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Is Wilmington U the future of college?

Why online ed pioneer Jack Varsalona wants another campus

UPDATE: More on the promise of/questions raised by the success and expansion of Wilmington University, whose student body has more than doubled, to 20,000+, since Jack Varsalona took over as President ten years ago, in my column in Sunday's Philadelpia Inquirer here. Wilmington is a college for these corporate-driven times: market-driven, self-paced, with a high-paid boss, privatized services, and a tenure-free and largely parttime faculty.

Separately, here's my interview with Varsalona last winter: Jack Varsalona heads New Castle-based Wilmington University, whose billboards boast that the Chronicle of Higher Education calling it one of the fastest-growing colleges in America, at a time many schools are having a tough time keeping enrollments up. The Chronicle has also reported Varsalona collects an Ivy League million-dollar-plus compensation package: $800,000 salary plus $700,000 in deferred income, for a total of $1.5 million.

WU employs hundreds of low-paid adjuncts, plus a core of fulltime teachers. Varsalona fills the place with cops, social workers and other adult learners, often schooling at night, working their way through. He's planning another campus, near Chadds Ford. I talked to him earlier this year.

What prepared you to run this place? I [was principal] at Ursuline Academy (Wilmington Catholic prep school) three years. Then I was (then-Delaware Gov. Pierre S.) "Pete" du Pont's education adviser in a pretty bad (1970s) recession.

Pete's philosphy was, 'Let's do what we know how to do, and let's subcontract out everything else.' And that's what we learned to do. [Later he was Director of Development at the University of Delaware, where he holds three degrees; the position put him in touch with major donors and employers in the region.]

And then I went to Wilmington University, and I learned from the previous President, Dr. Audrey Doberstein, and from Irenee du Pont, who was chairman of our board. (Chairman du Pont is a cousin of ex-Gov. du Pont. Both descend from DuPont Co. founders. Irenee lives at Granogue, a farm estate in Delaware's "Chateaux Country." Varsalona lived for a time in a house at Granogue.)

You're a nonprofit private college, but it's a private-sector model? We really do not seek state and federal grants. All the money our endowment earns stays in the endowment; it's not used for operating income. All the gifts we raise go to kids to pay tuition.

The thinking here is, you have no artificial income sources; so when a recession hits, when the government stops giving money or endowment income is less, you don't hurt the kids.

Your tuition is higher than community college... My tuition is lower than (the University of Delaware). My average tuition increase is 2 to 2.5 percent a year. So, over the last seven, eight years I've been able to bring tuition lower than (U)Delaware and almost as low as Delaware State (Delaware's historically African-American, land-grant university). At one time it was $4,000 a year more than Delaware. Now it's $1,000 lower. We're lower than the New Jersey schools. We do it on purpose. We want people to be able to go here.

You rely on market forces...? We are evaluated. The percentage of my budget that goes directly to student activity is running around 74-76 percent. My board evaluates me on that. I don't know what other schools (report). Probably lower.

No student housing? I don't have dorms cause I don't know how to run hotels. There are professionals near us who own apartments. I don't know how to cook or run a restaurant. We have an independent person (offering meals at the New Castle campus). Our prices are lower than when we tried to do our own.

There's enormous savings in letting people run the services (in which they specialize). Our chairman, Judge Joseph Harman, believes in that. Irenee does too. He retired as chairman but he is still very active. Irenee was chairman for [30] years. He runs the Crystal Trust (du Pont philanthropy).

Did he endow this place? We had a major deficit when we were under 1,000 students. Through financial assistance, Irenee du Pont got us over the hump. Audrey Doberstein (his predecessor) really came up with the concept that our market was more adult. Now it's both, traditional and adult.

(As the school grew and tuition income increased) we were able to stop drawing down interest from the endowment, in 1989. We're now above $60 million. That's up from $[16.7] million eight years ago. We would use it (to prevent) a large tuition increase, if we (would otherwise) have to raise more than 2 or 2.5 pct. We've been able to leave it alone, and it's grown.

How big? We'll hit 20,000 students this year [update: 20,500 as of May 2015]. Half are graduate, they are all working adults. The undergraduates, if you take DelTech transfers and communit college transfers, that's 80 percent.

I think weve been successful becuase we're a great academic product. We have national accreditation on every product. And the price is low. We're also convenient. you can take classes half in person half online, you can take em on the weekend.

Nursing, I.T., teacher education, criminal justice, all the help-wanted fields... 98 pct of my degrees lead to jobs. Everybody takes a liberal arts core. That's 39 credits. Our criminal justice, nursing, all my tech programs, have tripled in four eyars. Everything here leads to jobs. That attracts people. Plus, they can do it at a pace that's convenient -- while they have kids, while theyre trying to get the promotion.

We have a philosophy, one reason we're building the site, it used to be, if you wanted to get to our school it's a 20 minute commute. It's not that now. We have classrooms in Georgetown, Middletown, North Wilmington.

We were 9,000 students 10 years ago (when Varsalona took over as President.) We're 20,000 now, that includes parttime. 13,000 full-time equivalents.

How many degrees a year? We granted 3,200 degrees last year.

A lot of our students come to us from community colleges. You do two years at DelTech in criminal justice. We encourage them to get the associate's degree there first. Then finish. It's a fit. Plus, our price point is closer to the community college. And my average class size is 16, 17.

Patrick Harker, president of UD, got his faculty mad at him when he wrote, in the Inquirer, that college needs to be more open-ended, needs to offer more online courses. (He has since said he's leaving to work for the Federal Reserve.) Are you trying to put traditional schools like UD out of business?

I love UD. I got all my degrees there. We provide an alternative. Are they competition? I don't know. Our enrollment is 80 percent in-state.

You rely heavily on part-time adjuncts. Doesn't that threaten the idea of an independent scholar-run faculty? Adjuncts are our secret weapons. My adjunct faculty are not people who teach three courses for me, three for Delaware, three for Goldey Beacom. They are people, working, who teach one or two courses a year. Or retired,  maybe five courses a year.

How many fulltime faculty, how many adjuncts? 150 fulltime. 600 parttime. That ratio works. You have to include these adjuncts, bring em in two times a year for training. You can't just hire somebody.

Nationally, everybody is moving toward adjuncts. We just know how to do it.

Quality control: We have ways to monitor all our courses.

Where do you find faculty? We know the people in this community who are the best educators, the best criminal justice people. I started the education program, I knew the great superintendents. We have a massive pool. We frequently have to say No.

How much do you pay adjuncts, per course? $1500 [to $3,000]. Less if the class gets under five people. We have waiting lists even on technology (of people wanting to teach).

What schools are like Wilmington? That's hard to find, but more are trying to get there. (Other educators have suggested Wilmington is like Southern New Hampshire University, University of Maryland-University College (which targets military service people), St. Leo's University in Florida, Arizona State University-Online.)

What do you mean when you talk about being 'flexible,' besides night school? It used to be the semester was 16 weeks. Now we have all these different methods of delivery. We've always done classes online. More and more people will go thru this; without a doubt it's the future.

So why are you building more classrooms? Sitting in a classroom is good for some people. Some learn better other ways. So long as you can be close to them.

I think online courses are more difficult. You can't sit in the back and hide in an online classroom. You're putting in assignments three times a week.

How big will the new campus be? Total square footage is 200,000 square feet. A couple thousand students. Should the nearby schools, Neumann, West Chester, be worried? I don't think so. A lot of people don't cross borders. We are going to build one building as soon as we can. Twelve classrooms. (Builder is EDiS, Wilmington's DiSabatino construction clan. Architect is Holsey, a popular school designer.)

The new campus site, on longtime Woodlawn Trustees property, is up the road from Granogue. Have you talked to Irenee du Pont about expanding that direction? I've never talked to Irenee about Granogue. We want to stay out of the Brandwine Valley. That's beautiful there. We're just glad to be on 202 and Naamans Road.

What message do you want your new buildings to send? Our desire is not to make it a typical 202 office building.l We put our buildings near the water feature and parks in the middle. One year approval. Two and a half years to build. This is going to be a campus setting not an office park.