The presenter conducts a six‑year (2014‑2019) financial and outcomes analysis of Albion College, a private Michigan institution, and compares it to five peer private colleges in the state. The video examines enrollment trends, tuition and fee revenue, six‑year graduation rates, endowment size, and the gap between expenses and core revenue. Albion shows modest enrollment growth (~200 students) but a decline in tuition/fee revenue, indicating tuition discounting. The graduation rate sits at about 70%, meeting the presenter’s “good” threshold, though it has slipped slightly. The endowment fell from $187 million to $170 million, while expenses rose roughly 20% and core revenue fell about 20%, suggesting a negative operating margin. Data are drawn from publicly available federal and college financial reports. The presenter invites viewers to request additional college comparisons, stresses that no predictions are made about institutional survival, and encourages likes, subscriptions, and notifications.
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In this episode, we're going to look at Albion College, a private college in Michigan. We're going to compare its finances, outcome, and enrollment to 5 other private colleges in Michigan. And you can see on the screen the 6 total colleges that I have, and we're going to focus on Albion in this episode, and we'll compare it to the other colleges. And right off the bat, we're going to see that over the last 6 years— and keep in mind, in all of these videos, we look at a 6-year period. This period is the years 2014 to 2019. As I always do, I'll remind you that colleges are traditionally very slow in getting their data out, both through their own sources and through the government as well. But nonetheless, we get to see a trend, we get to see a pattern for each of the colleges that we look at. Sometimes that trend is good, sometimes that trend is not so good. So let's look at Albion, and we can see enrollment up over 200 over the course of this 6-year period. I'm going to give that a green indicator. That's a good sign, that's a good pattern, it's a good trend. We're going to go to the next column over, and we're going to look at the 6-year tuition and fee change. This is where I'm going to have concerns. This is where there's going to be some caution. Because while their enrollment has gone up, the fees and tuition they collect has gone down. This is heavily suggestive of a college that is heavily discounting tuition to get students to enroll. Not a bad thing for students, not necessarily a good thing for the college because enrollment doesn't pay the bills. Tuition and fees and other sources of revenue do. So I'm going to give this a red indicator. It's just not a good trend. We can see the 6-year graduation rate has gone down. I'll have more about that in a minute. It's essentially flat, but anytime it goes down, you have to start to have some concerns. And then we look at the changes in the 6 years' worth of expenses and 6 years' worth of revenue. And again, over this period of time that we show up here. And we can see that in the course of these 6 years that the total expenses for Albion have gone up almost $11 million. And the revenue has decreased over $12 million. Not a good trend. And so now that we've looked at the 6 years of changes on one screen, let's kind of dive a little bit deeper. Let's look at the enrollment and see how it compares to the other colleges. And we can see that Albion has gone from 1,300 to 1,500 and change, the good growth that we talked about before. And it compares favorably, really, with all the other colleges in this set except for Kettering University, who has been very successful in growing their enrollment, undergraduate enrollment, about 700 students over the 6-year period. Let's go back now and look at tuition and fees. And again, Albion has looked at a decrease. While they're not alone, of the 6 colleges here, 3 have shown a decrease, and really the other 2 of the other 3 have not shown much of an increase in tuition revenue at all. Again, not a bad thing for students, but not really a good financial outcome for colleges. Let's look at graduation rates. I want to focus on the 6-year graduation rate. And for Albion College, we can see that it's 70%. That's a pretty good number. The threshold I normally use is exactly that, 70% and above shows a good graduation rate. It reflects a college's ability to develop and implement systems and processes to get students graduated with their undergraduate degree from that college. Let's look at the endowment. And again, a couple of things going on here for Albion College. We can see it has gone down from $187 million to $170 million, or decreased a little over $17 million. You don't see endowments decrease very often. I think it can be pretty obvious what's going on here. We saw the issues they had with expenses and revenue, and I'll show you that again here in a minute. It's entirely possible that Albion has had to use resources from their endowment to be able to keep functioning at an acceptable level over the last 6 years. And again, let's quickly look at that number again. We can see that the expenses for Albion have gone up 20% over the 6 years we're looking at. And as you look at the revenue, or the core revenue, it has gone down 20%. So again, they can't be pleased with the pattern here. They can't be pleased with the trend. Any business wants to operate with more revenue than expenses, and we see that's not the trend here at Albion. By the way, if you would like to see my financial comparisons of private colleges you are considering, leave the list of 2 or 3 or 4 colleges in the comments section down below. I'll be sure to add them to the list and get those produced sometime in the near future. You will see that some colleges compare well to others, and others don't compare well at all. Keep in mind, I don't do predictions. I'm not interested in making guesses about which college is strong, which college is weak, which colleges may or may not survive. I just provide comparisons of data that colleges themselves have provided to the federal government, and from their own auditors of their financial statements. It's all publicly available information. You deserve a quality education. I want to give you information that's not normally available to help you make the best possible college decision for yourself, your children, or for others. Colleges already have information about your finances from the FAFSA. The College Viability App, and what you've seen in this video, simply reverses that and now gives students and their families a better comparison of how one private college's finances compare to others. If you like the content I've shared with you today, make sure to click on the like button down below. Click on the subscribe button if you want to see more of these private college comparisons. And if you want to be alerted when they're posted, click on the little bell to make sure you get notifications of any new private college financial health and viability videos that I post.
