Campus Expansion

[ChitownSpaceForRent]

So I know we're really excited about the potential to expand campus and build new buildings but I'm with my sister on a tour of Iowa right now, who is just ahead of MU in the rankings and they are absolutely killing it on expansion right now.

They have 1 billion dollars worth of building projects going up right now, so it's nice that Marquette is expanding but so is everyone else, and at a much higher rate.

[GGGG]

They are also three times bigger than Marquette.  It is completely inaccurate to say that "everyone" is expanding "at a much higher rate."

[ChitownSpaceForRent]

They are also three times bigger than Marquette.  It is completely inaccurate to say that "everyone" is expanding "at a much higher rate."

I think what I meant to say is that if MU wants to jump in the rankings, it's gonna take much more than a new jes res and a new athletics facility.

[mu03eng]

It's true there is an arms race amongst universities right now, especially with what I would call auxiliary buildings (dorm and recreational space, ie things not directly tied to education).  However, I don't think MU wins by keeping up with the joneses.

The price of a college education is absolutely the next bubble to bust....those universities that are all in on the orgy of building, costs be damned, will fall very hard in the next 5-15 years.  MU needs to do targeted growth but would be much better served keep cost growth low and focus on opportunities where there is shared cost/risk with industry/real world partners.

MU has zero issue attracting students right now....in fact they are looking at reducing the number of students they attract but increase the quality* of the student overall.

*quality isn't a great word to use there, but it's a very complicated explanation...basically becoming more picky in who we thing would value MU experience and will be successful down the road.

[PBRme]

Thank goodness they weren't looking for quality in the 80's, or I would be wearing a red W.

[4everwarriors]

Public vs private, hey? Dorms with amenities are the competition along with state of the art rec. centers. Gotta somehow raise your endowment to piss with da big boys, ai na?

[Chicos' Buzz Scandal Countdown]

Facilities are only one part of the criteria for university rankings. Not disagreeing with you that it is important. Per http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/ranking-criteria-and-weights I'm realizing more and more how little undergrad rankings reflect a useful measure.

One of the largest components is what high school counselors think of the university's reputation. This is so pointless compared with the result of the degree. If you want to be an engineer, who cares if your counselor knows if that school is strong, as long as the reputation with recruiters is strong.

I'm mid-MBA myself. While graduate school is a different animal, it illustrates how the "average joe" who doesn't care about business schools might be misguided on "best schools." Sure, Harvard and Stanford are always safe bets, but Booth, Darden and Tuck are consistently ranked higher by The Economist

http://www.economist.com/whichmba/full-time-mba-ranking

Totally irrelevant factors go into the average person's impression of what the best schools are. Most might assume Ivy Leagues are always the best schools. By B-School rankings (and others, I assume), you'd choose Booth or Darden over Cornell, Yale or Oxford ten times out of ten.

Bottom line is reputation to a generalist like some high school counselor is an asinine metric to place such a high weight behind. I want to see MU jump in the polls, but there are some of those ranking criteria that I honestly don't give two craps about.

[GGGG]

Nice facilities attract students, both of quality and quantity.  Nice facilities also impact the University's reputation as well.  I think Marquette not only realizes this, but they have taken many steps to improve their facilities.  They have improved its law school, engineering and dental schools as a first step.  Sounds like they are going to be concentrating on athletic performance and business as a next step.  I'm sure residence halls are part of this.

[Chicos' Buzz Scandal Countdown]

Quick link for anyone interested.... http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=faculty_scholarship

Points out how the academic reputation for the top 10 Law Schools is essentially unchanged in the last 50 years. This is becoming a component of rankings that would be similar to assigning points based on how old a school is. There's no point in focusing any resources on this, as the return is low.

I'm not knocking any of the expansion MU is doing - love seeing the university grow.

Personal opinion, however: They need to end the business school and move economics to art & sciences only. I don't think MU Business needs to exist, and I've never heard a differentiating statement from any faculty there on why it is important for MU to exist.

For example, why does it matter that you learn business in the context of a Jesuit university? I believe this can be important, but MU doesn't (in my experience) have any idea how to turn this into compelling differentiation. The only (kind of) consistent thing I have heard is that somehow MU students will be more ethical business leaders. Existing research on the consequences of teaching business ethics suggests that those who take business ethics classes appear to behave no more ethically than those who do not take such classes.

Bottom line: Kill the b-school unless you can have a compelling and differentiated position, and divert those resources toward making the rest of MU that much greater!

[GGGG]

That may be the single, dumbest idea I have heard regarding the future of Marquette.

The business schools is considered a very strong regional school.  It ties Marquette strongly into the Milwaukee and Chicago business community.  And its alumni write checks.  Big checks.  It also enrolls nearly 20% of the University's students.  You can't "divert resources" if you have killed off those resources. 

I am all for schools looking at their programming and dropping those that aren't a value-add.  That isn't the business school.

[Chicos' Buzz Scandal Countdown]

That may be the single, dumbest idea I have heard regarding the future of Marquette.

The business schools is considered a very strong regional school.  It ties Marquette strongly into the Milwaukee and Chicago business community.  And its alumni write checks.  Big checks.  It also enrolls nearly 20% of the University's students.  You can't "divert resources" if you have killed off those resources. 

I am all for schools looking at their programming and dropping those that aren't a value-add.  That isn't the business school.

1) Those check-writing alumni don't seem to support their own program. Straz has been an absolute sh1thole since long before I arrived on campus in 2003. The b-school alumni checks have gone to Law and Comm - all MU business school graduates.
2) Can you cite which rankings support your claim of it's strong regional standing? (Edit: If you can't make the top 150 in your program and are unranked, maybe you should consider a different direction http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/marquette-university-01243) They're on their, what, third or fourth dean to take a stab at this?
3) Should the goal of the university be excellence or profit? Why is it that no actual elite school has an undergraduate business school? (EDIT: My bad on this, there are some elite schools which offer undergrad b-school programs. absolutely wrong on that)

[keefe]

Public vs private, hey? Dorms with amenities are the competition along with state of the art rec. centers. Gotta somehow raise your endowment to piss with da big boys, ai na?

Doesn't Louisville have an avante garde program for attracting talent to campus?

[GGGG]

1) Those check-writing alumni don't seem to support their own program. Straz has been an absolute sh1thole since long before I arrived on campus in 2003. The b-school alumni checks have gone to Law and Comm - all MU business school graduates.

Has a Straz replacement been ever been prioritized?  Is that something that has been pushed as a major fund-raising initiative?  I know that that very recently they have had conversations with people about that.  And even if I believe your assertion that b-school alumni checks have gone to Law and Comm (and I don't at face value), that could be because those actually were university priorities.

2) Can you cite which rankings support your claim of it's strong regional standing? (Edit: If you can't make the top 150 in your program and are unranked, maybe you should consider a different direction http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/marquette-university-01243) They're on their, what, third or fourth dean to take a stab at this?

Your link is for graduate school rankings.  According to Marquette, its undergraduate business program was ranked 93rd in the country by USN&WR.  (Full rankings are behind a paywall.)  So that would make it a strong regional school. 

3) Should the goal of the university be excellence or profit? Why is it that no actual elite school has an undergraduate business school? (EDIT: My bad on this, there are some elite schools which offer undergrad b-school programs. absolutely wrong on that)

You need to be profitable, but you should do so while striving to be "excellent."  I would argue that having the 93rd ranked undergraduate business school at the 86th best national university is no slouch.  If that doesn't meet your definition of "excellence," then that's your deal.

But it would be financially disasterous for Marquette to eliminate its business school. 

[warriorchick]

So I know we're really excited about the potential to expand campus and build new buildings but I'm with my sister on a tour of Iowa right now, who is just ahead of MU in the rankings and they are absolutely killing it on expansion right now.

They have 1 billion dollars worth of building projects going up right now, so it's nice that Marquette is expanding but so is everyone else, and at a much higher rate.

Have you forgotten that the U of Iowa campus was basically destroyed by a flood 5 or 6 years ago? When Chick jr.  took a tour there with Glow in '10, half the buildings were surrounded by cones and police tape.  My guess is much, if not most of the building projects are simply replacing what had already been there.

[warriorchick]

That may be the single, dumbest idea I have heard regarding the future of Marquette.

The business schools is considered a very strong regional school.  It ties Marquette strongly into the Milwaukee and Chicago business community.  And its alumni write checks.  Big checks.  It also enrolls nearly 20% of the University's students.  You can't "divert resources" if you have killed off those resources. 

I am all for schools looking at their programming and dropping those that aren't a value-add.  That isn't the business school.

+1

Not to mention that the B-school has several high-ranking individual programs (accounting, reals-estate, supply chain, etc.).

The places that need to drop their business programs are the unremarkable, smaller private schools.  No one looks at a resume and says, "Whoa!  He's got a marketing degree from Cardinal Stritch!  Set up an interview!"

[ChitownSpaceForRent]

Have you forgotten that the U of Iowa campus was basically destroyed by a flood 5 or 6 years ago? When Chick jr.  took a tour there with Glow in '10, half the buildings were surrounded by cones and police tape.  My guess is much, if not most of the building projects are simply replacing what had already been there.

Didn't know that but I dint think that's the case nowadays. They're tearing down a parking lot to build a new pediatric teaching hospital, so now they're tearing down infrastructure to build new things. Maybe that was the case with the project that finished 2 years ago or so but I don't think that's the case now.

[mu03eng]

+1

Not to mention that the B-school has several high-ranking individual programs (accounting, reals-estate, supply chain, etc.).

The places that need to drop their business programs are the unremarkable, smaller private schools.  No one looks at a resume and says, "Whoa!  He's got a marketing degree from Cardinal Stritch!  Set up an interview!"

+1

Plus the part-time MBA program is a good fit for a lot of working folks to check the box on an MBA degree.  I didn't think the program was very challenging so there could be some improvement there but conceptually it's a good fit with the university mission.

I'd actually go the other way and expand the B-school in terms of it's reach within the university.  B-school needs to create partnerships with the other colleges to generate business related classes for the disciplines.  As an example, the engineering school needs to have engineering in the business environment courses....one of the biggest gaps in engineers generally and with MU specifically is a lack of understanding how engineering needs to work within an environment of profit and loss.  Same could be said for nursing or PT or journalism, etc.

[jficke13]

Not sure if this applies, but with the cost of debt so incredibly low coupled with the fact that everyone kind of tacitly acknowledged the tuition hiking gravy train cannot go on forever, are schools embarking on the capital-intensive projects like real estate expansion and new buildings just "getting in while the getting's good?"

[GGGG]

Not sure if this applies, but with the cost of debt so incredibly low coupled with the fact that everyone kind of tacitly acknowledged the tuition hiking gravy train cannot go on forever, are schools embarking on the capital-intensive projects like real estate expansion and new buildings just "getting in while the getting's good?"

And financing rates are really low.

[GooooMarquette]

Not sure if this applies, but with the cost of debt so incredibly low coupled with the fact that everyone kind of tacitly acknowledged the tuition hiking gravy train cannot go on forever, are schools embarking on the capital-intensive projects like real estate expansion and new buildings just "getting in while the getting's good?"

Maybe so.

But depending on how abruptly the gravy train ends, even today's low-cost debt might end up looking expensive in a few years.

[mu03eng]

Not sure if this applies, but with the cost of debt so incredibly low coupled with the fact that everyone kind of tacitly acknowledged the tuition hiking gravy train cannot go on forever, are schools embarking on the capital-intensive projects like real estate expansion and new buildings just "getting in while the getting's good?"

This is 100% what is going on.  This is why I think the university pricing and debt bubble will burst at some point.  Once student loan interest rates go up and university debt becomes more expensive it will no longer be sustainable.  There is seemingly no connection between the costs that universities incur and the quality of the product they deliver nor a connection to the price they charge.

[GGGG]

Why are people assuming that student loan rates are going to increase?  The federal government makes money...billions of dollars a year...on the Direct  Loan Program.  Students will continue to take out these loans because the benefits of a college education, on average, far outweigh the costs. 

[mu03eng]

Why are people assuming that student loan rates are going to increase?  The federal government makes money...billions of dollars a year...on the Direct  Loan Program.  Students will continue to take out these loans because the benefits of a college education, on average, far outweigh the costs.

Because they are going to have to increase, as the government debt service goes up with increasing interest rates they are going to have to generate more revenue.

[warriorchick]

Didn't know that but I dint think that's the case nowadays. They're tearing down a parking lot to build a new pediatric teaching hospital, so now they're tearing down infrastructure to build new things. Maybe that was the case with the project that finished 2 years ago or so but I don't think that's the case now.

If you are including a new hospital in with campus expansion, then you are not really comparing apples to apples.

That place is a medical care facility as much, if not more, than an place to educate students.  And it has a built-in source of revenue. 

[Eldon]

Here's a big part of the problem:



For-profit colleges are shams.  Kudos to the Obama administration for FINALLY starting to realize this, but, it was way overdue. 

I think these schools should be fined for false advertising.  I also think that they should have their FAFSA funding cut.

EDIT: Editing in order to provide the link for the figure, in case anyoen is interested in reading the soure: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-u-of-phoenix-fleeced-america-2015-10