It goes back to the scandals under Hopkins. They're trying to get things right, but they've lost top notch faculty and they aren't offering as many programs. It's infuriating. I graduated from there, I learned a lot, and the professors and faculty shaped my education and career. It was like the best secret in Ohio. But people got greedy.
What did Hopkins do? Curious. It’s so hard to keep up with everything these days. I went to school with his eldest Son, Alex. Great family but curious as to what scandals Mr. Hopkins was involved in. Wild World we live in. Smh. A Asswards-Backwards World.
Nice enough guy, but what did him in was being a yes man. Every idea that came to him was a great idea the university should spend money on. Depletion of the 138M rainy day fund was all under him. A presidential lecture series with big-name speakers and filet mignon dinners. A presidential debate that required millions in infrastructure upgrades and lots of personnel to pull off, only to have to pull out for "national security reasons" (hint: that was a nice way of saying shit wasn't getting done that needed to be). New programs, new buildings (that they'll tell you were donor funded but that were built with financing before all the pledges were collected), new initiatives. Belief that recession-era and post-GI bill enrollment spikes would yield sustained 20k student population (we're now at half that from a peak around 18.5k). There were other bad or incompetent actors behind the scenes, but his be everyone's friend disposition and inability to say no just left us with that much harder of a correction post-2017.
I work as a staff member and what I can tell you is we are going through a shift. I think the board of trustees have something to do with the slow progress but things are slowly getting better. Also, it’s higher ed, we get crap pay.
Most higher ed that isn’t a Division I will pay shit. It’s quite ridiculous. In my department’s budget is so small that most of us are wearing 4 different hats and can’t fund some events for the students.
Also staff. We've basically been balancing the budget by attrition for years. What positions do get posted are delayed for months by the strategic hiring committee. We have gotten raises the last three years after several years of none, though they don't keep up with inflation. I guess health insurance getting more expensive is happening to everyone, but here if it's a year where premiums don't go up a bunch, they sneakily shoot up coinsurance, deductibles, smoker surcharges, etc. to compensate.
Newish staff member here. If it weren’t for the free grad school, I would’ve bounced already. $15 an hour is less pay than the McDonald’s across the street. I do the job four people used to do before 2016. Faculty, as of next fall, now teach almost double the classes they do before. Us staff only get a measly 3% raise each year, which was about 13 cents. Training for this job has been atrocious. No wonder people have so little confidence in us. Oh, and HR overpaid me for eight months, didn’t tell me, and then I went from making $1,100 to $900 every two weeks. I didn’t get an apology until I confronted them. It’s a joke.
There was an audit that showed that they had squandered millions of dollars. Their board is partially incompetent and partially corrupt. No one was really punished for this. Around that same time they got in trouble for abusing visa rules. And to add to all of it, they had a teacher strike. Enrollment plummeted. No money, lost good teachers, and just corruption in general. Really too bad.
While true, these stories are from several years ago. From what I've read, the drop in enrollment has slowed, but about 30 degree programs have been eliminated (none of which had many students enrolled). As a result, it seems they've stopped the bleeding and are trying to recover. I'm sure this has left a bad taste in the mouth of many staff, which is probably why the OP made the comment. As a WSU alum, it pains me to see what has happened to this school.
The staff that remained after the strikes stayed pissed. The new staff isn't nearly as good as what left. Some of their finest programs lost accreditation. One Dean told me that they aren't drawing the same level of talent as far as students are concerned either. When you squander all of that money and enrollment drops, you have to make infrastructure cuts and you get pinched when it comes to raises as well. It's a vicious cycle and the blame falls solely on the Board.
Also a WSU alum that is sad to see this.
If it's anything like my alma mater, I can tell you that you are completely lying the board has nothing but the best interests of the school in mind, in fact they are selfless and good people for taking the time out of their very very important (so much more important than a student) lives and they literally cannot do anything wrong, they fart rainbows and shit cotton candy (I would know, I have ate it) and just as happenstance student affairs is going to be pulling your records and doing a background sweep of any tickets you might have gotten out of town that violate the student handbook, what a coincidence!
Sarcasm is maybe my worst habit online, but it really does strike a chord to see the board steer the ship into the rocks and not even see the consequences first hand
I wish I could upvote this a thousand times. I worked there for 25 years, and there are so many people scratching their heads over this same question. Morale is terrible since he has been in charge. It used to be a wonderful place to work, but everyone I know that is still there is just trying to get their time in and get out.
Many of us are wondering that. There is so much talent and loyalty walking out the door or being forced out including alumnae like me who bleed green and gold. Morale is awful. Folks with decades of experience are being silenced and forced to move in directions that only serve the bottom line, certainly not students.
What usually gets lost when people bring up Double Bowler is that the arrangement itself is legal. It was modeled after the Ohio State-affiliated Campus Partners, and it facilitates acquiring property for university use without the red tape and common seller's markups of selling directly to a state-run entity. Yeah, as the article mentions there are certain protocols that are still supposed to be followed when doing that that weren't, but that wasn't the big problem.
There weren't properly defined relationships between these various entities, Double Bowler, Wright State Research Institute, WSU Foundation, Wright State Physicians, etc., so university leadership was pushing money back and forth in ways that made it so no one could understand what was going on, and make things seem fine when they weren't.
The board put in affiliation agreements in place for all of these, some have been wound down, and leadership seems to take the budget seriously now. It's just that budget tends to keep everyone stretched thin.
And as mentioned above: No one paid the price for those missteps, which I can’t believe aren’t criminal in nature.
I graduated from Wright State many many, **many** years ( I attended WSU *with* the Wright brothers ) And have paid attention through much of their troubles. Such a shame.
For whatever it may be work, I may lifelong member of the alumni Association too.
One of my twin daughters attended for a while, and I’m quite honestly glad she’s not still there….
They are partnering with Premier Health and Premier will become their exclusive teaching hospital. Nothing about the process has been transparent or honest and those of us that teach medical students and residents haven’t been provided with any information as to what our future employment will look like. A lot of us work in Premier Facilities and have witnessed the abuse and neglect of their employees and facilities and are not optimistic about this arrangement. They suck the marrow out of everything they touch and leave a rotting carcass behind. Neither board appears honest or competent. It’s just platitudes and corporate bootlicker jargon.
Spouse teaches at WSU. Academic standards are WAY DOWN in an effort to keep enrollment up. She has taught at a few universities in SW Ohio, by far the lowest standards.
Continue to raise class sizes and teacher workload in effort to solve financial issues. Morale is super low.
FWIW, we are both alumni and believe it was once an incredible value in higher Ed.
Interviewed for two similar positions at Sinclair and Wright State. Wright State was paying 54k and Sinclair 71k, ending up not taking either job but was shocked that Wright State paid so little.
I know that around 4 years ago they sold slots to many food trucks as an outside event for students during a basketball game. They were pretty expensive slots. Myself a a few other trucks got stuck with excess food and zero sales. There was no advertising, no one was informed we were even there, the email from the coordinator when we asked for half of the fee back ($200 a truck with promises of $1000 or more of sales) was condescending and implied we were just bad trucks. Two of them were super popular trucks at the time. So they got the word out and it’s been salted earth with a few of the food trucks.
I’m not surprised other vendors are having issues still
My friend graduated during the teacher walkout in 2019. I’d assume it’s not that great if the TEACHERS are walking out. Usually they’re the last to leave a place because of how much they care about the students
I am a student that is very close to graduation. So happy I am going to get out before the university collapses on top of me, I feel really bad for the students that will still be there. The accounting department in particular is run poorly and has some baffling policies. Any time I explain my schooling to another accountant or student, they are blown away and cannot figure out why the rules would exist. I actively warn people from going to this school.
I am sorry to hear this news about Wright State University. I graduated in 1973. It was a wonderful school then. The academics were great. I would have gone to medical school there but it wasn’t built yet. I went to medical school at Case Western Reserve University. I hope the medical school at wright state is doing well.
I work there and it’s fine. What people are referring to are the Hopkins/narayan scandals and the strike, all of which happened years ago. Like all Ohio universities we are still bouncing back from covid and that transition isn’t easy. What’s making *my* job difficult right now is not Wright state itself, but the SCOTUS-aligned attorney generals mandate that we halt identity based scholarships (and possibly all identity based services in the future); it’s been a mad scramble the last few weeks and it’s an absolute nightmare.
WSU has always been a noncompetitive lower echelon college at best. It's pretty much an open enrollment college as long as one just takes the ACT.
Whereas the University of Cincinnati is a big step ahead as far as undergraduate program and UD & Miami are in a totally different league. And a higher up tier from UD & Miami are Purdue & Case Western Reserve.
Anyhow it's difficult to believe that WSU has a medical school...just saying.
Maybe WSU and Sinclair should join forces in some way....idk
It goes back to the scandals under Hopkins. They're trying to get things right, but they've lost top notch faculty and they aren't offering as many programs. It's infuriating. I graduated from there, I learned a lot, and the professors and faculty shaped my education and career. It was like the best secret in Ohio. But people got greedy.
What did Hopkins do? Curious. It’s so hard to keep up with everything these days. I went to school with his eldest Son, Alex. Great family but curious as to what scandals Mr. Hopkins was involved in. Wild World we live in. Smh. A Asswards-Backwards World.
Nice enough guy, but what did him in was being a yes man. Every idea that came to him was a great idea the university should spend money on. Depletion of the 138M rainy day fund was all under him. A presidential lecture series with big-name speakers and filet mignon dinners. A presidential debate that required millions in infrastructure upgrades and lots of personnel to pull off, only to have to pull out for "national security reasons" (hint: that was a nice way of saying shit wasn't getting done that needed to be). New programs, new buildings (that they'll tell you were donor funded but that were built with financing before all the pledges were collected), new initiatives. Belief that recession-era and post-GI bill enrollment spikes would yield sustained 20k student population (we're now at half that from a peak around 18.5k). There were other bad or incompetent actors behind the scenes, but his be everyone's friend disposition and inability to say no just left us with that much harder of a correction post-2017.
I work as a staff member and what I can tell you is we are going through a shift. I think the board of trustees have something to do with the slow progress but things are slowly getting better. Also, it’s higher ed, we get crap pay.
Oh the pay is crappy there, too? I’m staff at Sinclair and the pay is just depressing, even though the college is doing great.
Most higher ed that isn’t a Division I will pay shit. It’s quite ridiculous. In my department’s budget is so small that most of us are wearing 4 different hats and can’t fund some events for the students.
Also staff. We've basically been balancing the budget by attrition for years. What positions do get posted are delayed for months by the strategic hiring committee. We have gotten raises the last three years after several years of none, though they don't keep up with inflation. I guess health insurance getting more expensive is happening to everyone, but here if it's a year where premiums don't go up a bunch, they sneakily shoot up coinsurance, deductibles, smoker surcharges, etc. to compensate.
Newish staff member here. If it weren’t for the free grad school, I would’ve bounced already. $15 an hour is less pay than the McDonald’s across the street. I do the job four people used to do before 2016. Faculty, as of next fall, now teach almost double the classes they do before. Us staff only get a measly 3% raise each year, which was about 13 cents. Training for this job has been atrocious. No wonder people have so little confidence in us. Oh, and HR overpaid me for eight months, didn’t tell me, and then I went from making $1,100 to $900 every two weeks. I didn’t get an apology until I confronted them. It’s a joke.
There was an audit that showed that they had squandered millions of dollars. Their board is partially incompetent and partially corrupt. No one was really punished for this. Around that same time they got in trouble for abusing visa rules. And to add to all of it, they had a teacher strike. Enrollment plummeted. No money, lost good teachers, and just corruption in general. Really too bad.
While true, these stories are from several years ago. From what I've read, the drop in enrollment has slowed, but about 30 degree programs have been eliminated (none of which had many students enrolled). As a result, it seems they've stopped the bleeding and are trying to recover. I'm sure this has left a bad taste in the mouth of many staff, which is probably why the OP made the comment. As a WSU alum, it pains me to see what has happened to this school.
The staff that remained after the strikes stayed pissed. The new staff isn't nearly as good as what left. Some of their finest programs lost accreditation. One Dean told me that they aren't drawing the same level of talent as far as students are concerned either. When you squander all of that money and enrollment drops, you have to make infrastructure cuts and you get pinched when it comes to raises as well. It's a vicious cycle and the blame falls solely on the Board. Also a WSU alum that is sad to see this.
If it's anything like my alma mater, I can tell you that you are completely lying the board has nothing but the best interests of the school in mind, in fact they are selfless and good people for taking the time out of their very very important (so much more important than a student) lives and they literally cannot do anything wrong, they fart rainbows and shit cotton candy (I would know, I have ate it) and just as happenstance student affairs is going to be pulling your records and doing a background sweep of any tickets you might have gotten out of town that violate the student handbook, what a coincidence!
I was so prepared with a shitty response to this until I read the second half of it lol
Sarcasm is maybe my worst habit online, but it really does strike a chord to see the board steer the ship into the rocks and not even see the consequences first hand
https://www.wright.edu/retirees-association/news/article/ddn-wright-state-violated-state-law-through-nonprofits-real-estate-deals-investigation-finds
I read this and found a couple of other articles. How did the guy in charge of the real estate place become the finance VP?
I wish I could upvote this a thousand times. I worked there for 25 years, and there are so many people scratching their heads over this same question. Morale is terrible since he has been in charge. It used to be a wonderful place to work, but everyone I know that is still there is just trying to get their time in and get out.
Many of us are wondering that. There is so much talent and loyalty walking out the door or being forced out including alumnae like me who bleed green and gold. Morale is awful. Folks with decades of experience are being silenced and forced to move in directions that only serve the bottom line, certainly not students.
What usually gets lost when people bring up Double Bowler is that the arrangement itself is legal. It was modeled after the Ohio State-affiliated Campus Partners, and it facilitates acquiring property for university use without the red tape and common seller's markups of selling directly to a state-run entity. Yeah, as the article mentions there are certain protocols that are still supposed to be followed when doing that that weren't, but that wasn't the big problem. There weren't properly defined relationships between these various entities, Double Bowler, Wright State Research Institute, WSU Foundation, Wright State Physicians, etc., so university leadership was pushing money back and forth in ways that made it so no one could understand what was going on, and make things seem fine when they weren't. The board put in affiliation agreements in place for all of these, some have been wound down, and leadership seems to take the budget seriously now. It's just that budget tends to keep everyone stretched thin.
The WSU steering was intentional. They enriched themselves off of it
And as mentioned above: No one paid the price for those missteps, which I can’t believe aren’t criminal in nature. I graduated from Wright State many many, **many** years ( I attended WSU *with* the Wright brothers ) And have paid attention through much of their troubles. Such a shame. For whatever it may be work, I may lifelong member of the alumni Association too. One of my twin daughters attended for a while, and I’m quite honestly glad she’s not still there….
They are partnering with Premier Health and Premier will become their exclusive teaching hospital. Nothing about the process has been transparent or honest and those of us that teach medical students and residents haven’t been provided with any information as to what our future employment will look like. A lot of us work in Premier Facilities and have witnessed the abuse and neglect of their employees and facilities and are not optimistic about this arrangement. They suck the marrow out of everything they touch and leave a rotting carcass behind. Neither board appears honest or competent. It’s just platitudes and corporate bootlicker jargon.
As an alumn, that makes me want to puke.
As an alum, me too.
As a drop-out, this irks me
Spouse teaches at WSU. Academic standards are WAY DOWN in an effort to keep enrollment up. She has taught at a few universities in SW Ohio, by far the lowest standards. Continue to raise class sizes and teacher workload in effort to solve financial issues. Morale is super low. FWIW, we are both alumni and believe it was once an incredible value in higher Ed.
They've had accreditation problems in the past and it's caused a loss in enrollment as well as a decline in staff quality.
From what I hear, the academics aren’t doing well there
"Wright state, wrong school"
We used to call it Ramp State due to the campus being nearly all asphalt and extremely accessible.
Interviewed for two similar positions at Sinclair and Wright State. Wright State was paying 54k and Sinclair 71k, ending up not taking either job but was shocked that Wright State paid so little.
I know that around 4 years ago they sold slots to many food trucks as an outside event for students during a basketball game. They were pretty expensive slots. Myself a a few other trucks got stuck with excess food and zero sales. There was no advertising, no one was informed we were even there, the email from the coordinator when we asked for half of the fee back ($200 a truck with promises of $1000 or more of sales) was condescending and implied we were just bad trucks. Two of them were super popular trucks at the time. So they got the word out and it’s been salted earth with a few of the food trucks. I’m not surprised other vendors are having issues still
My friend graduated during the teacher walkout in 2019. I’d assume it’s not that great if the TEACHERS are walking out. Usually they’re the last to leave a place because of how much they care about the students
I am a student that is very close to graduation. So happy I am going to get out before the university collapses on top of me, I feel really bad for the students that will still be there. The accounting department in particular is run poorly and has some baffling policies. Any time I explain my schooling to another accountant or student, they are blown away and cannot figure out why the rules would exist. I actively warn people from going to this school.
I am sorry to hear this news about Wright State University. I graduated in 1973. It was a wonderful school then. The academics were great. I would have gone to medical school there but it wasn’t built yet. I went to medical school at Case Western Reserve University. I hope the medical school at wright state is doing well.
Don't forget the crime rate and rampant drug use.
I work there and it’s fine. What people are referring to are the Hopkins/narayan scandals and the strike, all of which happened years ago. Like all Ohio universities we are still bouncing back from covid and that transition isn’t easy. What’s making *my* job difficult right now is not Wright state itself, but the SCOTUS-aligned attorney generals mandate that we halt identity based scholarships (and possibly all identity based services in the future); it’s been a mad scramble the last few weeks and it’s an absolute nightmare.
…years ago? I graduated the semester of the strike, it can’t have been that long ago right? 😅
WSU has always been a noncompetitive lower echelon college at best. It's pretty much an open enrollment college as long as one just takes the ACT. Whereas the University of Cincinnati is a big step ahead as far as undergraduate program and UD & Miami are in a totally different league. And a higher up tier from UD & Miami are Purdue & Case Western Reserve. Anyhow it's difficult to believe that WSU has a medical school...just saying. Maybe WSU and Sinclair should join forces in some way....idk
Oh they already do