Gary Stocker analyzes 23 private religious colleges in Texas and Oklahoma, tracking enrollment, graduation rates, and endowment health from 2015 to 2022. Losing just 40 students costs a college roughly $800,000. Private colleges are closing at about one per week in 2024.
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Hi, it's Gary Stocker with College Viability. This week our top/bottom report is going to Texas and Oklahoma, and this week I think for the first time we're going to look at private religious colleges in both Texas and Oklahoma. So let's go ahead and take a look at what we actually look at, and you can see on the screen in front of you We're looking at data from the National Center for Education Statistics and its IPEDS database. And the last submitted range of data is from 2015 to the most recent data in 2022. That's the hand that we're dealt. That's the hand we're going to use to compare these private religious colleges in both Texas and Oklahoma. And you can see some of the fields that we're looking at in the top-bottom report. Let's go ahead and get started. And as always, we always start with enrollment. And we always look at FTE enrollment, and that stands for full-time equivalent. We think that's the best way to compare enrollment among all private and public colleges. And looking at the top, I think there were 23 private religious colleges in both Texas and Oklahoma. And of those 23, only 5, looks like 6, have had increased enrollment in the last 8 reported years. You can see the numbers on the right-hand side. Feel free to pause the video as appropriate. I'll also include a link to the presentation on the College Viability website so you can actually download the file as you need it. So there's are the ones who have done reasonably well compared to the others. But of course, after the top comes the bottom. And you can see all of the private religious colleges in Texas and Oklahoma for the last 8 reported years who've had decreased enrollment. And let's just go down here. Southwestern Adventist University. I think that's in Texas. Yeah, it's gotta be in Texas. And they're down 40 students. Now, keep in mind, that's over 8 years. Let's assume they collect $20,000 per student. That's probably high. But 40 students times $20,000 is $800,000. That's reasonably serious money that has been lost over the last 8 reported years. Now, does that mean anything in and of itself? Not necessarily. It's not good. But in terms of a comparison, you can look at colleges who've lost enrollment, in this case, private religious colleges that have lost enrollment and those that have gained enrollment. Let's move on. Let's look at my passion, that's 4-year graduation rates. Again, remember there are 23 private religious colleges in Texas and Oklahoma in the IPEDS database, and 5 of them had 4-year graduation rates, undergrad graduation rates, above 40%. Now here at College Viability, if you can't graduate half of your students in 4 years, we call you a coin toss college, for obvious reasons. Toss a coin, heads you graduate, tails you don't graduate. It's kind of the way we look at it. And only one, one of these colleges, and even that, Southwestern Christian College, if you look at the data, they didn't even report it for 2 out of the 8 years, and it goes all over the place from 3% to 100%. I would even question the validity of that data. We're seeing, I'm seeing in many colleges, they don't have the resources to identify and hire enough talent to be able to do these kind of reports for a variety of reasons. Once we look at the high end for graduation rates, you know what's coming next. Look at that column on the far right-hand side. It's the 2022 4-year graduation rate for undergraduate students. Every single one of them graduates less than 40 students out of every 100. So for every 100 students that attend East Texas Baptist University, 4 years after they started, only 36 of them graduate. Now again, we, we coin our own phrases here. And I make the case that if you can't even graduate 40 out of every 100 or 4 out of every 10 students, you're not really a college. You're really more of a tuition collection agency. Think about that for a second as we move on to the next top-bottom report. Let's take a look at retention. What percentage of students are retained from year to year? Again, pause the video if you want to compare these. I have a link to the presentation in the description. In the postings that I do. And you know, above 80% is good. 70% is not bad. In the 60s percent, certainly acceptable. You can, again, Dallas Baptist, it just happened to be here. So for every 100 students in one year, 62% return the next year. That means 48 do not. Think about that. And on the low end, again, the comparison is what matters. You can say at Arlington Baptist, they return only 33 out of every 100. And that may be fine. Maybe the students, maybe the families, maybe the faculty and staff at Arlington Baptist think that's good. And that's fine. The purpose of the College Viability App— and you can see I use the 2024 Private College Viability App, and this is the one for executive analysis. I have one for faculty and staff and a smaller version for students and their families as well. Do the comparisons. You know, you've heard about the FAFSA before, where you share your financial information with colleges. You know, the College Viability app is kind of the reverse FAFSA, if you will. You have shared your financial information with colleges. Now colleges, and they submit all this data that you're looking at to that National Center for Education Statistics, you now have a chance to look at the financial health and compare the financial health and viability of colleges you are considering. In this case, it is the private religious colleges in Texas and in Oklahoma. And I did something a little different here. This is the endowment value, but the endowment value per student kind of gives you a better comparison. So again, we have the top, and there are a handful that have more than $50,000 per student, so their endowments are much more substantial than that. I do have access to the actual endowment value. I just didn't post that here. I think the per-student one is better for comparisons. And of course, after we look at the top, we look at the bottom. And again, do your comparisons. Here's the top. There's one college that has $122,000 in endowment per student. Here's one that has $24,000. Draw your own conclusions, but this is a way to compare the financial health and viability of these colleges. And finally, let's take a look kind of at a business function, if you will. This is the tuition and fee revenue collected by these colleges. And you can see we've highlighted, or I've highlighted, the 8-year change. So again, from 2015 to 2022, Abilene Christian University has been able to grow its tuition fee revenue $18 million and change, right? Over 4 years, or excuse me, over 8 years, that's not bad. It's not great, but it's not bad. And you can see some others have had positive growth in their tuition fees. That means either they're charging more per student or they have more students It can, it can go either way. But of course, let's then look at those not doing so well. And again, we'll do on top, Wayland Baptist University in Texas is down $14 million and a small amount of change over the last 8 reported years, down 35%. Maybe it's good. That's not a likely scenario. But again, the College Viability App gives you a chance to compare the financial health and viability of these colleges. Use the app, use the video, pause it as appropriate, and of course I'll make the file available to you as well. And then what about that College Viability app? You can see I have private college versions on the left-hand side and public college versions on the right-hand side, and you can see the number of reports for each. I can tell you now the student and family version on both sides is $29. Per year, and the faculty and staff version is, I think, $300 per college per year, and the executive analysis version is much, much more expensive than that because it has a lot more reports. So what do you do with this? Well, you've looked at 23 private religious 4-year colleges in Texas and Oklahoma. You looked at the top and bottom comparisons across multiple reports, and And this is just a way to look to make sure you're comfortable that the college you're choosing is going to have, number one, the financial resources to provide the type and quality of college education you're looking for. And number two, to be blunt, to make sure that they're likely to not have to close. We're now past the middle of 2024, and through this year, about one private college per week has been closing. There's reason to believe that as the FAFSA debacle hits later this fall, that number might go up. And you don't even want to contemplate the personal and family and financial trauma associated with a college that closes. So the College Viability Reports, this is the top/bottom report for Sunday, June 21st. My name is Gary Stocker with College Viability. Always pleased that you're taking time to look at the reports and the data that we provide you. We'll do this again next Sunday.
