BY THE TIME THIS ISSUE OF WM IS IN YOUR HANDS, my time as an alumni servant of the College will be over. I’ve served on the national alumni board for 11 of my 26 years as an alumnus, and as a co-founder and leader of the National Capital Association of Wabash Men for another 5 years before that. I’ll move on to some other interests, such as service to my law school and to the cause of adoption and family building. I’ve been fortunate to serve this College, and, at times, to lead in connection with that service. It has been a privilege. Thank you all for that opportunity.
This issue of WM carries the theme “The Wabash Way,” and for my final note as president of the NAWM, I’d like to offer a short meditation on what the way forward—the path ahead for Wabash —might be.
After the last Wabash Trustee Newsletter I received a lot of mail about this particular sentence: “If Wabash is to protect its endowment, it must increase its net tuition revenue—by increasing tuition and reducing aid (in part, by recruiting a greater number of students with the ability to pay all or a substantial portion of stated tuition).” My correspondents worried that this would end what they viewed as the “Wabash Way” of educating “diamonds in the rough.” In the words of one alumnus, if that decision “had been made in 1984 the likelihood is that this steelworker’s son would have a bachelors degree from I.U. hanging on his wall right now.”
Since I’m not a trustee, I urged each of my correspondents to write to that board about their concerns. Still, this is a reality that all of us as Wabash alumni have to face in the “new normal” that exists following the extended economic downturn that began in 2008.
But Wabash is one of the richest schools, you may protest. How can this be? True, we have a $320 million endowment as of last September, “which places Wabash among the highest colleges in the nation in per-student endowment.” Divided by 907 students, that’s an endowment of about $350,000 per student. That probably puts us around 35th in the nation—nowhere near Princeton’s $2.2 million per student (1st), or even Notre Dame’s $521,000 per student (18th), but on a par with Hamilton, Columbia, Haverford, Colby, and Vassar.
Good company to be in? You bet. But Wabash has been fundamentally different from these other institutions in the way it has historically used its endowment income. Vassar has an endowment of $805 million, has an annual budget of around $150 million, and gets 52% of its income from tuition (versus 32% from endowment). Wabash’s budget for the same 2011-12 period was a more modest $46 million, with 42% coming from endowment, and only 35% from tuition.
As the economy took its toll on the endowment (it dropped from $390 to $230 million between September 2007 and March 2009 before recovering to $320 million last fall), there has been less endowment income to drop into the College’s operating budget. And the College had to cut costs close to the bone. It’s simple math that many of us are used to dealing with in other areas of our professional and personal lives, particularly over these past five years.
HERE IS THE WAY FORWARD: There should be some appreciable number of the 900 men who attend Wabash at any given time who should be willing to pay more for this high-quality education.
For too long now, we have been offering an “apology discount” for the Wabash education—sorry that we’re an all-men’s school in a small town in Indiana, so here’s some extra money. That is unnecessary and unwise. Our graduates believe in the Wabash education when they’re here, and after they leave, and the recruitment of Wabash men should reflect that belief as well.
As one of the three all-men’s colleges left in the United States, we should not apologize. To the contrary, we should sell it as the unique and valuable commodity that it is. We should create and expand the market for an all-men’s education. The “Seriously” campaign is a good start, and I’m grateful to our friend Pat White for leading us to that point. There needs to be a whole lot more of that emphasis upon the two unique virtues of Wabash College—its intimacy and its maleness.
We are alumni of Wabash, where Scientiae et Virtuti translates as “Know-how and Guts.” We need to have the guts to “own it,” to quote another of my friends, Jim Dimos ’83. Wabash should be synonymous with “Educating the Twenty-First-Century Man” in every corner of this nation, from the hills of Maine to the Western plain. We should be the national thought leader in educating young men. I should not have to explain Wabash to people in Washington, DC; they should know EXACTLY what “Wabash College” means.
And if they know what Wabash College means, then young men and their families who can pay more for college should and will want to come here. And that, in turn, will leave plenty of seats for those steelworkers’ sons who cannot. (And further, it should go without saying, alumni gifts need to not just keep pace, but increase, in order to make certain that that can still happen.)
Wabash should not be undersold because it is an all-male college in a small Midwestern town. Wabash is worth more. We know that this is a unique education and experience, as well as a life’s foundation, that a young man can’t get anywhere else. Let’s make that case. Loud and long. Let’s find the know-how and the guts to “own it” in a big way.
—Gregory A. Castanias ’87, President, National Association of Wabash Men