<p>I want to know who is publicist is. Favorable article in the new US News College Guide and major article Forbes in the last month.</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing that. I knew they wanted to grow, but didn't realize they aspire to have a population of 25,000 students.</p>
<p>Excuse my mangled too late to edit syntax. Las Vegas took a toll on me this weekend.</p>
<p>Hah. I bet that every school with a $20 million endowment likes to believe they are "building a $1 billion endowment".</p>
<p>I'd like to know how their PR agency can keep a straight face when spewing nonsense like that.</p>
<p>I'm glad, since I hear a lot of CC parents are very upset about the liberal influence of some of those scary eastern colleges, filled with heathens. I am just so glad there is another choice for these moral children.</p>
<p>I believe the Forbes article said they had commitments for nearly $200 Million but much of that was in estates and years out. I just hope the football team is better when I move back in a few years. I will need some cheap entertainment.</p>
<p>Here is a bit of the Forbes piece.</p>
<p>Getting recent Liberty alums to cough up has proved challenging. The Falwells say they have $163 million pledged to Liberty's endowment in the form of wills, bequests, trusts and gift annuities from contributors to Jerry Sr.'s ministry, but only $20 million of that is in cash. Father and son are at work on scads of other, unconventional ideas. Falwell père, who carries a $46 million life insurance policy, convinced a wealthy couple to take out a $100 million second-to-die policy making Liberty the beneficiary. A former Detroit auto engineer, Charles S. Clark, donated a design to reduce the cost of making printed circuit boards. Jerry Jr. filed a patent for the process and is marketing the idea, claiming it could be worth "north of $250 million" but admitting that this number is speculative. </p>
<p>That said, the Falwells have a history of persuasiveness in Lynchburg (pop.: 65,269), where 56 relatives are buried. Jerry Sr.'s father, Carey Hezekiah Falwell, ran a string of gas stations during Prohibition, using his fuel trucks to smuggle bootleg whiskey. After Carey shot his younger brother to death in self-defense, he became an alcoholic with a nasty knack for keeping his staff in line. An employee called in sick one day, so Falwell caught the man's cat, killed and cooked it, then delivered the remains to the employee's home as a complimentary lunch. And once, after a drunken patron turned belligerent at a Falwell-owned restaurant, Carey grabbed the customer and threw him into a bear cage, where he was maimed by the beast, then set free. Tough dudes, these Falwells</p>
<p>How would anyone know? They provide essentially zero financial reporting on their website. They don't report their endowment (if any) to the national NACUBO endowment survey.</p>
<p>Based on Falwell's track record and the previous $80 million debt of his co-mingled university and ministries empire, it is not unreasonable to assume that Liberty is a financial house of cards.</p>
<p>... i don't think their football team will be gettingi better any time soon barrons =P</p>
<p>wow allmusic, you really disappointed me here. :(
I guess CC is not a place for divergent views either.</p>
<p>Oh do carry on...this thread has great potential for all of you to show how "tolerant" you are. Didn't mean to spoil your fun.</p>
<p>According to the Forbes piece, before making a huge $70 Million donation Mr Williams sent in his accountants to go over the books and provide some "guidance". I should think they are pretty well financed and have corrected the early mistakes.</p>
<p>From Forbes
"Since 1999 Jerry Jr. and his private development firm have raised $100 million or so via sales of land and leaseholds to pull in retailers--Wal-Mart, Kohl's, Staples and Circuit City, plus a dozen restaurant chains--around Liberty's campus. "Jerry Jr. is a one-man real estate boom," cracks Christopher Doyle, vice president at CB Richard Ellis and the Falwells' point guy on the Candlers development.</p>
<p>Liberty also found a savior in life insurance mogul and Forbes 400 member Arthur L. Williams, who has dropped $70 million into the kitty. His biggest gift came in 1997 with the proviso that he be allowed to send his finance chief to scrutinize Liberty's books. It came out that the source of Liberty's ramshackle financial state was an overreliance on donations from Falwell's diminishing TV ministry. Williams also urged him to scale back his other ministries and make Liberty the focus of the family business. "Jerry Falwell is one tough dude," Williams says. "He refused to let his dream die." Williams has created a few of his own: His $12 million for a new basketball arena and football stadium helped recruit University of Virginia coach Danny Rocco for the upcoming season. Other big gifts have come in from the likes of apocalyptic Christian novelist Tim LaHaye, whose $7 million helped to build an ice rink and a student center with five basketball courts and an Olympic-size pool.</p>
<p>That was Williams who bailed out the $83 million in debt Elmer Gantry U. had in 1992, right? From what I've read, Williams wrote off $50 million of the money he had loaned Gantry.</p>
<p>I would be interested in any verifiable reference to an endowment at the school. Their "Strategic Plan" is short on financial data but does state that the school relies on tuition and fees for essentially all of their operating budget.</p>
<p>Your sarcasm detector is broken. =(</p>
<p>They could use some new dorms. The existing accomodations look like military barracks and are labeled, "MALE B" and "FEMALE E".... I guess no coed dorms.</p>
<p>I had some extended involvement with Liberty when I was in the Federal Government. I found the people to be very pleasant even though Rev Falwell has said some very ungracious things about my co-religionists. I even met Jerry Falwell,Jr., the University's General Counsel, who I thought looked like a Yalie, but they were (and are from what my former colleagues tell me) hopeless when it comes to actually doing what needs to be done. I had the impression, and perhaps barrons can comment on this, that some/many of the students were there because it offered a relatively inexpensive educational opportunity and not because of the religious stuff.</p>
<p>Of the kids I met a few were very into the religious aspects and training and the rest were there because it was relatively cheap and had lots of hands on type training or because their parents liked the rules.</p>
<p>The new dorms are much nicer--more like good apartments. More are planned. I am sure the early ones which you described aptly were built on a tight budget.
Let me say I do not support many things Falwell stands for nor am I all that religious. I do find him interersting and with more facets than you see in the national media. I think his activity with LU has been a boon to the city of Lynchburg and I hope LU makes it financially and evolves into a more midstream university. Many of the most draconian rules have already been eliminated.</p>
<p>And the football team is 2-0 now.</p>