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Are you pleased with the direction of Wake Forest under Hatch

It's very hard to move up in those rankings - you have to pass somebody and those are all really good schools that are also working to expand programs and improve facilities.

Agreed. To some degree the rankings are fixed and it will be very hard for Wake to go much higher than it already has. If we can manage to stay in the top 25, or at least on the cusp, I'll be happy.

Major jumps up the rankings do happen -- Penn was not ranked at all when the USNWR rankings debuted in 1984, and Wash U in St. Louis has made big strides over the years -- but those are rare.
 
The fact Wake Forest was named in the elite university bribe scandal and Duke wasn't says Hatch should be given a raise.
 
The fact Wake Forest was named in the elite university bribe scandal and Duke wasn't says Hatch should be given a raise.

I was told by someone close to me that this would never happen at Duke. I told them they are a fucking moron if they honestly believed that.
 
I was told by someone close to me that this would never happen at Duke. I told them they are a fucking moron if they honestly believed that.

Tell him that if 80 highly educated , "best of the brightest" professors can be duped by faulty evidence and personal bias into signing a petition that basically called on 20 young men to be screwed for life, then yes, one coach toiling away in an obscure sport could possibly be bought to get a kid into the Gothic halls of Dook.
 
Tell him that if 80 highly educated , "best of the brightest" professors can be duped by faulty evidence and personal bias into signing a petition that basically called on 20 young men to be screwed for life, then yes, one coach toiling away in an obscure sport could possibly be bought to get a kid into the Gothic halls of Dook.

Tell them that if their medical school can accidentally wash surgical instruments in hydraulic fluid, then yes, it could happen at Duke. https://www.foxnews.com/story/n-c-hospitals-washed-instruments-in-hydraulic-fluid
 
I agree with this. Hatch has done an objectively solid job. The older sorts on here, me included, often lament some of the changes. And there are things I miss about the Wake Forest I knew as a student, but the overall result has been positive. The amount of money raised, the transformation of campus, Wake Downtown, a more diverse student population, etc. are all positives. And sports have been pretty solid too...the new facilities are amazing and results are pretty solid sans basketball. That is the glaring issue, for sure. And the scandal is centered on one dude and shouldn't be viewed as a Wake or Hatch issue. In fact, it is oddly good for Wake...that it is reported as one of the elite places people were cheating to try to get into.

4 years ago or so I had the same qualms as many on here probably do/did. I lamented the changes and feared that the Wake I knew and loved as a student would become unrecognizable. Then my daughter entered Wake and I got to see it through her eyes...and it has been her greatest experience too, just like me. Her experience is different, because Wake is different. But she loves it. At the heart of it, Wake is still Wake. A unique place, IMO, unlike nearly any other place. The Hatch Era has seen our national reputation grow and Wake students are in demand more than ever before. But the school itself hasn't really changed that much at its core. I think I graduated with 1000 folks and my daughter will graduate with about 1250. I grant that is 25% larger, but in raw numbers it is pretty close and I suspect students can't tell the difference in size at all. My daughter has never had a class larger than 40 and her classes currently range in the 8-15 range. The fears that we were growing too much and pursuing becoming Vandy or Duke were/are misplaced, imo. The result seems to be that Wake is what it always has been...the best of both worlds. A small intimate college with the reach of a research university. Are we as quaint as Davidson? No. And are we as big a national presence as Duke? No. But the opposite is true...we have a larger national reach than Davidson and intimacy that Duke doesn't. Always hard for me to put into words what it is...but Wake is just special. And it seems to me, that is still the case.

One more thing...my wife, family, and I still live here in Winston. Hatch's leadership in expanding the footprint of the school downtown is absolutely huge. The Wake-led innovation quarter has transformed that part of downtown and has had a ripple effect across the entirety of downtown. Without the med school and Inmar and others moving into that area, I just don't see the renaissance of downtown happening as vigorously. And with the eventual departure of BB&T and the continued weakening of RJR, Wake Forest is the single most important entity in the city. So as a resident, I see the Hatch Era as positive through that local lens too.

BB&T is leaving?
 
I was told by someone close to me that this would never happen at Duke. I told them they are a fucking moron if they honestly believed that.

Nobody cares about Duke sports besides basketball. That makes it easy to slip kids in. Plus K could auction off a walk on spot for $1 million on ESPN right before the NBA draft lottery and nobody would blink an eye.
 
I don’t know Hatch personally, but he sure seems like he gives zero fucks about athletics.
 
I don’t know Hatch personally, but he sure seems like he gives zero fucks about athletics.

Dead on point. Ask anyone at Notre Dame. He needs to retire with Wellman. We can have good athletics and academics. We need more flexibility with athletics which will never happen with Hatch.
 
As a non-alumni I'm torn, Wake is doing a great job of helping to reinvigorate my hometown, and I am truly appreciative of that.

However it seems like the school is being run solely for profit and appearances now, which is kind of sad. And the disconnect between the students and the the city they live in four years (or more) has never bene greater.
 
I repeatedly say this as someone in academia. Y’all who bitch about us stagnating in ranking don’t get it. It is a ranking of the entire university. We have basically 0 PhD programs. Lots of these schools are propped up on grad programs. We don’t have that.
 
I repeatedly say this as someone in academia. Y’all who bitch about us stagnating in ranking don’t get it. It is a ranking of the entire university. We have basically 0 PhD programs. Lots of these schools are propped up on grad programs. We don’t have that.

Good point. Many of these ranking systems take into account research funding as well, which will be very, very hard for a school like Wake to move the needle on.
 
Good point. Many of these ranking systems take into account research funding as well, which will be very, very hard for a school like Wake to move the needle on.

US News now ranks "best undergrad teaching programs." Wake is #13.
 
As a non-alumni I'm torn, Wake is doing a great job of helping to reinvigorate my hometown, and I am truly appreciative of that.

However it seems like the school is being run solely for profit and appearances now, which is kind of sad. And the disconnect between the students and the the city they live in four years (or more) has never bene greater.

By definition it’s not-for-profit, so I’m curious what you mean by this. I haven’t checked the Form 990 recently, but, as far as I know, the administration’s compensation is not out of line with other national universities.
 
Wake Forest gets tons of money for medical research.

I’m sure we do and there’s a lot of funding behind medical research, but there’s also a TON of research funds for the hard sciences, engineering, etc. that it’s difficult for us to take advantage of because we’re not primarily a research institution. There’s nothing wrong with not being a research-first university; it’s one of the things I live about Wake. It does make it difficult, however, to make big jumps in some of the ranking systems.
 
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