As we get ready to celebrate Founders’ Day in this, our bicentennial year, there is no better time for me, on behalf of the Board of Trustees, to thank each and every member of our Lafayette community for your many contributions and ongoing commitment to Lafayette and its mission of educational excellence — a mission that has never been more relevant to the nation and the world.
Late last month, Lafayette received the welcome news that the college has once again received favorable bond ratings of A+/A-1 and Aa3, respectively, from credit rating services Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s.
Coming at a time when colleges nationwide are continuing to face significant financial headwinds, these ratings — which independently acknowledge Lafayette’s strong financial position — are especially meaningful. They are a ringing validation of the hard work of so many across our campus and broader community.
These external rating services use extensive quantitative modeling, analyzing current and historical information about the college and its position in the market, to inform their decision relative to the institution’s creditworthiness.
What might be less familiar are the qualitative measures also incorporated into these firms’ analyses: the incredible quality and commitment of our faculty, the passion and engagement of our students, the dedicated efforts and professionalism of the president, administration and staff, the loyalty and participation of our alumni, the support of our families and citizens of Easton and the vision and stewardship of our trustees.
We are inspired by all that happens on campus each day and know that Lafayette’s next 200 years will be even greater than all that has come before.
On Lafayette!
Robert E. Sell ‘84 is the chair of the Lafayette College Board of Trustees.
Families Know Better • Mar 12, 2026 at 10:30 am
What an embarrassment. Why this “message”? Were they worried the ratings may not stay the same? Are we going to discover, maybe several years from now, that the college’s finances are not that healthy after all? The president’s capital campaign has raised a fraction of what she promised (and shouldn’t that be her primary job as those faculty were saying in their no-confidence motion?); the admissions target was missed by a lot; the administrators’ salaries keep growing (more than a million dollars/year for Hurd? The paper should do an article on that); tuition is growing, while students get sick because of the food. Families have every right to be upset with Mr. Sell and the trustees who supported him. This final “message” only adds insult to injury.
Society must be defended • Mar 7, 2026 at 1:35 pm
I am surprised BS didn’t tout Audra Kahr’s contract extension in this self-congratulatory and utterly uninteresting news. These are all completely run of the mill higher ed credit ratings. One wonders what trustees are for in such circumstances. It often seems like colleges need boards as much fish need bicycles. All of this is to say, the board should think very carefully about who they will install as the next chairman. Much of what this board, president, and CPA Kahr have broken will be hard to ever get back: decades of institutional knowledge in all of the lost personnel, an ethos of Lafayette being a college on the rise, an athletics division which was less empowered than the academic division, and the good will of the majority of the faculty.
credit worthy! • Mar 7, 2026 at 9:07 am
“The most trifling actions that affect a man’s credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or eight at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard-table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day; demands it, before he can receive
it, in a lump. It shows, besides, that you are mindful of what you owe; it makes you appear a careful as well as an honest man, and that still increases your credit.”
It is Benjamin Franklin who preaches to us in these sentences, the same which Ferdinand Kürnberger satirizes in his clever and malicious picture of American Culture as the supposed confession of Faith of the Yankee. That it is the spirit of capitalism which here speaks in characteristic fashion, no one will doubt, however little we may wish to claim that every-
thing which could be understood as pertaining to that spirit is contained in it. Let us pause a moment to consider this passage, the philosophy of which Kürnberger sums up in the words, “They make tallow out of cattle and money out of men.” The peculiarity of this philosophy of avarice appears to he the ideal of the honest man of recognized credit, and
above all the idea of a duty of the individual toward the increase of his capital, which. is assumed as an end in itself.
Max Weber
Loyal Pard • Mar 6, 2026 at 2:44 pm
Lafayette has received these bond ratings for ages now. There is no news here. Of all the PR generated to distract from a No Confidence vote, unprecedented staff turnover, declining student enrollment numbers, and lackluster fundraising, this op-ed is the most pitiful. How desperate can you get?
“At least we are not going backwards” is a pretty sad brag from a departing Board of Trustees Chair. Chair Sell leaves behind a super-sized administration swimming in a loyalty circle around an embattled leader (the “No Confidence” President makes well over a million dollars a year–your tuition dollars at work), a strategic plan that took forever but still isn’t underway, and a last-minute Bicentennial (have fun in Paris next month, Lafayette Administrators, enjoy Versailles, let them eat cake!).
As his parting gift, Sell offers this ringing testimony of failure to move the College forward–and leaves us with a millstone around our necks. On Lafayette, indeed.