VCU in a post-Final Four era
Robert Showah
Opinion Editor
The attention VCU has attracted over its remarkable climb to the Final Four is clear.
Despite falling short of advancing to the national championship game, VCU’s unlikely run will have big consequences for the university, a major one being the almost inevitable strengthening of admission standards along with a rise in applicants that come with first-time Final Four appearances. Believe it or not, Shaka Smart and his boys may have done more to attract students who actually want to attend VCU in three weeks than Presidents Rao, Trani and the Board of Visitors have done in the past decade. The question is whether it is for the right reasons.
The benefits of our NCAA victories are great. They have placed VCU on the map and more importantly electrified our city and defibrillated our virtually flat-lined school pride. However, as wonderfully ironic as it may be for a basketball team to be the prime motivator in having the university take a long, hard look at itself in the mirror, it is not exactly a great rationale.
Athletic victories shouldn’t be the reasons our university will decide to either increase its tuition rates, admission standards or enrollment population. Yet, they are. If we keep admitting more of the same types of students, at the same rate, under the same standards because of these victories, we are tightening the choke we have on ourselves with our faulty quantity-over-quality mentality.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
We can use these victories to encourage academically strong students who otherwise may opt to attend a different school to reconsider VCU. There is no doubt more students will find interest in at least glancing over VCU’s website next fall, but we should make sure that we invest in our current programs to support students in choosing to attend for the right reasons. Otherwise we will end up like Virginia Tech, a fine university but one virtually fueled off its brand and merchandise and synonymous with its sole academic trademark: engineering.
VCU, conversely, has an amazing full-court advantage. In Virginia, VCU holds a decisive lead in the arts and medical schools along with booming engineering, life sciences and business programs.
We can use these athletic victories to improve in these areas. When it comes to this, it’s difficult to ignore the need for a tuition hike – especially if VCU raises its admission standards and admits less applicants – as the real issue will be how tuition is effectively spent.
Today, VCU’s strategy for attracting students is also its Achilles’ heel. While we have widened our field of applicants to more students, especially those who are financially disadvantaged, along with that comes lower standards, lower academic achievement and more students with whom we cannot keep up staying here for five, six or seven years.
Where VCU faces the current challenge of not being able to attract more academically solid applicants because of many internal reasons (i.e. lack of prestige, high admission standards) and external ones (i.e. perceptions of Richmond), it will face new challenges in giving future applicants substantive reasons to attend, not superficial ones solely derived from the success of our athletic teams.
This will be the more difficult transition to make and balance to strike: for VCU to remain relatively open to giving second-chances to students not defined by their high school record, yet appealing to academically strong applicants who are seriously considering VCU.
Now that VCU is proud to say that it is in a post-Final Four era, it can hopefully recognize this as an opportunity to encourage applicants to attend for the right reasons all thanks to, who would have guessed, a talented team of students themselves.