Number Games with AMU Donors
Thu, Dec06, 2007 - Category: University
Consider the following excerpts.
Bold added for emphasis -
Fundraising letter from AMU VP Carole Carpenter, Sept. 14, 2007:
"Now, on August 27 of 2007, we have moved into this wonderful new university which is located in Ave Maria Florida. With the addition of 187 new students, enrollment is now at a record 601 students who are witnesses to a miracle of the faith of many."
Fundraising letter from AMU lawyer-President Nicholas Healy, Sept. 14, 2007:
"We welcomed a record 601 students at our Opening ceremony on August 27!"
Fundraising letter from AMU priest Fr. Matthew Lamb, Oct. 15, 2007:
"With a record of over 600 students this year on our permanent campus in the town of Ave Maria, we are on the right track."
Compare the aforementioned to the following excerpt from yesterday's Naples Daily News -
"According to August student enrollment statistics, there are 447 degree-seeking undergraduate and graduate students on campus and 147 students enrolled in the school’s distance learning master’s program."
The problem:
1) The NDN numbers total 594, not 601. How much bolder it is to say "over 600", rather than even "600", let alone "almost 600".
2) NDN says that there are 447 "students on campus". Fr. Lamb told donors that there are over 600 students "on our permanent campus" and "in the town of Ave Maria". He appears to be counting distance learning students in AMU's Institute for Pastoral Theology as "on" campus and "in" the town. The Institute runs out of Kansas City, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and St. Louis, among other cities. Healy told donors that 601 students were welcomed "at our Opening ceremony", which was also in August, the same month that the NDN cites its statistics. Is Healy suggesting that the distance learning students flew to south Florida to be "at our Opening ceremony"?
Lamb's letter may be particularly problematic. The context of his note to donors creates the appearance that the "over 600" are traditional young full-time residential degree-seeking students. Excepts from Lamb's fundraising letter (bold added):
"We have to teach the teachers of the next generation in the seminaries, colleges, and universities. If we don't, we will lose the next generation of Catholics to the dissenting falsehoods currently masquerading as Catholic scholarship in higher education."
"But we need to increase this number [the over 600]... who will be the next generation of parents, leaders, and teachers."
To AveWatch, this all appears to be a lawyerly attempt to make the number of traditional on-campus students to appear 34% greater than actual to propsective donors.
Even after being forced to pay $259,000 to the federal Department of Education for being caught in a financial aid sleight of hand that inflated, and benefited, Ave Maria's numbers, AMU administrators persist in their tactics. Other sleight of hand tactics were successful, such as AMU's early deceptive use of the .edu domain name in apparent violation of Department of Commerce rules.
If this recent use of the phrase "over 600" is an attempt to inflate appearances for donors, it would not be the first time that Monaghan has employed such a technique. Ave Maria used a scheme earlier this year to inflate the number of people who appeared to be interested in Monaghan's for-profit Ave Maria Town real estate development (see the AveWatch report "Let's Pad the Numbers"). Monaghan, by his own admission, used deceptive inflation when Ave Maria College started in Michigan:
Excerpt from Tom Monaghan's 2003 address to NAPCIS:
"... I don't know how many full-time students we had the first year ... I think it was 10 or 12 [students], and that's questionable because we were taking everybody and anybody off the street and almost had to pay 'em to come. But, we got started! That's the point - we got started. And we had some of our employees over at Domino Farms in the Foundation take classes in our cafeteria just so we could get our numbers up. They came over and gave a class in theology and philosophy once a week. I took one of the classes in philosophy just to help get the numbers up so we could say that we have 25 or so students that first year."
For as much as Ave Maria fundraising letters complain about the "authenticity" of other Catholic universities, it would be difficult to imagine Notre Dame or Georgetown having so little integtrity on such a straight-forward issue as enrollment.
Fundraising letter from AMU VP Carole Carpenter, Sept. 14, 2007:
"Now, on August 27 of 2007, we have moved into this wonderful new university which is located in Ave Maria Florida. With the addition of 187 new students, enrollment is now at a record 601 students who are witnesses to a miracle of the faith of many."
Fundraising letter from AMU lawyer-President Nicholas Healy, Sept. 14, 2007:
"We welcomed a record 601 students at our Opening ceremony on August 27!"
Fundraising letter from AMU priest Fr. Matthew Lamb, Oct. 15, 2007:
"With a record of over 600 students this year on our permanent campus in the town of Ave Maria, we are on the right track."
Compare the aforementioned to the following excerpt from yesterday's Naples Daily News -
"According to August student enrollment statistics, there are 447 degree-seeking undergraduate and graduate students on campus and 147 students enrolled in the school’s distance learning master’s program."
The problem:
1) The NDN numbers total 594, not 601. How much bolder it is to say "over 600", rather than even "600", let alone "almost 600".
2) NDN says that there are 447 "students on campus". Fr. Lamb told donors that there are over 600 students "on our permanent campus" and "in the town of Ave Maria". He appears to be counting distance learning students in AMU's Institute for Pastoral Theology as "on" campus and "in" the town. The Institute runs out of Kansas City, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and St. Louis, among other cities. Healy told donors that 601 students were welcomed "at our Opening ceremony", which was also in August, the same month that the NDN cites its statistics. Is Healy suggesting that the distance learning students flew to south Florida to be "at our Opening ceremony"?
Lamb's letter may be particularly problematic. The context of his note to donors creates the appearance that the "over 600" are traditional young full-time residential degree-seeking students. Excepts from Lamb's fundraising letter (bold added):
"We have to teach the teachers of the next generation in the seminaries, colleges, and universities. If we don't, we will lose the next generation of Catholics to the dissenting falsehoods currently masquerading as Catholic scholarship in higher education."
"But we need to increase this number [the over 600]... who will be the next generation of parents, leaders, and teachers."
To AveWatch, this all appears to be a lawyerly attempt to make the number of traditional on-campus students to appear 34% greater than actual to propsective donors.
Even after being forced to pay $259,000 to the federal Department of Education for being caught in a financial aid sleight of hand that inflated, and benefited, Ave Maria's numbers, AMU administrators persist in their tactics. Other sleight of hand tactics were successful, such as AMU's early deceptive use of the .edu domain name in apparent violation of Department of Commerce rules.
If this recent use of the phrase "over 600" is an attempt to inflate appearances for donors, it would not be the first time that Monaghan has employed such a technique. Ave Maria used a scheme earlier this year to inflate the number of people who appeared to be interested in Monaghan's for-profit Ave Maria Town real estate development (see the AveWatch report "Let's Pad the Numbers"). Monaghan, by his own admission, used deceptive inflation when Ave Maria College started in Michigan:
Excerpt from Tom Monaghan's 2003 address to NAPCIS:
"... I don't know how many full-time students we had the first year ... I think it was 10 or 12 [students], and that's questionable because we were taking everybody and anybody off the street and almost had to pay 'em to come. But, we got started! That's the point - we got started. And we had some of our employees over at Domino Farms in the Foundation take classes in our cafeteria just so we could get our numbers up. They came over and gave a class in theology and philosophy once a week. I took one of the classes in philosophy just to help get the numbers up so we could say that we have 25 or so students that first year."
For as much as Ave Maria fundraising letters complain about the "authenticity" of other Catholic universities, it would be difficult to imagine Notre Dame or Georgetown having so little integtrity on such a straight-forward issue as enrollment.