely moved at some point, as there is a Mathewson Street but it is now on Bowen Street. That is quite a bit closer to campus if there is any such intention.) https://www.mathewsonhouse.org/
But I will agree hardly a surprise that McCloskey was able to worm himself into an Ivy.
As a mom of a 2024 CUA graduate and a Residence Hall minister, I can’t say enough about Fr. Aquinas, Fr. Joseph and their staff.
However, my hope is that they consider bringing FOCUS to campus…something that has been pushed for and has been denied..not because of finances but because “it’s bad form” for THE Catholic University of America to have an outside student Catholic ministry come in. Something needs to happen to enrich their otherwise struggling CM program…it will be interesting to see what happens.
To be clear, this didn’t come from the Dominicans. This was a posture when the Franciscans were there and maybe before. Always surprising to me given the positive attitude toward FOCUS from President Garvey.
I’m a CUA alumni, class of 2016. I just attended an alumni dinner where the school boasted a commitment of $518 million for the “Light the Way campaign”. I’m not an expert on how money is spent on capital expenditures vs endowments vs operating expenses, but surely some of that money could be leveraged for a creative solution to this $80 million problem.
My thoughts exactly. I thought the LTW campaign was a huge success, and now we are being told they are 30M in the hole? I think a big part of the issue is that CUA is still tuiition based as opposed to endowment-based. In fairness, CUA got into the undergrad business far later than most schools, and it continues to play catch-up with the endowment and in construction of new buildings and dorms.
This is only going to get worse because it’s downstream of a demographic freefall. Universities, of course, blow unfathomable amounts of money on athletics programs and facilities. But tuition will only drop further because there are no kids in the US left to go earn 4-year degrees. We are below replacement birthrate, and elementary/middle schools in dense population centers (cities!) are already seeing major downsizing trends in class sizes. Once that wave hits the unis, will decimate higher ed in the US. In 2005-2015, the peak of US undergraduate enrollment rates, almost every kid with a pulse was going to college. Now, the tide is pulling out hard and fast. There are not enough kids to send to college, and an even smaller amount of Catholic kids to go to college (US Catholics are at the same birthrate as the general public), and more and more kids (especially Catholic) don’t want to take on debt to earn completely worthless degrees that offer no opportunities.
Long-term, this is not a money issue. It won’t be fixed by balancing a budget and cutting bloat. It’s a demographic crisis that is totally outside a board’s control, and inescapable. Most Catholic colleges will close (maybe even CUA) and most Catholic schools K-12 will close too.
I’m telling you, this is something you can’t escape or avoid. Bishops: start closing your schools strategically now, or risk another financial crisis. My parish went $2M in debt just because we kept our K-8 school open 2 years longer than we should have.
Depending on the area, I am somewhat more optimistic about K-8 schools, just because of the horrendous job the public schools are doing. But there are challenges everywhere.
The enrollment cliff is real, and not new or unexpected, but it's also geographical. Here in TX we have a very bright future demographically, but I would be concerned if I lived somewhere like CA or NY.
I studied at CUA for many years. The deficit isn't news to anyone, but the budget cuts are greatly dissapointing. Campus Ministry, for all its faults, helped me convert to the faith and ignited the faith of a great number of my best friends in college, and the fact that they're gutting it while letting more 'profitable' parts (aka athletics) off the hook is terrible.
The pastoral question here is, how do I tell the good people of my parish, who are already generous with their money, that they should chip in to the Second Collection for CUA, when the university hasn't been able to demonstrate good stewardship? The university does a fine job training priests and religious; but could the faithful's money go directly to seminaries or vocations offices instead?
Just an altogether sad situation. Ss. Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, & Albert the Great, pray for us!
I’m not sure where you get the idea that the university hasn’t been demonstrating good stewardship. It was growing better until the pandemic hit it hard. Even this year, there was reason to be optimistic about hitting its enrollment goals until the federal government botched student aid awards, and by the time it was fixed, 75-100 students had chosen a safer option.
The capital campaign raised a lot of money for key campus buildings and projects, but not much for general operations.
There are bureaucratic issues at the university, but there’s also been a concerted effort to get better all while holding fast to Catholic identity.
They’ve finally decided to pull off the band-aid and admit that the old model isn’t going to be sustainable and they have to live within their means. They’re even apparently trying to do so “synodally.”
Many Catholic colleges will have to close, but if “The Catholic University of America” closes, the loss to the country’s Catholics will be large indeed.
Maybe I'm wrong then. When I was there (which wasn't that long ago), there was a general resentment towards the bureaucratic side of things, but that's also normal among any university students. At first, the university was greatly excited about constructing new dorms and renovating the existing ones, and had all sorts of projects planned. We'll see what happens (and what 'synodality' means).
They're definitely not "gutting" campus ministry. What the article refers to is cutting a program where some undergraduates get free room and board in exchange for doing some lay ministry tasks, if that's the right expression. They do additional outreach to students in dorms and so on.
There's still a very strong chaplaincy, headed up by Dominicans but supplemented by sisters and priests from a few additional orders.
Yes, Professor, I know what the student ministry program is, and that Campus Ministry will continue without that part of its mission. I agree that the Office is strong and committed to the New Evangelization; but the student ministry program had a big impact on my time there, and that of many of my closest friends. Obviously, if we're in that much debt it makes sense to close it - it's just very unfortunate.
The board and administration should be help accountable for the poor fiscal management. It's fine that they are cutting the waste in the budget, but that should have been forseen and done earlier. There are really no excuses.
I wonder how much money is sent to CUA from the National Collection and is the USCCB audting and monitoring the university? I certainly hope so given that the people in the pews are sending money in the nation collection.
Is there a reason CUA needs to spend a lot of money on athletics? Have nice enough facilities for intramural or club sports, but this is CUA. Surely it doesn’t have competitive athletic teams. And if it does, why?
Division 3 is really only a few steps ahead of club sports. No scholarships. I cannot speak for CUA, but at most schools students seem to like a sports presence on campus even if not big-time.
I like sports and find them to be beneficial. Maybe they should pick one or two sports to compete in at the conference level and leave the rest club, with far less expense invested into facilities, coaching, insurance, whatever. It just seems like an easy area to manage nice but unnecessary expenses.
Sports at this level are a marketing tactic to get students to enroll, especially boys who are going to college in fewer numbers than girls. If a spot on a D3 team gets a butt in a seat with some tuition revenue, that's a good outcome for the college.
How much of CUA's deficit derives from the pandemic enrollment dip? That hit a lot of schools hard, but it was also a fairly unusual situation, to say the least.
CUA is way behind the curve when it comes to distance learning graduate theology, especially for graduate degrees. I went looking for an MA Theology program awhile ago, considered CUA but they had nothing to offer for that degree. I live too far from them to attend in person, plus I have a day job (which also means I don't need financial aid). Even if I lived near DC, the area around CUA is kind of iffy for driving over there to attend evening programs in person. I now am partway through my distance learning MA program at another good school that offers both brick-and-mortar and distance learning programs, and is getting my and others' money. I also considered Augustine Institute which seems to be doing a land-office business in online MA degrees though I ultimately chose to go elsewhere.
The brick-and-mortar schools really need to think outside the box of traditional young students. A lot of working people would like to learn more theology from a respected institution and have money to pay for tuition. If you don't offer them a decent program then you're simply losing business and losing money.
A PRACTICAL IDEA FOR YOUR REVENUES TO RAPIDLY EXPLODE:
I've been saddened to read this post, I love Jesus with all my heart and sincerely believe the Catholic Church is the original Church of Christ before the establishment of the more than 45,000 man-made so-called "Christian" denominations globally, with over 200 of them being the United States alone!
RIDICULOUS!
It's heartbreaking to see the 24% decrease in the tuition of the Catholic University of America since 2018, which I believe is mainly the result of the public perception among conservative Christians that the Pope and Catholic establishment has embraced socialist and globalist principles. These principles have been strongly rejected by Americans, as the results of the 2024 presidential election demonstrates.
The moral of the story is that the church and politics need to stay separate in my humble opinion, if I may dare express it, because I love your church most of all and want it to thrive again. Church leaders need to become the heroes we long to see, courageously resisting all pressure and risk death if they must fighting against the use of religion for political influence by the party in power. Church leaders need to bravely stay focused on spreading only the Truth God expounded to Jesus.
But hopefully, I see a way for the original Catholic Church of God to rapidly regain its popularity and power by shifting its focus to spreading the genuine Truth as the scientific proof of God's existence in a way no one can refute or disagree with. I'm a computer scientist with a Masters Degree who has spent almost all her life compiling the information summarized in my 3 minute long post pitching my book revealing the full scientific truth of God's reality in the light of subatomic theory in layman's terms in a crystal clear way everyone can easily follow without knowing math or physics. The understanding gained also uncovers the lost core teaching of both Jesus and John the Baptist, please find out why in only 3 minutes: https://logicalproofofgod.substack.com/p/understand-how-to-contact-god-for
I know that the voice of the Truth has intrinsic convincing power, I'm convinced what I'm presenting is 100% backed by science without any holes in it -- if you do find any holes, please let everyone know in the public comments which I'll never delete. As far as I know, the simple scientific proof I present is irrefutable, therefore it will spread and take over sooner or later, perhaps after I've also mastered social media marketing.
The lost Truth of the core teaching of the Bible will spread and take over as I'm convinced, either with the Catholic Church spreading it or without the Catholic Church as its influence may keep dwindling, may Jesus and God prevent this from continuing!
If, after spending the 3 minutes needed to read the pitch for my book, you agree it contains the true interpretation of the Bible's core teaching and the logical proof of God's existence which can finally end atheism on earth and let everyone see the Kingdom of God within them, please let me know if your university would like to include it in its teachings, please let me know if you agree teaching the lost core Truth of the Bible can make your university's popularity rapidly explode if God's willing. Please direct message me on my Substack or call me at 850-867-5449.
With my Masters degree I can teach in any college, and I'd like to keep calling what I'd like to teach Contemplative Prayer in Jesus's name.
As someone who forked over about 60 grand for two daughters to attend a small, state university (and they also borrowed that much again from the feds and a private bank), only to make less money after graduation than two of my sons with a trade school degree and no education respectively, I don't really care about universities having money problems. Kids and parents are waking up to the reality that the American university degree, and all the years of public school preparation for it, is just a bad economic investment. Add in the watered-down Catholicism of most of these so-called Catholic schools with their pride masses and LGBT sponsored speakers, I say let them all burn.
And yet last year they had over $500 million campaign. Endowment (based on quick google search so I KNOW it's correct) seems to be $200-300 million. Most colleges only have a small percent of their income from tuition, so this is not surprising news. Seems to be in the same vein as every university which cries out about it's financial state and it needs more money. Even Harvard does this, with it's $50 billion endowment. People still donate money to them! Crazy.
CUA has serious problems. Not only has enrollment declined, but they have been on a decade long path of lowering admission standards. Further, their historic admissions network of East coast Catholic high schools is declining. And even Bill Bennett admitted that their attempts to signal 'orthodoxy' are not helping admissions or academic standards.
Expansion of adult education degree programs, both in-person and online, might generate some revenue, provided they aren't prohibitively expensive. If working professionals could attend night or Saturday classes, or attend online, and earn advanced degrees in fields like Philosophy, Theology, or History, I think the demand would be there. Of course, those degrees would still need to be rigorous and not watered-down.
There are two questions that should instantly and instantly be asked in any story about a deficit at a college before any reader can assess the depth of the problem.
(1) What percentage of the operating budget is the shortfall?
$30 million is one problem in a $300 million budget, and a different problem in a $600 or $900 million budget.
(2) What is the normal teaching load per professor?
I discovered that one serious and prestigious institution asking for my money had a normal teaching load of 3 courses A YEAR per professor. And they explained that they were matching the teaching load at other institutions of their level. Therefore, to assess the problem for CUA, we need to know the normal professorial teaching load.
I don't know much about CUA in particular, but IIRC, the trend in academia has been escalating administrative roles, to the point of some schools having more administrative than teaching staff. A cut of 12% there is probably good, but I'd be curious to know how much was there before and after the cut.
(I also see this in K-12 education in my area a lot, and while I think good administration is essential, I think there's a lot of non-essential make-work type positions that can hide out there.)
Spending on athletics programs and facilities overshadows administrative staffing in most US institutions.
Building and maintaining separate full-size facilities for every varsity sport, paying coaching and training staff, paying for scholarships (which get incredibly pricey if you want competitive recruiting)… these are all far more costly than hiring 10 random office staff.
That's a good possibility too that I had not considered! My tiny D3 school was not known for its athletics, though we did have some multi-use facilities. I don't know what the situation is like now, though.
CUA is also Division 3.
CUA doesn’t offer a whole lot in the way of competitive sports. Where was that cost cited in the article?
https://www.catholic.edu/student-experience/athletics
Sorry - I missed it buried here: “and student services by 53% (this latter number includes not only student life and athletics expenses, but also enrollment management, admissions, and marketing and communications).”
Surely an SOS request for wire transfer has gone out to the Napa Institute by now, right?
Will the discontinued residence chaplains be replaced by an Ivy League-like Opus Dei Chaplain? Or will someone from the Catholic Information Center take on additional on-campus CUA duties?
https://cicdc.org/
The Dominican Province of St Joseph (opeast.org) was invited to take over the campus ministry at CUA before the previous President, John Garvey, left office. But I understand that, perhaps, in some people’s estimation, that could be just as unappealing as an “Ivy League-like Opus Dei chaplain”?
Several of the Ivy League schools also have Dominicans now. In some cases this is an affiliation of long standing. (I assume from your user name you know all of this already.) Not sure where the Opus Dei chaplains are, if anywhere.
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/catholicism-campus
This Commonweal article from 2006 is clearly out of date. It would need to be updated to current. The author is now an associate editor for the Jesuit magazine America.
Back then he reported: “It’s no secret that Catholic conservatives target elite schools. Opus Dei has set its sights on the Ivy League: in addition to its residence at Princeton, the group operates houses near Brown and Harvard.”
The Opus Dei chaplain at Columbia was recently promoted into a global missionary leadership role. Fr. Roger Landry, an Opus Dei priest and chaplain for New York City’s Leonine Forum Program, was Chaplain at Columbia university from 2022 through August 2024. No mention has been made (to my knowledge) of a replacement for Fr. Landry at Columbia.
https://onefamilyinmission.org/father-roger-j-landry-appointed-as-new-national-director-of-the-pontifical-mission-societies-usa/
Residence houses on or near campus obviously do not equate to episcopally appointed chaplains, but the Ivy League schools referenced are not Catholic universities. So Episcopal appointments of chaplains likely does not apply.
Additional past Opus Dei chaplains for Ivy League Universities included:
• Rev. Charles John McCloskey III at Princeton ca 1985 to 1990 then unofficial chaplaincy through 1998 from a numerary residence near campus
• Rev. Guillermo Porras, aka “Father Bill”, back in 1953 was appointed by Richard Cardinal Cushing as chaplain of the Harvard Catholic Club. Fr. Porras quit in June 1960.
That’s all the sparse history I have. Current info may not be so easy to come by. That’s why we subscribe to The Pillar. 💪
As someone who was actually a grad student at Brown at this time this article was published and still lives in Providence to this day, I did hear occasional rumors that there was an Opus Dei house in Providence, I never saw any presence on campus.
ETA: Their website seems straight out of 1998 but does mention 2024 events. Maybe it died and has been reborn. (For real PVD inside baseball, it seems it likely moved at some point, as there is a Mathewson Street but it is now on Bowen Street. That is quite a bit closer to campus if there is any such intention.) https://www.mathewsonhouse.org/
But I will agree hardly a surprise that McCloskey was able to worm himself into an Ivy.
As a mom of a 2024 CUA graduate and a Residence Hall minister, I can’t say enough about Fr. Aquinas, Fr. Joseph and their staff.
However, my hope is that they consider bringing FOCUS to campus…something that has been pushed for and has been denied..not because of finances but because “it’s bad form” for THE Catholic University of America to have an outside student Catholic ministry come in. Something needs to happen to enrich their otherwise struggling CM program…it will be interesting to see what happens.
I didn’t know about this situation. The Province of St Joseph works very closely and well with FOCUS in a number of other campus ministries.
Right?!
To be clear, this didn’t come from the Dominicans. This was a posture when the Franciscans were there and maybe before. Always surprising to me given the positive attitude toward FOCUS from President Garvey.
Aaahh…got it
I’m a CUA alumni, class of 2016. I just attended an alumni dinner where the school boasted a commitment of $518 million for the “Light the Way campaign”. I’m not an expert on how money is spent on capital expenditures vs endowments vs operating expenses, but surely some of that money could be leveraged for a creative solution to this $80 million problem.
My thoughts exactly. I thought the LTW campaign was a huge success, and now we are being told they are 30M in the hole? I think a big part of the issue is that CUA is still tuiition based as opposed to endowment-based. In fairness, CUA got into the undergrad business far later than most schools, and it continues to play catch-up with the endowment and in construction of new buildings and dorms.
This is only going to get worse because it’s downstream of a demographic freefall. Universities, of course, blow unfathomable amounts of money on athletics programs and facilities. But tuition will only drop further because there are no kids in the US left to go earn 4-year degrees. We are below replacement birthrate, and elementary/middle schools in dense population centers (cities!) are already seeing major downsizing trends in class sizes. Once that wave hits the unis, will decimate higher ed in the US. In 2005-2015, the peak of US undergraduate enrollment rates, almost every kid with a pulse was going to college. Now, the tide is pulling out hard and fast. There are not enough kids to send to college, and an even smaller amount of Catholic kids to go to college (US Catholics are at the same birthrate as the general public), and more and more kids (especially Catholic) don’t want to take on debt to earn completely worthless degrees that offer no opportunities.
Long-term, this is not a money issue. It won’t be fixed by balancing a budget and cutting bloat. It’s a demographic crisis that is totally outside a board’s control, and inescapable. Most Catholic colleges will close (maybe even CUA) and most Catholic schools K-12 will close too.
I’m telling you, this is something you can’t escape or avoid. Bishops: start closing your schools strategically now, or risk another financial crisis. My parish went $2M in debt just because we kept our K-8 school open 2 years longer than we should have.
Depending on the area, I am somewhat more optimistic about K-8 schools, just because of the horrendous job the public schools are doing. But there are challenges everywhere.
Meanwhile my parish K-8 school is expanding because of a huge influx of kids. They all must have moved from your area to here.
The enrollment cliff is real, and not new or unexpected, but it's also geographical. Here in TX we have a very bright future demographically, but I would be concerned if I lived somewhere like CA or NY.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/are-colleges-really-facing-an-enrollment-cliff/
I studied at CUA for many years. The deficit isn't news to anyone, but the budget cuts are greatly dissapointing. Campus Ministry, for all its faults, helped me convert to the faith and ignited the faith of a great number of my best friends in college, and the fact that they're gutting it while letting more 'profitable' parts (aka athletics) off the hook is terrible.
The pastoral question here is, how do I tell the good people of my parish, who are already generous with their money, that they should chip in to the Second Collection for CUA, when the university hasn't been able to demonstrate good stewardship? The university does a fine job training priests and religious; but could the faithful's money go directly to seminaries or vocations offices instead?
Just an altogether sad situation. Ss. Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, & Albert the Great, pray for us!
I’m not sure where you get the idea that the university hasn’t been demonstrating good stewardship. It was growing better until the pandemic hit it hard. Even this year, there was reason to be optimistic about hitting its enrollment goals until the federal government botched student aid awards, and by the time it was fixed, 75-100 students had chosen a safer option.
The capital campaign raised a lot of money for key campus buildings and projects, but not much for general operations.
There are bureaucratic issues at the university, but there’s also been a concerted effort to get better all while holding fast to Catholic identity.
They’ve finally decided to pull off the band-aid and admit that the old model isn’t going to be sustainable and they have to live within their means. They’re even apparently trying to do so “synodally.”
Many Catholic colleges will have to close, but if “The Catholic University of America” closes, the loss to the country’s Catholics will be large indeed.
Maybe I'm wrong then. When I was there (which wasn't that long ago), there was a general resentment towards the bureaucratic side of things, but that's also normal among any university students. At first, the university was greatly excited about constructing new dorms and renovating the existing ones, and had all sorts of projects planned. We'll see what happens (and what 'synodality' means).
They're definitely not "gutting" campus ministry. What the article refers to is cutting a program where some undergraduates get free room and board in exchange for doing some lay ministry tasks, if that's the right expression. They do additional outreach to students in dorms and so on.
There's still a very strong chaplaincy, headed up by Dominicans but supplemented by sisters and priests from a few additional orders.
Yes, Professor, I know what the student ministry program is, and that Campus Ministry will continue without that part of its mission. I agree that the Office is strong and committed to the New Evangelization; but the student ministry program had a big impact on my time there, and that of many of my closest friends. Obviously, if we're in that much debt it makes sense to close it - it's just very unfortunate.
The board and administration should be help accountable for the poor fiscal management. It's fine that they are cutting the waste in the budget, but that should have been forseen and done earlier. There are really no excuses.
I wonder how much money is sent to CUA from the National Collection and is the USCCB audting and monitoring the university? I certainly hope so given that the people in the pews are sending money in the nation collection.
Is there a reason CUA needs to spend a lot of money on athletics? Have nice enough facilities for intramural or club sports, but this is CUA. Surely it doesn’t have competitive athletic teams. And if it does, why?
Division 3 is really only a few steps ahead of club sports. No scholarships. I cannot speak for CUA, but at most schools students seem to like a sports presence on campus even if not big-time.
I like sports and find them to be beneficial. Maybe they should pick one or two sports to compete in at the conference level and leave the rest club, with far less expense invested into facilities, coaching, insurance, whatever. It just seems like an easy area to manage nice but unnecessary expenses.
Sports at this level are a marketing tactic to get students to enroll, especially boys who are going to college in fewer numbers than girls. If a spot on a D3 team gets a butt in a seat with some tuition revenue, that's a good outcome for the college.
Fair point.
How much of CUA's deficit derives from the pandemic enrollment dip? That hit a lot of schools hard, but it was also a fairly unusual situation, to say the least.
CUA is way behind the curve when it comes to distance learning graduate theology, especially for graduate degrees. I went looking for an MA Theology program awhile ago, considered CUA but they had nothing to offer for that degree. I live too far from them to attend in person, plus I have a day job (which also means I don't need financial aid). Even if I lived near DC, the area around CUA is kind of iffy for driving over there to attend evening programs in person. I now am partway through my distance learning MA program at another good school that offers both brick-and-mortar and distance learning programs, and is getting my and others' money. I also considered Augustine Institute which seems to be doing a land-office business in online MA degrees though I ultimately chose to go elsewhere.
The brick-and-mortar schools really need to think outside the box of traditional young students. A lot of working people would like to learn more theology from a respected institution and have money to pay for tuition. If you don't offer them a decent program then you're simply losing business and losing money.
A PRACTICAL IDEA FOR YOUR REVENUES TO RAPIDLY EXPLODE:
I've been saddened to read this post, I love Jesus with all my heart and sincerely believe the Catholic Church is the original Church of Christ before the establishment of the more than 45,000 man-made so-called "Christian" denominations globally, with over 200 of them being the United States alone!
RIDICULOUS!
It's heartbreaking to see the 24% decrease in the tuition of the Catholic University of America since 2018, which I believe is mainly the result of the public perception among conservative Christians that the Pope and Catholic establishment has embraced socialist and globalist principles. These principles have been strongly rejected by Americans, as the results of the 2024 presidential election demonstrates.
The moral of the story is that the church and politics need to stay separate in my humble opinion, if I may dare express it, because I love your church most of all and want it to thrive again. Church leaders need to become the heroes we long to see, courageously resisting all pressure and risk death if they must fighting against the use of religion for political influence by the party in power. Church leaders need to bravely stay focused on spreading only the Truth God expounded to Jesus.
But hopefully, I see a way for the original Catholic Church of God to rapidly regain its popularity and power by shifting its focus to spreading the genuine Truth as the scientific proof of God's existence in a way no one can refute or disagree with. I'm a computer scientist with a Masters Degree who has spent almost all her life compiling the information summarized in my 3 minute long post pitching my book revealing the full scientific truth of God's reality in the light of subatomic theory in layman's terms in a crystal clear way everyone can easily follow without knowing math or physics. The understanding gained also uncovers the lost core teaching of both Jesus and John the Baptist, please find out why in only 3 minutes: https://logicalproofofgod.substack.com/p/understand-how-to-contact-god-for
I know that the voice of the Truth has intrinsic convincing power, I'm convinced what I'm presenting is 100% backed by science without any holes in it -- if you do find any holes, please let everyone know in the public comments which I'll never delete. As far as I know, the simple scientific proof I present is irrefutable, therefore it will spread and take over sooner or later, perhaps after I've also mastered social media marketing.
The lost Truth of the core teaching of the Bible will spread and take over as I'm convinced, either with the Catholic Church spreading it or without the Catholic Church as its influence may keep dwindling, may Jesus and God prevent this from continuing!
If, after spending the 3 minutes needed to read the pitch for my book, you agree it contains the true interpretation of the Bible's core teaching and the logical proof of God's existence which can finally end atheism on earth and let everyone see the Kingdom of God within them, please let me know if your university would like to include it in its teachings, please let me know if you agree teaching the lost core Truth of the Bible can make your university's popularity rapidly explode if God's willing. Please direct message me on my Substack or call me at 850-867-5449.
With my Masters degree I can teach in any college, and I'd like to keep calling what I'd like to teach Contemplative Prayer in Jesus's name.
As someone who forked over about 60 grand for two daughters to attend a small, state university (and they also borrowed that much again from the feds and a private bank), only to make less money after graduation than two of my sons with a trade school degree and no education respectively, I don't really care about universities having money problems. Kids and parents are waking up to the reality that the American university degree, and all the years of public school preparation for it, is just a bad economic investment. Add in the watered-down Catholicism of most of these so-called Catholic schools with their pride masses and LGBT sponsored speakers, I say let them all burn.
Don't worry. CUA has long been quite nasty to LGBT students.
And yet last year they had over $500 million campaign. Endowment (based on quick google search so I KNOW it's correct) seems to be $200-300 million. Most colleges only have a small percent of their income from tuition, so this is not surprising news. Seems to be in the same vein as every university which cries out about it's financial state and it needs more money. Even Harvard does this, with it's $50 billion endowment. People still donate money to them! Crazy.
Cut the number of administrators in half, eliminate the "Diversity/Equity Inclusion Task Force" (https://ncsss.catholic.edu/about-us/diversity-equity-inclusion/index.html), and fire anyone who thought investing in the solar panels farm project was a good idea. That's for starters...
CUA has serious problems. Not only has enrollment declined, but they have been on a decade long path of lowering admission standards. Further, their historic admissions network of East coast Catholic high schools is declining. And even Bill Bennett admitted that their attempts to signal 'orthodoxy' are not helping admissions or academic standards.
Expansion of adult education degree programs, both in-person and online, might generate some revenue, provided they aren't prohibitively expensive. If working professionals could attend night or Saturday classes, or attend online, and earn advanced degrees in fields like Philosophy, Theology, or History, I think the demand would be there. Of course, those degrees would still need to be rigorous and not watered-down.
There are two questions that should instantly and instantly be asked in any story about a deficit at a college before any reader can assess the depth of the problem.
(1) What percentage of the operating budget is the shortfall?
$30 million is one problem in a $300 million budget, and a different problem in a $600 or $900 million budget.
(2) What is the normal teaching load per professor?
I discovered that one serious and prestigious institution asking for my money had a normal teaching load of 3 courses A YEAR per professor. And they explained that they were matching the teaching load at other institutions of their level. Therefore, to assess the problem for CUA, we need to know the normal professorial teaching load.