Carlow University (PA) & Mary Baldwin University (VA): Financial Health & Viability Review

It is Tuesday, October 14th, 2025. Time for the weekly College Financial Health Show with Matt Hendricks and Gary Stocker. Hi everybody. Matt is on other assignment today, so he's not going to be joining the show. I'll be doing the show live. And of course, this is the show. This is the only show that looks at the financial health and even viability of private colleges across the country. We use the data that the colleges themselves provide through their audited financial statements, through something called IRS Form 990s, and through data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Today we're going to look at two colleges. One is Carlow University in Pennsylvania, and the other is Mary Baldwin University in Virginia. Let's get to the data. And of course, this is the Advanced Private Financial Compass from Matt Hendricks at Perspective Data Science. His data uses a tool from AI to bring all the data together from those sources I told you about and compile it into the database that we use to make these comparisons. And to start off with just a quick definition of terms, um, this data has 4 reference points. The red line is a set of 9 recently closed private colleges. The long dashed line is the 25th percentile. The dash— the solid line is for the median, the 50th percentile, and the small dashed line is for the 75th percentile. Today, the blue line is going to be for Carlow University, and the green line throughout our show today is going to be for Mary Baldwin University. So let's start off by looking at the net income, and there are dozens and dozens and dozens of reports available. On these, on the app. And I look at net income, and so does Matt when he's on the show. We look at it because it's kind of the profit margin. Colleges don't like to call it that, but that's what it is. And we can see from the data from 2016 to 2024— some data is now starting to come in for 2025— we can see that these colleges have really both been all over the place. Carlow University has been below zero for most of the last 5 years, all the last 5 years, and Mary Baldwin University has bounced around a little bit above and beyond that 0%. And as Matt would share with you, private colleges shoot to have about a 1, a positive 1% margin. And as you'll see throughout today's show, it's the comparisons that matter, one college to another and one college to the percentiles. And it's the trends that matter. It's not a single data point, it's trends for a college, and you'll see those show up today. Let's take a look at students for the two colleges and a couple different ways we look at the data for some of these charts. We can look at the raw value, we can look at the per student value, per FTE student value, the percent change since 2016, and then another standardized measure is per $1 million in operating revenue. And we look at per student, and we can see that, look at percent change, and we can look at Mary Baldwin has had decent FT enrollment growth over the last 8 years, mostly since 2019, and the good folks at Carlow University have struggled. Their enrollment is flat, really, down 1% over the last 8 reported years, and Baldwin is up about 4%. It's always interesting, and most media accounts talk about the enrollment number, but really what, really what matters is the net tuition. And let's take a look at the net tuition revenue for these two colleges, right? There's a gross amount, so you can see it's been relatively flat for Carlow University, up a little bit in 2024, up to $42 million, and really trending flat to slightly up at Mary Baldwin. That's the raw value, it's up at about $24 million and change in 2024. But let's look at the net tuition revenue per student. And what this gives us is kind of the average tuition paid per student. So we can see at Carlow University back in 2016, it was about $18,000. Forward ahead to 2024, it was about $23,000 and change per student. Not bad growth. These, these are not our numbers not associated with inflation. So when you add the inflation factor, they're not quite as good as they would normally be. And for Maria Baldwin, we can see the net tuition per student was at $12,000 and change in 2016 and was $14,000 almost $400 in 2024. And again, we look at the percent change, which is again a more standardized measure. Both have been up, um, a little bit, um, since 2020— since 2016. And we look at the amount per 1 million, we can see that both hover around The median value, Mary Baldwin, a little bit below, and, and Carlo a little bit above. Let's move on then and look at the basics around operating expenses and operating revenue. So we're going to use both graphs here. We're going to look at operating revenues, and on Chart 2, we're going to look at— Graph 2, we're going to look at expenses. And again, we can see the raw value doesn't have a lot of merit because a bigger college is going to have more expenses and a smaller one less expenses. So we can see the raw values, but look at— let's look at the percent change for both of these measures. So we can see that since 2016, Carlo has been up— total operating revenue has been up for— has been up 48%, not quite 49%. Total expenses at Carlo have been up 54%. So a little bit of a, like, a 5% gap, a little bit too much spending in relationship to total operating revenue over over the last 8 reported years. And Mary Baldwin, the revenue is up 64% and expenses up 48%. So good job at Mary Baldwin in terms of managing the overall expenses in association with revenue. And let's turn into our endowment. There's a couple things I want to look at at the endowment, and we'll start with the total endowment value. I lied to you, I'm with the endowment value at the end of the year. And again, we can see that the raw values have been relatively flat. That's not the best indicator. Let's take a look at the percent change. Again, we've got closed 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile markers. We can see that Carlow University's endowment value as a percent of change has grown nicely. Let's go back and look at the raw value. Now, the raw value for both of these is modest at best. Started off at $37 million for Mary Baldwin and has now dropped a little bit to $34 million. That's never good. And for Carlow, it was $28 million and change and has grown considerably to $56, almost double. So let's go back and look at the percent change. And this is really in relation to about 1,300 other private colleges in the country. We can see that Carlow is well above in terms of percent growth that endowment well above the 75th percentile. And on a more concerning note, Mary Baldwin is considerably below the 25th percentile. You look at that chart, they're probably bottom 10, bottom 5% of all private colleges across the country. And then let's look at what was commonly called the endowment draw. We call it the appropriation here. Look at the endowment draw as a percent of the beginning of the year endowment value. And the typical standard for that, and Matt talks about this all the time, is somewhere between 4% and 5%. And we can see that Carlo, that median number is right around that number, 4.5%. Carlo has really been pretty gosh darn consistent, staying right at that standard. They had a bump in 2024. We'll have to watch and see what the 2025 number is. Mary Baldwin, on the other hand, really used that endowment excessively. It's probably one of the reasons why their percent growth is so small. A lot in 2018, '19, and '20. And then again in 2024, they grabbed 20%, almost 20% of their endowment value in that year. Now, in my estimation, in my experience, that's, that's an important indicator of a college in trouble. They're essentially having to rob the endowment piggy bank to meet payroll and to keep the lights on and meet other spending obligations. As we move ahead, I want to kind of a different indicator. I want to look at something called the capital expense to depreciation ratio. And what this measures is how much an institution is investing in its infrastructure. And the standard threshold accepted by most is 1.0. So you want your capital expenses to be replacing depreciation. So whether it's buildings, it's sidewalks, it's roofs, it's computer, it's software, you You want that number of capital dollars each year to equal whatever your depreciation is for that year. And we can see that— we'll start with Carlo. They're right at or right above that one point, a big number. They probably built something back here in 2019. With exception of the last couple years, down a little bit. We would watch that, and I'll tell you why here in a second. And then at Mary Baldwin, they have been below that threshold really for all but two of the last 8 reported years. So what's the value? The value in this CapEx to depreciation ratio is associated with looking at it from my perspective, from my experience, looking— it's a safety issue. Is a college investing in its infrastructure, mostly buildings, sidewalks, HVAC, those kind of things, to keep that campus safe? If they are consistently below 1, it's fair to ask that college, if you're considering that college, for whatever reason, why that value is consistently below the depreciation ratio over a period of many, many, many years. And then let's move on and look at employees. I'll go back up to graph 1, and a couple ways we're going to look at employees. We're going to look at the W-2 employees, and again, in the presence of a relatively flat enrollment, relatively flat in net tuition revenue, We can see a 2% change. We can see that, that Harlow has been flat for the most part, down a little bit during the post-pandemic and inching back up a little, a little bit in the last couple of years. And that in relationship to all private colleges, Mary Baldwin has been on the high side, uh, total W employees as a percent change since 2020, since the pandemic started. And then let's look at employees This is always an interesting one— employees paid over $100,000. Now, in many cases, this is associated with a high-cost region. Massachusetts is high cost, Virginia is probably high cost, Pennsylvania maybe not quite so much, although there may be those that disagree with me. So let's take a look at total number of employees— it's the raw value— paid over $100,000, and both hovered around the same 20, right below 20, through 2016 through 2021, and both have inched up rather dramatically since 2021. See the percent change? Yeah, you can see the percent change for both of these. For Mary Baldwin, more than the others. And let's look at the per $1 million. So again, so per $1 million in operating revenue, Mary Baldwin is near the top 75% in the number of employees paid over $100,000. Now Mary Baldwin can do whatever they want to in terms of compensating their executives, their leadership, all of their employees. But this is one of the ways where this kind of tool, this Private College Advanced Financial Compass, can be used to compare colleges across the region. Now, a quick sidebar on this. I've just got 2 colleges here. If we wanted, we could put every other private college in Virginia or every other private college in Pennsylvania on this set of comparison tools. You would see an average number for the green. You wouldn't see individualized numbers for each of 10 or 15 colleges. But again, you can kind of design your own comparisons, peer comparisons for private colleges across all of these many, many, many, look at all these numbers, all these different kinds of reports. And in many cases, most cases, almost all cases across many, many different views. And then just a few more that I wanna show. I'm gonna take a look at at advertising, because in this day and age, with the demographic cliff, demographic slope upon us, let's take a look at the percent change in advertising. And Mary Baldwin, kind of all over the place. They have spent a lot more in the last couple years on advertising. Carlow, to their credit, has kept their advertising costs below, below the median for sure, hovering around the 25th percentile. Let's take a look at the $1 million operating revenue, and again we see advertising expenses For Carlo, a little bit above the average. And again, why these different reasons are important. And Mary Baldwin, a little bit below the median. And after you look at advertising, let's look at gifts. Excuse me. These are unrestricted private gifts. And we can see relatively flat at around $1.5 million, give or take, for Mary Baldwin over the last 8 reported years. And at about $500,000, a little bit above that, for for, um, Cardwell University over those same last 8 reported 8 calendar years. And then finally, I want to take a look at something that's new to the show. We haven't shown this before, I don't think. Matt may correct me on this. I want to look at months of liquidity. Now this started in 2019, and this is the number of months of cash, liquid assets, that a college has. You can see the formula for it right here, and we can see that back in 2019, pre-pandemic, that Mary Baldwin had about 10 months and, and Carlo had almost 5 months. But look what happened post-pandemic. Their liquid assets have been consumed so that now both hover really less than 2, or right around 2 months of liquidity. Now, I'm not the best in knowing how— what a good standard would be, but I know that 1 or 2 months of liquidity is a challenging number. And I know if we look at other industries, for example, in healthcare, it's called days of cash, and many hospitals have 300 days, 12 months of cash available for spending. So just a comparison, and again, the comparisons matter. We can see that in terms of liquidity, both Mary Baldwin and Carlo are below that 25th percentile. And really, I hadn't noticed in the early preparation I did, below that closed college set as well. And then the last thing I'm gonna look at on, on the Advanced Compass is just a quick tool that we really don't spend enough time on outside of the show. And this is the private college vendor prices from 2016, 2024. I've got Mary Baldwin up, and what I do when I look at this, I just look for color. Color is not good in general. The darker the color, the worse the comparison. And what this does is takes a vendor for all of Mary Mary Baldwin University from 2017 on, shows their students, shows the vendor, describes the vendor, and then for data purposes it's harmonized. And we can see that in terms of, I'm gonna look at enrollment, enrollment back in 2020, and really for each of, so we can see the EAB that Mary Baldwin University, and that's enrollment services provider, has spent above the median compared to its peer colleges, this is 1,300+ private college peers throughout the country. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? I don't have the data to know, but it gives the good folks at Mary Baldwin the chance to say, hey, EAB, why are we paying so much more than others? Maybe they're getting different services. Maybe it's a different structure. Who knows? And the same thing, we can do it for Carlow. So Carlow University, let's just look at one year, 2024, just to show you the functionality here. And we can see that Carlow University in 2024, and this is the top 5 IRS 990, Form 990 spending that shows up there. And with exception of HVAC and mechanical, Carlow does fine in terms of comparison. There's only one color that is for that HVAC material. And then finally, a quick look at the College Viability app, the app that I created. And as Matt knows, when we, when we do my part of the show each week, we look at graduation rates. And neither of these colleges is above the minimum threshold we have here at College Viability of 50% If you can't graduate at least 50% of your students in 4 years, the term I've coined is your coin toss college, for obvious reasons. And we can see both of these colleges have numbers considerably below that. Mary Baldwin not even as strong as Carlow, and that's a relatively modest comparison. And then even to point this out, let's look at the 6-year graduation rates. And just at Mary Baldwin, after 6 years, students who started at Mary Baldwin, less than half of them after 6 years graduate from Mary Baldwin University. Now I understand some have transferred and graduated all their other places, some will graduate in 7 or 8 years, but it's the comparisons that matter. This is not a good number for Mary Baldwin, it's not a great number for Carlow, but at least half of their students graduate after 6 years. And let's take a look then at undergrad enrollment. We saw that below, saw that before, and again flat for the most part. Both colleges are both about the same kind of colleges, around 1,000 students. Let's take a look at something called unfunded institutional grants. This is what you and I know as most merit aid, almost all merit aid, and most, most scholarships, not all scholarships. And we can see the growth. So for both Carlow and Mary Baldwin, they started at about $10 million each in 2016. Carlow's up $2.5 million over that time period, up to $11 million and change, almost $12 million. And about a 60% growth at Mary Baldwin. They have added an additional almost $7 million in unfunded institutional grants. These are not funds where there's actual dollars transferred, it's just coupons, it is just discounts. There's no actual dollars. And this is what I— what the colleges report in the IPEDS database for an unfunded institutional grants. And then let's look also at college majors. And I brought up both Carlow University on the College Majors Completion app. This has 2,700+ private and public 2- and 4-year colleges. And on this one, we look at college— at the mix and match of majors completed. And here we have 64 common and diverse majors that we look at, and we can see some decent volume. And you can see where there's decent volume for the last couple of years. This is the student family version. The full executive version for academic leaders has 4 years of data. And we can see it's down, I'm sorry, we can see that there are a few programs that have decent enrollment volume, but look at these programs with low majors completion. Same thing for Mary Baldwin, look at all of these with low numbers. Now, one of the arguments that I make is why are colleges continuing to try and be everything to everybody in physics and chemistry and arts and math and business and music and applied math. What's the cost? What's the value? Now I understand there's some tuition dollars coming for each of those, but how strong can a program be when it's graduating applied math 3 students? Because we can bring up other programs. I'll bring the external comparison here in a minute. This is internal market share. So 1.5% in 2023 of all of the majors of the 64 we track were in applied math. And we scroll down, 15% were in liberal arts, 13% in psychology, and 10% psychology, and smaller numbers for the other ones. And then when we look at external market share, I just picked Virginia. So we're looking at the state of Virginia, and we're looking at just— look at just private colleges. We could look at public as well. And this is external market share. So I've got— I've had applied mathematics, right? Let's choose that major for applied mathematics. Turn off accounting, look at applied mathematics, and we can see there's dominant players. Liberty University. Liberty University is a dominant player in applied mathematics. The folks at Hampton, the folks at Murray Baldwin, and the folks at Shenandoah are bit players in this applied mathematics market. Let's look at something a little bit more common— accounting. And again, we can see the diverse set of colleges. I can make this a little bigger. And we can see colleges are dominant, are dominating in, this is again biology, I'm sorry, I got biology up here. And because they're doing strong, University of Richmond, and look at these small college percentages, 1.6% of the market, 4% of the market, 2% of the market. And again, the argument is made, and you've heard me say this before on previous shows, if you and I need brain surgery or some other kind of important health event, we'd rather have the physician who does one brain surgery a day 4 or 5 a week, not 1 a month or 1 a quarter. And the same thing here, I can make a logical case that those colleges with larger volumes have better programs. And in this day and age, when colleges regularly cut back programs, lay off faculty for that programs, you want to look at the majors completion for the colleges you are considering to make sure they don't have a small number, because small number— small completion numbers for majors are at high risk of being closed in the coming years. And then lastly, just a tool that we have available— this is a free college viability report available at mycollegeviability.com. You can have the link included in the show notes, and we'll show you just to customize for a college you choose, a 4-year and 6-year graduation rates. You can see this college is just our demo. The enrollment change, has it gone up or down? The endowment change, has it gone up or down? And then we look at a cost of delayed graduation. So this is really for students and their families, although we have versions for counselors, faculty, and staff coming out soon as well. So as Matt and I, if he were on the other side of the screen each week, it is the comparisons that matter. It's the trends that matter. Look at the data and how we use the apps for Carlow University and Mary Baldwin University. We can do one for you if you've got a college or colleges you want us to do on the show, drop me a note. I'll leave my contact information in the show notes and we'll add it. And I just had somebody add a college today. We're already out into mid-December for college requests from folks. And I know why, because these are colleges that folks have concerns about. Will either Mary Baldwin or Carlow University close? It's highly unlikely, but both are— neither is in a financially strong position and they both have to watch that endowment value. They both have to do a better job of managing expenses and revenue, although Baldwin is doing better than Carlow. And they have to realize that this is a shrinking market. There are way too many colleges and not nearly enough students willing to pay even heavily discounted tuition to attend those colleges. So for Matt Hendricks, who's not with us today, I'm Gary Stocker. Thanks for making time to watch the show. We'll be, we'll be back next Tuesday with two more colleges on the College Financial Health Show.