nbhoya
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Post by nbhoya on Dec 18, 2019 13:10:15 GMT -5
With this decade coming to a close, I thought it would be a good time to see what some items you'd like to see Georgetown address over the next decade? Mine: - Grow Endowment to $3 Billion+ (position ourselves better among our peers)
- Climb in Academic Rankings to Top 15 (USNWR, and others)
- Improve Facilities (dorms, research buildings, academic buildings, etc.) while retaining gothic revival architecture
- Improve Branding and Outward Visibility (in regions where GU is less-known, ie. the South)
- Hire the Absolute Best Faculty
- Increase Coordination and Synergies with the District (improve neighborhood relations where possible)
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Dec 22, 2019 20:55:15 GMT -5
Here's a thread I could fill up a few paragraphs on! But before I go down that road, a few thoughts. 1. Georgetown cannot grow its endowment to $3B in 10 years. It is a mathematical impossibility unless we experience hyperinflation. Build the endowment, yes, but the time value of money give our peers a consistent head start. 2. Georgetown is not going to climb to #15 and may well fall out of the Top 25 next year because the USNWR metrics have changed to the detriment of Georgetown's model. 3. Facilities are lacking but it's the chicken or the egg question - construction is operating expense, not endowment. 4. Branding is a subject all it own, but I will ask this: What is Georgetown University to a 17 year old? Many of the old talking points may not apply. - Best Catholic university? Probably not, inasmuch as its influence in the Church is diminishing.
- Home of future Presidents and Supreme Court justices? Probably not, inasmuch as the Ivies still have a stranglehold on that stat.
- Great place to study foreign affairs? Yes, but Hopkins' arrival to downtown DC will get some attention in that regard.
- Final Four basketball power?
That's a simplification, but it may be fair to say that the Georgetown of 2029 may be positioned different from 2019. The DeGioia years have been modeled after the man, who prefers scholarly dialogue and academic conversation over bold precedent. That plays inside the Beltway and in academia but I think it has been hard for the Wall Street and the technology community to digest over the years. The Georgetown "ROI" is still a hard question to answer for parents who will see a $100,000 tuition bill within the next four years. 5. Hire the absolute best faculty? Georgetown is the second largest private employer in the entire District. Georgetown has added a lot of programs over the last 10-15 years for relatively fewer students and that can't continue unabated. 6. "Increase Coordination and Synergies with the District (improve neighborhood relations where possible)". That takes a certain strategy which Georgetown seems institutionally unable to address. Someone smarter than me suggested that the older and more established an organization is, the more that innovation becomes structurally impossible. Georgetown missed the boat by not aligning with Amazon HQ2 and the impact will be felt throughout the next decade.
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Post by reformation on Dec 22, 2019 21:19:50 GMT -5
Would think Gtwn will sink or rise depending on whoever its new leadership is(Assuming DiGioia is gone sometime in that timeframe)
Many of its supposed structural impediments would have been mitigated or overcome with better management over the past several decades. If Gtwn had a chance to align with the amazon HQ effort and did not, it would seem to be another in lost list of strategic debacles-- Have no idea if Gtwn actually had that oppty.
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Post by reformation on Dec 22, 2019 21:25:10 GMT -5
As a follow on, if Gtwn falls out of the USNWR top 25 for more than 1 yr (no matter what the actual quality of the ranking is), the University President would be gone pretty much anywhere else.
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Bigs"R"Us
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Post by Bigs"R"Us on Dec 22, 2019 23:24:06 GMT -5
My boss is the Chairman of the Board for the endowment of a school that has leapt over GU in the past decade. The institution’s main focus is how to move up the USNWR rankings. While GU may dismiss its significance, for others it’s the end all be all.
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Post by reformation on Dec 24, 2019 0:08:52 GMT -5
I'm sure you are right. I know the president of one of the top 15 pretty well. They are pretty focused on rankings.
I guess my take on Gtwn's issue really has to do with both accountability and a focus on excellence. Rankings are a part of those things but not the whole story. Gtwn would have one believe that the rankings are irrelevant, which is not the case either.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Dec 25, 2019 19:55:13 GMT -5
Oh boy... I feel like this is a Bat Signal for me, given that it combines my passion for Georgetown, my personal and professional focus on strategic planning (and especially strategic foresight), and my past engagement with similar exercises like the Georgetown Business Improvement District's "Georgetown 2028" initiative and of course past Georgetown planning efforts like the Master Planning work with Sasaki and Forest City that led to the most recent Campus Plan. Insofar as strategy is the alignment of aspirations to capabilities, answering the question of what we want Georgetown to prioritize over the next decade requires some assessment of both - what do we want to be and what are we able to do? The former is more self-generated and endogenous, the latter more contextual and exogenous... but not entirely so. For an institution like a university, whose proper role as understood by the public has changed dramatically over the years, the question of "what do we want to be?" cannot be wholly separated from the context of "what do others expect us to be?" If nothing else, those many others who are not part of the University community nonetheless make it possible to maintain the non-profit status without which the current Georgetown model is simply impossible (and lest you think that is set in stone, allow me to introduce you to the concept of Payment In Lieu Of Taxes, with which more and more private universities sitting on 10-digit endowments will become quite intimate over the coming decade). So, while it might seem a bit backwards, I think the place to start is not to just jump right into our unicorn target dream state for the University, but rather with the evolving role of the major research university in American society. Not surprisingly, Stanford has done a lot of thinking around this very topic over the last few years with their Stanford 2025 initiative... but so has Georgetown, with its "Designing the Futures" initiative run out of the Red House. In fact, Stanford profiled Georgetown's work. As good of a place to start as any if we want to ground our aspirations not just in the reality of today, but in the anticipated realities of the future: futures.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Georgetown-Chapter-from-Uncharted-Territory-Stanford-2025-Part-Two-digital-guide.pdf
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Dec 25, 2019 22:30:52 GMT -5
So, while it might seem a bit backwards, I think the place to start is not to just jump right into our unicorn target dream state for the University, but rather with the evolving role of the major research university in American society. Not surprisingly, Stanford has done a lot of thinking around this very topic over the last few years with their Stanford 2025 initiative... but so has Georgetown, with its "Designing the Futures" initiative run out of the Red House. In fact, Stanford profiled Georgetown's work. As good of a place to start as any if we want to ground our aspirations not just in the reality of today, but in the anticipated realities of the future: futures.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Georgetown-Chapter-from-Uncharted-Territory-Stanford-2025-Part-Two-digital-guide.pdfI appreciate your closer view on this than I, but the increasing minutiae of Designing The Futures is of diminishing returns outside the gates. Curricular reform is to academics what Eoan Ermine is to Linux developers: it represents a move towards long term change, but the executive in the corner office will still ask, "Ummm....does it work?" The question I ask about planning efforts like this is what are the measures of success in 2030 that this will be judged on? One credit courses on climate change won't move that needle. So here are three admittedly provocative questions that a decade's worth of planning should at least ask: 1. What is the appropriate size of an undergraduate population? Putting aside the politics of admissions, does Georgetown need more undergraduates (perhaps at a campus outside the District unaffected by enrollment caps) or fewer? What does a campus of just 4,500 do to the infrastructure, to faculty hiring, or even to a four year education? If Georgetown became a three year accelerated undergraduate program, what would that mean to its measures of success? 2. Is Georgetown a Jesuit university if there are no more Jesuits left? That's not a rhetorical question. Georgetown Prep has just two Jesuits on its teaching staff, same at Gonzaga. The number of Jesuits has dropped in North America by 44% since 1977 and there is a net loss of 100 SJ's a year in North America by death or attrition. With an average age of 68, you do the math. But instead of thinking of the SJ's as a future state of de minimis, could Georgetown adapt to develop a series of graduate programs that will attract the episcopacy from around the world to study here? Imagine if the next generation of Catholic leaders worldwide (not merely Jesuits, but diocesans and the men's and women's religious orders) studied for 1-2 years on the campus at Georgetown and not necessarily via a pontifical degree from a regional seminary? Georgetown can sometimes undersell one of its greatest core competencies--the ability to apply the centuries of Catholic tradition of education to the issues of the day. Much as Georgetown likes to say that a future senator or President could study here, could we say the same about a future cardinal or Pope? 3. What is the long term direction of the medical school? For 100 years, Georgetown has been able to bookend a medical school with the hospital as its ticket to the upper echelon of health care and that model is in serious change. As a teaching hospital, Georgetown isn't what it was, ranked between 91st and 120 by US News, and just #48 for research on a aging physical plant even with the new Medstar addition. The centralization of health care companies in Northern Virginia (a region where GU/Medstar has no active presence) will change the dynamics of health care education in this region over the next decade, as will the arrival of a medical school at George Mason and Virginia Tech's arrival to Alexandria as part of the Amazon move. The strength of medical schools at private institutions nationwide is superior research, something Georgetown lacks in dollars and in the ability to quickly develop facilities and programs to meet those needs. How does it attack this issue in the next 10 years?
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Post by reformation on Dec 26, 2019 8:37:45 GMT -5
Following on to the list of big picture issues by DFW would be who should the next president be--maybe not the specific individual, but qualifications and background? I think that decision will pretty much dictate the response to the critical issues you raised above.
RE curriculum I have a different take than either of you--I think Gtwn would be we'll served if it did a competitive review of where its curriculum stacks up versus its peers and obviously took actions to address deficiencies. I'm sure a couple of depts. might do this on their own but it is certainly not an institutionalized effort as it is at most top places. Doing this type of review might address issues like the generally poor quantitative training of Gtwn undergrads + strengthening of departments and overall academic reputation. I suspect any new president who has spent a decent amount of time at a top place would probably enforce this
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Dec 26, 2019 9:31:28 GMT -5
Following on to the list of big picture issues by DFW would be who should the next president be--maybe not the specific individual, but qualifications and background? I think that decision will pretty much dictate the response to the critical issues you raised above. Lots to discuss here...looking forward to carving out some time today to do it justice... but I did want to quickly respond to this one. The worst kept open secret at Georgetown is that the presidency's is Dan Porterfield's if he wants it. If he doesn't...then I think all bets are off.
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Post by reformation on Dec 26, 2019 14:17:24 GMT -5
Re someone like a Dan Porterfield my own take is that he does not have relevant experience at a non Gtwn elite Univ. One might argue that he has exceptional other qualities that compensate for this and can hire tech expertise that he lacks, but that approach has not really served gtwn well recently.
I think I'd prefer somebody who is not such an inside candidate and could help change the culture "a bit" to have a bit more accountability. I think I'd want somebody who could present a credible plan to elevate gtwn across sectors where it should be elite but is not, take neuroscience for one, and maybe some of the social science disciplines where we should be elite. I guess I'd take a look at some of the success stories of univ's that were closer to Gtwn say 20-30yrs ago but have now more or less moved past it in most ways other than undergrad selectivity. maybe a Northwestern or Duke and see what we can learn from their leadership choices.
I don't really know Porterfield, though have met him. Certainly has some strong qualifications, though the last time I heard him spk he spent a ton of time explaining why the Boathouse had not been built but that Gtwn had done "everything right". This struck me as the epitome of a lack of accountability culture that we need to get away from; hence, my initial preference for more of an outsider. I'm sure that there are internal candidates that I do not know that might have appropriate vision and external experience. so I am not dismissing internal candidates out of hand but Porterfield strikes me as a quintessential insider. I know for ex that Gallucci, former SFS Dean, was considered before DiGioia was hired: I would not be opposed to that type of hire, obviously not advocating for him specifically, if the internal candidate had the appropriate vision, fundraising skill, intellectual heft, and at least some exposure to another elite Univ.
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Bigs"R"Us
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Post by Bigs"R"Us on Dec 26, 2019 15:58:44 GMT -5
Does anyone think GU ended this decade in a better position relative to its peers than it entered it?
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Post by hilltopper2000 on Dec 26, 2019 19:57:20 GMT -5
That’s a very tough question to answer. I definitely see improvement across the board—I think most programs are stronger, some dramatically so (eg, economics, computer science, public policy). But where we stand relevant to peers is hard to say. The big question continues to be the financial situation. That is a drag on everything. Not that programs and departments can’t improve, but limited resources means difficult trade-offs in terms of meaningful investment. Growing the endowment to $3 B by the end of the next decade should absolutely be a goal—and isn’t that ambitious, give that the endowment is almost $2 B now. (I think the last published number from 6 months ago was $1.8.) Obviously, this all depends on investment success and mega-gifts. I wish that GU could have ratcheted back the percentage spent from the endowment to encourage growth; that is probably something that needs to be up for consideration. In any event, the rich will continue to get richer over the next decade. It is very hard to make up ground, but we could definitely get to a position in which our financial resources aren’t absurdly low.
Regarding leadership, I assume that by the time the presidency opens up, we will be considering a list of candidates on no one’s radar right now—administrators currently in their 30s and 40s. Just a guess, but I don’t get the sense the change is imminent. No pressing need for someone to have a GU connection, and I would prioritize senior positions in peer institutions so we can draw on that experience. Duke has had that model for years.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Dec 26, 2019 21:26:04 GMT -5
So, while it might seem a bit backwards, I think the place to start is not to just jump right into our unicorn target dream state for the University, but rather with the evolving role of the major research university in American society. Not surprisingly, Stanford has done a lot of thinking around this very topic over the last few years with their Stanford 2025 initiative... but so has Georgetown, with its "Designing the Futures" initiative run out of the Red House. In fact, Stanford profiled Georgetown's work. As good of a place to start as any if we want to ground our aspirations not just in the reality of today, but in the anticipated realities of the future: futures.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Georgetown-Chapter-from-Uncharted-Territory-Stanford-2025-Part-Two-digital-guide.pdfI appreciate your closer view on this than I, but the increasing minutiae of Designing The Futures is of diminishing returns outside the gates. Curricular reform is to academics what Eoan Ermine is to Linux developers: it represents a move towards long term change, but the executive in the corner office will still ask, "Ummm....does it work?" The question I ask about planning efforts like this is what are the measures of success in 2030 that this will be judged on? One credit courses on climate change won't move that needle. This bit is as good of a jumping off point as any, I think. I would not diminish the importance of reconceptualizing - not just nibbling around the margins, but truly Designing the Future(s) - of the curriculum. Those of us who regularly interview, hire, and then manage recent graduates experience every day the ups-and-downs associated with our the legacy model, which tacitly if grudgingly accepts that society has largely used (especially 'elite') college admissions as a sorting mechanism for socioeconomic status, connections, and the occasional rare talent, without much diving into the particulars of what graduates actually know and what they can actually do. Randy states the case for why this kind of reform should be at the forefront of the institutional agenda... even, or especially, when it doesn't require major new infusions of funding, but instead is in need of a rarer commodity - top cover: Ultimately, though, the curricular question is but one aspect of the University's concept of operations or raison d'etre or whatever you want to call it. That's where I would want to look next: at the contours of the University's 'mission space.' I've personally settled on a 3x3 rubric of rather familiar pillars: 3 (Teaching & Learning, Scholarship, Service) x 3 (Mind, Body, Spirit) You could populate each square of that 3x3 grid with a healthy laundry list of needs, wants, hopes, and fears (or - if one just finished their MBA and feels so inclined - strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). It's probably a useful exercise no matter what, just to see if there are things that just about everybody agrees on. Hard to get buy-in for a strategic plan if you appear to be ignoring the most obvious and pressing items in front of you.
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C86
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Post by C86 on Dec 29, 2019 13:52:59 GMT -5
One thing that should not be overlooked is the current state of the physical plant. On a couple of recent visits it looked like maintenance is being deferred. The asphalt in the roadways was crumbling, the men's room in Pierce was out of order, and the steps to Healy between the cannons had gaps between the treads and the risers. And this is not just a grumpy old alum talking. My 17 yo daughter noticed it on her admission tour.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Dec 29, 2019 17:13:53 GMT -5
Does anyone think GU ended this decade in a better position relative to its peers than it entered it? This is a very relevant question - and, as hilltopper2000 says, a very difficult one to answer. It is relevant because it speaks directly to the last major area of analysis that you would want to complete before undertaking a comprehensive strategic planning effort: reviewing past successes and failures and using those findings to inform both what you want to achieve and how you want to go about achieving it. It is difficult because, as with most non-profits that have a broadly stated mission, there are few clear and objective measures of success, aside from some very basic existential ones (Can you make payroll? Are you in a debt spiral?) that speak more to survival than excellence. Instead, success tends to be in the eye of the beholder. To use a more extreme but very real example, there are more than a few Georgetown alumni who view the University's trajectory over the last (insert timeframe here) to be a plummet into waywardness, as the school has in their eyes largely abandoned its sacred duty to reinforce and propagate the Catholic doctrine and faith in favor of more worldly and heterodox pursuits. Even setting aside those sorts of philosophical disagreements that stem from incompatible first principles, we still face the challenge of defining the bar against which to measure performance. Jack DeGioia has often said that the school's aim is to become the best Georgetown it can be, rather than trying to simply copy all the bells and whistles with which other elite institutions have adorned themselves. Cross-comparisons and generalizable metrics like endowment, US News rankings, acceptance rates, patents, grants, publications and GoogleScholar citations, etc. etc. are certainly important, but as diagnostic information, not as the ends in and of themselves. If, for the moment, we take that to be true, then what has the University said about where it wants to go, such as that we can assess its effectiveness in getting there? Here, we run headlong into a challenge that I and plenty of others have complained about over the years: Georgetown has tended not to engage in this sort of deliberate strategic planning, at least not out in the open. Instead, those looking to piece together the strategic direction set by the school's leadership have largely been left to piece it together from a number of sources, including public, quasi-public, and private statements by representatives of that leadership. In some cases, as with Georgetown football, extensive reading between the lines is required. It's not the sort of approach that lends itself to feeling like strategy, transparency, and accountability are institutional priorities, even if you know the people in leadership positions to be capable, committed, and accomplished people of good faith and strong ethics. The most concrete and authoritative strategic documents we have to go on are the campus plans and capital campaigns. They are imperfect in their own ways, of course. Campus plans are centered on facilities, and even then, they are more of a wish list than a firm statement of intent. Capital campaigns are fundraising-centric. While both documents include some broader statements about University goals, they are ancillary, where in a true strategic plan they would be primary. Facilities and funds, after all, are means, not ends. Going with what we have though, it seems hard to argue against the proposition that Georgetown has made tremendous strides over the last decade. Facilities-wise, the expansion and enhancement that's taken place over the past decade has been unprecedented in the school's history, flipping the physical environment from being a glaring deficit to a distinctive advantage in a number of areas. Much work remains to be done, of course, particularly around maintenance of existing spaces - dorms in particular. But the improvement is undeniable. Flattening it down into an overall score or ranking is a highly subjective exercise, but for what it's worth, Niche (the successor to College Prowler) now ranks the Campus writ large as a B (and the dorms as a C... and the "Overall Niche Grade" an A+). Past scores in the College Prowler "Off the Record" book series have... not been quite so kind in their assessment of Georgetown's physical infrastructure. Fundraising-wise... well, The Voice wrote an unsigned piece called "No Money, Mo' Problems" back in 2005 that remains, despite its flaws, my go-to for setting the scene in the immediate aftermath of the Third Century Campaign, which was the first time Georgetown embarked on a top-flight fundraising effort (at the time it was declared complete, it was just the 20th billion-dollar campaign in the history of American higher education, even if it almost certainly took GU longer than any of the other 19). The contrast from that moment to more recent times is also remarkable. Despite a major financial downturn and some...uhh...changing of horses in mid-stream (what's Jim Langley up to these days, anyway?), the For Generations to Come capital campaign crossed the finish line in 2016 with the school in a far better financial condition. The most objective evidence that I can point to in this regard is not the endowment, which remains an obvious area of continued need, but the University's standing in the capital markets, where it is now in a position to take out one-hundred year bonds. Don't take my word for it:
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Dec 29, 2019 18:20:39 GMT -5
Despite a major financial downturn and some...uhh...changing of horses in mid-stream (what's Jim Langley up to these days, anyway?), the For Generations to Come capital campaign crossed the finish line in 2016 with the school in a far better financial condition. Jim Langley has been an independent consultant on development since leaving Georgetown. langleyinnovations.com/While it was suggested that the Board of Directors grew tired of Langley's timeline on the capital campaign, I felt that Langley did get people to think about donor relations as something more than asking for money, but to know why people choose to invest (or not invest) in support. Here were three of his metrics: 93% polled said they received an excellent or very good education 84% said Georgetown had a profound impact on their lives 17% gave on a consistent annual basis It's almost 15 years removed from those metrics, but it's going to apply in the next campaign. The base, on its own, isn't going to drive the numbers the Board wants over the next ten years, so how do we understand the distinction (and the difference) between fundraising and philanthropy for the group it needs to make that target?
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iowa80
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Post by iowa80 on Jan 1, 2020 23:18:23 GMT -5
Does anyone care about Georgetown's "mission" as a Catholic university?
Or it that now subordinate to rankings and the whims of modern culture?
Yes, this is Bill Blatty speaking from beyond the grave.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Jan 1, 2020 23:23:47 GMT -5
Does anyone care about Georgetown's "mission" as a Catholic university? Yes. See the post above referencing Georgetown and the paucity of Jesuits moving forward. Thoughts?
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iowa80
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Post by iowa80 on Jan 1, 2020 23:38:50 GMT -5
Does anyone care about Georgetown's "mission" as a Catholic university? Yes. See the post above referencing Georgetown and the paucity of Jesuits moving forward. Thoughts? I don't want to discount the decline in the number of Jesuits--particularly if that number approaches near extinction--but a little can go a long way. I graduated many (many) years ago, and could count on less than two hands the number of Jesuits I had in fours years (SFS)-- and virtually all of those taught theology or philosophy. Nonetheless, I never felt that I was attending a secular university. In short, there's more to a Catholic Georgetown than the number of black robes on campus, even if that Georgetown is at odds with the quest for ratings and dollars..
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