Most of the faculty are fools. I thinks a lot of alumni and donors(the only voices that should mean anything) stand behind the president and his efforts.

Sure, it is mostly dissident faculty who are unhappy. While I was aware of the tone deaf comments on shooting black people, I was unaware of Michigan St´s p.r. weasel being hired. Changing some names on campus makes for a good smokescreen to distract from this stinking pile of...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/leadership-questions-mount-at-gwu-where-officials-plan-layoffs-salary-cuts/2020/08/25/57363dbc-e3c1-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html

Nobody should feel enthusiastic about acknowledging this but GW's pricing, which I will affectionately refer to as the SJT pricing model, should have resulted in GW popping up on most "worst value" college/university lists should such lists exist.  It's akin to the person who will only eat in very high-priced restaurants because the food there must be better.  As most of us know, this is not necessarily the case.  

The SJT model succeeded on certain levels.  GW annually received publicity for being the most expensive school in the country, or one of them.  In this sense, any publicity was deemed good publicity.  High tuition in the minds of some must naturally equate to a commensurate value in education, again, something we know may not necessarily the case.  Nevertheless, because of the perceptions of some, a high price tag resulted in a more intelligent crop of students to choose from as well as an upgrade in the credentials of professors who wanted to teach at GW.  

Better qualified students + better credentialed professors should have added up to better USNWR rankings, not worse.  The problems began roughly 20 years ago when the school began submitting faulty data to USNWR.  As an example, one year, the school reported 71% of its students ranked in the top 10% of their high school classes when this figure in reality was closer to 58%.  This resulted in GW going unranked in 2012 after being nationally ranked in or around the low 50's.  Today, the school's ranking is tied for 70th but guess what?  Tuition is still inordinately high.  The SJT model proved to fool some folks for a while but once exposed in the rankings, it's hard to keep fooling folks forever.

So, one of two things really needed to happen.  One, tuition would need to come down considerably.  This would be an admission that the value of a GW education isn't quite what the school said it was for many years.  (Sure, we knew the truth.  But you weren't supposed to know that we already knew the truth.)  That's admittedly a tough pill to swallow.  That leaves doing what the school is in the process of doing.  Keep tuition around where it's been but focus on generating a STEM specialty for the school while enrolling substantially fewer students.  In other words, make every attempt to deliver an elite education to a more elite group of students for an elite price. 

This means that certain majors will be phased out leaving some professors and administrators disgruntled and perhaps even unemployed.  Change can suck but sometimes, it has to happen.  It's a shame but the vocal opposition is to be expected by those who will ultimately be left out in the cold.  In fact, why did the Post even write this article in the first place?  If you were to tell me that the writer was tipped by one of those disgruntled individuals, I wouldn't exactly be shocked. 

Gwmayhem, I agree with some of what you wrote.  You also wrote: "That leaves doing what the school is in the process of doing.  Keep tuition around where it's been but focus on generating a STEM specialty for the school while enrolling substantially fewer students.  In other words, make every attempt to deliver an elite education to a more elite group of students for an elite price. " 

I agree the school should do this, if in fact that is what they are doing.   However, it is 2020... it is not feasible to enroll fewer students, and deliver an elite education to a more elite group of students.  It is not like when most of us went to school in 1900s and early 2000s.  For the last number of years the school has been attempting to be more inclusive/diverse to non-elite students (like I was).  By enrolling fewer students, and of those there are more non-elite, the average testing scores and GPA will be lowered, which in turn will reflect in ratings.  

Pre-SJT I was not exactly convinced GW was a good value for the money, and SJT´s exponential tuition/fee increases did not change my opinion. These are tough times and no one on campus should expect to avoid budget cuts. HOWEVER, by failing to address the vision behind veering away from the liberal arts areas that the school has built its reputation on (SIA, GW Law, PoliComm, etc.) to areas where GW has no competitive advantage (physics? maths?) while tuning out dialog with factulty and students and THEN hiring someone involved in covering up child rape at Michigan St... Seems Mr. LeBlanc is alienating people for no reason.

 

Tennessee Colonial wrote:

When has The Post ever written a nice thing about GW? It always have been Negative. 

I will admit to wondering if this story shakes up Rice Hall the way a previous Post story shook up the Athletic Department. As the District´s largest private landlord, GWU should expect scrutiny from the District´s main media outlet...

Not so sure Dr. Mike. GW is soon going to find itself in the cross hairs of being an overpriced private institution that does not deliver elite education. This pandemic is causing a fundamental reassessment of both the delivery and cost of education. A lot of warts in the delivery of college education are being exposed now and the cost of elite education is becoming out of the price range of most except the wealthy and the very poor. The guy who makes $150k a year is having trouble because he can't afford the high cost and he won't get much assistance. Add to that the fundamental question about incurring a huge amount of debt to go to school and you better have an elite payoff. Schools like GW with a relative high price tag but not a commensurate reputation or ranking will struggle mightily in this new era if the value proposition is not there. The top 30-40 private schools will have their niche because they can deliver elite results.The squeeze will be placed on all private schools with a high price tag but who are not elite. So when you say GW will still be standing long after we are gone, I think the jury is out on that one and it will depend largely on the value proposition GW offers moving forward.

Last edited by GWRising (8/27/2020 4:33 pm)

GW as a STEM school doesn't make sense.  The main drawing point of GW is that you are in Washington, DC.  You don't draw the kids who want to do math and science.  You draw the kids who are interested in Politics, Government, internal Relations, Business, Law and Media.  If I ran this University, would deprioritize STEM, focus on these programs, which are your best graduate school programs, and put together a top notch externship program like you see at Northeastern's law school.  You make the selling point that if you want to be a player in DC and get the connections to get a job right out of college, you go to GW.  That's your selling point.  Any school can do STEM.  Not every school can do this.  Play to your strengths.  

GW69 wrote:

Porter 71–so right on.It would be awesome to excel ar everything-but as it stands we are perfectly set-up
to be a premier provider of the disciplines you mention.

Except not as many want those disciplines any more. STEM is being pushed hard at the high school level and that translates up. That's where the most jobs are and most people are now looking at college as a ROI proposition given its very high cost. The problem is not that GW is offering/focusing on STEM in this environment. The problem is that GW is not yet good enough at it to be elite.