Valparaiso University
Valparaiso University is a private university in Valparaiso, Indiana, United States. It is an independent Lutheran university with five colleges. It enrolls nearly 2,300 students and has a campus.
The university is known for its Lutheran Christian heritage and has one of the largest chapels on a U.S. college campus. In 2025, it accepted 89% of applicants for enrollment.
History
Valparaiso Male and Female College
In 1859, residents of the city of Valparaiso raised $11,000 in support of the Methodist Church locating the college there. The school opened on September 21, 1859, to 75 students, and was one of the first coeducational colleges in the nation. Students paid tuition expenses of $8 per term, plus nearby room and board costs of approximately $2 per week. Instruction at the college began with young children, and most of the students were in elementary and grade levels. Courses at the collegiate level included math, literature, history, sciences, and philosophy. Courses stressing the Christian faith included "moral philosophy" and "moral science." During the Civil War, many students and administrators enrolled in the army. Financing problems led to the closing of the school in 1871.Image:ValparaisoMaleFemaleCollege.jpg|thumb|right|Valparaiso Male and Female College, circa 1870
Northern Indiana Normal School and Business Institute
The school, reopened by Henry Baker Brown in 1873, was named the Northern Indiana Normal School and Business Institute.Valparaiso College, then Valparaiso University
In 1900, the school was renamed Valparaiso College and gained its current university status after being rechartered in 1906.In 1902, Valparaiso became affiliated with the American College of Medicine and Surgery. The name was later changed to the Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery in 1907. Students could save money by spending their first two medical college years in Valparaiso.
In 1905, Valparaiso formed an affiliation with Chicago College of Dental Surgery to provide dental education for its students. For the next two decades, Valparaiso gained a national reputation as an economic institution of higher learning, earning its positive nickname The Poor Man’s Harvard. At the height of enrollment in 1907, it was the second-largest school in the nation, behind only Harvard University. In 1914, the monthly literary magazine The Torch was founded; it became the university's weekly student newspaper in 1915.
The university began intercollegiate athletic competition in 1916. Valparaiso's first game was a basketball game against the Chicago YMCA Training School, in which Valparaiso fielded players from intramural teams.
In 1917, World War I and the death of President Brown took their toll, and the school was forced into bankruptcy. Valparaiso University sold the Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery to Loyola University Chicago. In 1923, a fire destroyed the original 1860 Old College Building, and Valparaiso could not afford to clean the site. This was one of many financial problems Valparaiso faced in 1923, as President Horace M. Evans tried to settle a $375,000 debt. Evans appealed to the Rockefeller Foundation and other wealthy individuals before asking the Indiana state legislature to make the university public. The legislature refused, and Evans almost sold the university to the Ku Klux Klan, but the deal was stopped due to "legal technicalities", likely cited to save face for both organizations.
Valparaiso University was eventually bought by the Lutheran University Association, a conglomerate of the National Lutheran Education Alliance and American Luther League.
Lutheran revival
In July 1925, the Lutheran University Association, affiliated with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, took over ownership of the school. The association was a group of clergy and church laity that saw promise in the school and wanted to create an academic institution not controlled by any church denomination. Valparaiso is still operated by the Lutheran University Association and remains an independent Lutheran institution that enjoys close relations with the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.On March 13, 1929, the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools accredited the university. Two years later, President Kreinheder created the Valparaiso University Guild, a volunteer and philanthropy organization to help students, and in 1934 the Alumni Association began operation. The university's College of Engineering started a cooperative education program with Purdue University in 1938. At the end of the 1930s, the university completed a new gymnasium. In 1941, Valparaiso instituted its Department of Art. Coincident with the beginning of World War II, Valparaiso University renamed its yearbook from The Uhlan to The Beacon. The next year Valparaiso changed its athletic team name from the Uhlans to the ''Crusaders.''
Golden Era
In 1940, O. P. Kretzmann became president of the university. During his 28 years in office, he marshaled significant changes, many of which remain in place. Valparaiso University bought about of land in 1944 east of campus near the corner of Sturdy Road and US Highway 30. The large oak tree occupying this land was named "Merlin" and remains a central feature of the campus. This purchase would transform the campus, as the university moved to its current location over many years.Kretzmann increased enrollment from 400 to more than 4,000. Academic rigor increased along with enrollment. Valparaiso created its Honor Code in 1943 and remains in place today, as students continue to write the code on top of assignments. After the Second World War, Valparaiso offered its first four-year degrees: mechanical, civil, and electrical engineering. On November 27, 1956, the Chapel Auditorium burned down. The university quickly rebuilt its worship space: the Chapel of the Resurrection was dedicated on September 27, 1959. Valparaiso installed a subcritical nuclear reactor in 1958, and in the 1970s the University Branch of the United States Atomic Energy Commission called Valpo's nuclear physics lab "a model for all small universities wishing to provide excellent training in the field of undergraduate physics."
President Kretzmann founded Christ College, the honors college of Valparaiso University, in 1967. Christ College was only the third such honors college in the nation. The campus radio station WVUR-FM began broadcasting in 1960. Robert F. Kennedy spoke before 5,000 people in 1968 at VU while campaigning, and in the same year, the university began its long-standing international study centers in Cambridge, England, and Reutlingen, Germany. During student protests in 1970, Kinsey Hall burned. The first class of the College of Nursing graduated in 1971. In 1976, Valparaiso University began NCAA Division I competition.
In 1991, Valparaiso became home to the Lilly Fellows Program, a national program that supports young scholar-teachers, during its inaugural year. This program has grown to almost 100 universities. The 1998 men's basketball team reached the Sweet Sixteen of the Division I national tournament. In 2002, a new international study center was established in Hangzhou, China. Phi Beta Kappa established a chapter at Valparaiso University in 2004. In 2013 the university completed a solar furnace and research facility, the only undergraduate institution to operate a solar furnace, and one of only five solar furnaces in the US.
Enrollment declines and financial challenges
In 2008, Mark Heckler became Valparaiso University's 18th president. During his initial years in office, Heckler embarked on the "most comprehensive and collaborative strategic-planning endeavor in the University’s history". The plan included goals such as increasing enrollment to 6,000 students, multiple building initiatives, and increased global engagement; however student enrollment never increased as desired, and the university began to face serious financial strain as construction debt servicing and administrative staffing costs grew, while student enrollment faltered at the undergraduate level. At the graduate level, poor rates of law students passing the bar exam led to a drop-off in enrollment and accreditation challenges.After 2015, Valparaiso University began to struggle with enrollment and retention of students. The student population dropped from 4,544 in the fall of 2015 to 2,939 in the fall of 2022 and the law school was closed in 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the university's enrollment and budgetary problems reached an acute point, resulting in the discontinuances of multiple undergraduate programs. Due to financial stress, the university also laid off numerous lecturers and more than a dozen other tenure-track faculty in remaining programs and offered a retirement incentive buy-out package to long-term faculty and staff to incentivize voluntary departures. Meanwhile, the student retention rate also fell to 77%.
Amid these enrollment struggles, the university has also faced controversy. In 2021, the Indiana Attorney General's office announced an investigation into the university's Confucius Institute, alleging that it promotes Chinese propaganda. The university closed the institute and denied the allegations. In 2023, the board of directors decided to sell three paintings, including one by Georgia O'Keeffe, from the Brauer Museum of Art to renovate freshman dorms. This raised strong opposition from the namesake of the museum and protest from some faculty and students about the erosion of the arts. The university eventually closed the museum and eliminated the corresponding staff positions, including its namesake director. The university announced in early 2024 that 28 additional programs would go into review for discontinuance due to budgetary problems, and embarked on the closure and demolition of additional buildings to reduce utilities costs. Later that year in July, VU confirmed the discontinuance of 30 programs.