The "sustainable" university report

A new report (website is here) attempts to assess the financial status of U.S. colleges and universities (public and private).  It is interesting reading.  It primarily evaluates the financial status of these institutions by estimating their (1) increase in expense ratio, (2) decrease in equity ratio, and (3) endowment per full-time-equivalent enrollment.  I have extracted the data for several Mississippi colleges and universities (see below).

 

The report contains the following:

You might be at risk if….

1. You are not a top-ranked institution
   • Your admissions yield has fallen and it’s costing you more to attract students
   • Median salaries for your graduates have been flat over a number of years
   • Your endowment is in the millions not billions, and a large percentage is restricted
2. Your financial statements don’t look as good as they used to
   • Your debt expense has been increasing far more rapidly than your instruction expense
   • Your property, plant and equipment (PP&E) asset is increasing faster than your revenue
   • You have seen a decline in net tuition revenue
   • Tuition represents an increasingly greater percentage of your revenue
   • Your bond rating has gone down
   • You are having trouble accessing the same level of government funding
3. You have had to take drastic measures
   • You are consistently hiking tuition to the top end of the range
   • You have had to lower admissions standards
   • You have had to cut back on financial aid
   • You have reduced your faculty head count