Gary Stocker compares financial health at Bradley, Greenville, and Quincy universities from 2013 to 2018. Bradley grew enrollment 10% and endowment $45M, but core revenue fell $18M. Greenville and Quincy both lost 5-8% enrollment and saw endowment shrink or stall, with core revenue declining across all three schools.
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Today's College Viability episode reviews 3 Illinois private colleges. They are Bradley University in Peoria, Quincy University in Quincy, and Greenville University in Greenville, Illinois. In this episode, we'll review the College Viability Application comparison results for the 3 colleges. The College Viability app provides 6-year summary comparisons for each of the 3 colleges from the years 2013 to 2018, and it's across full-time enrollment, admissions yield, graduation rates, expenses, revenues, and the endowment assets. And a quick look at our 3 universities in today's episode shows that Bradley University has increased enrollment over the last 6 years, and neither Greenville nor Quincy University have been so successful. In addition, you'll notice that while the expenses have gone up at Bradley University, $7 million and change, the revenue has gone down over $18 million. Greenville was able to raise expenses just half a million dollars, but their revenue went down $4 million. Clearly, Quincy University was trying to get ahead of the game by significantly reducing their expenses, but again, it doesn't really come close to the revenue losses they have taken from their fiscal years 2013 to 2018. The College Viability App then breaks down each of the schools by each individual year for enrollment, tuition and fees, endowment, graduation rates, core expenses, and core revenues, and we'll briefly look at each. When we look at enrollment, you can see that Bradley University is clearly the larger of the three colleges, and they have been able to increase their enrollment over the last six years by about 10%. Both Greenville and Quincy have struggled to maintain any kind of enrollment growth. As a matter of fact, they have both gone down about 5 to 8% over the last six years. Not necessarily a good thing. That's also reflected in tuition and fees. As we bring up the years 2013 all the way through 2018, we can see that Bradley University has grown their revenue from tuition and fees about $5 million in that time period. Greenville is down, decrease of about $3 million, and Quincy with a decrease of over $4 million in revenue. We can look at their endowment as basic comparisons of overall strength of the organization. And again, we see that Bradley is a much larger organization with a much stronger endowment than either, than either Greenville or Quincy. And they have been able to grow their endowment $45 million and change over the last 6 years. Greenville has been able to grow theirs not quite a million a year. And what is really concerning is the endowment assets for Quincy University has actually gone down over $4 million over the last 6 years. Graduation rates are an indicator of quality and the ability of an organization to graduate its students. And again, we clearly see Bradley University is much stronger in terms of its graduation rate. And while all 3 have remained relatively flat, Greenville's taken a little bit of a hit over the last 6 years. Both Greenville and Quincy with graduation rates of about 50%. While typical of smaller to medium-sized private colleges, is not a good number. And lastly, at the College Viability app, we'll look at the expenses and revenues. And this is really an individualized yearly report from the summary. And the expenses for Bradley have gone up from $123 million to $131 million over the last 6 years. Greenville has effectively been flat. Quincy, as we said earlier, has gone down about $3 million. But as we look at the revenue, we can see that in each of the 3 cases, revenue from tuition, core revenue, has gone down in each of the 3 colleges' situations.
