There are lots of places one can go to grad school and do research. ND decided under Hesburgh to create a new ND. A place where working class students were no longer welcome unless they also had some unbelievable test scores and grades and sob stories (or connections).
Well OK.
I would never have been able to get into today’s ND. Nor could I afford it because I worked my way through school and took 6 years of school plus part time and full time work to get out with a STEM degree debt free. The cost to go to ND (tuition, room and board) now is at least 3X greater than the rate of inflation than when I went. The faculty is way more liberal. They offer courses that don’t have a chance of getting students a good paying job.
They continually beg for money. Big doners keep funding new buildings but they beg Alums for the money to keep them heated and lighted.
In other words, today’s ND is no longer a special place for common people to get a great Catholic education. It is hardly special at all. It is like every other University with pretensions of what they consider greatness.
Today’s ND is a place for undergrads to go and see shiny new buildings and spend their parents money or go into debt to get a degree which may well be worth less than what they could get at virtually any institution at half the cost. Or for grad students who could not get into Cal Tech, MIT, Wharton, Chicago or Stanford.