College Viability Top-Bottom Reports for New York state Private Colleges (Regional)

Welcome to the December 4th, 2023 college viability top and bottom reports. This week brought to you by the private colleges in New York. And these are all the private college, private regional colleges in New York. And as you can see on the screen, we track enrollment. We track 4-year graduation rates, admission yields, endowment. Hi, my name is Gary Stocker, and as always, our sources of data is from the National Center for Education Statistics and its IPEDS database for the years 2014 to 2021. Let's look at New York private colleges, and we always start with enrollment because everybody tracks enrollment, and there are strong— there are many strong performing private colleges in New York. On the enrollment side, keeping in mind that enrollment is not always the key indicator, it's the tuition and fee revenue associated with that. But you can look at that list for yourself and see that there are any number of colleges who have grown enrollment from a lot to a little bit. And you can see Long Island University has experienced some substantial enrollment along with Fordham, and colleges like Colgate and the New School, Barnard, Siena, you know, that number of, in the second to right-hand column, of, for example, Siena, 452 students. That's over 8 years, so that's what, about 50 students a year, something like that. So not bad, not great, but better than, as is always the case, the bottom. And you can see again from the second column from the right, those colleges whose enrollment has dropped, has decreased from the period 2014 to 2021. And again, that's the last reported data here in December of 2023. We should be seeing the 2022 data show up shortly, and I'll be updating that in the 2024 versions of the College Viability App. But here's the takeaway: it's not just that they've decreased, but that the enrollment has decreased over the past 8 years. There's a downward trend for all of these. And keep in mind that we use something called FTE enrollment. You can see that in the top left portion of the screen. FTE stands for full-time equivalent. It's just, in our mind, the best standardized way to count enrollment. And there's another— there's some inside baseball, inside higher ed stories behind that. We'll save that for another day. These are the kind of colleges where you have to be prepared, if you're considering those for yourself or your family members, to ask the question why. At Ithaca College, why is your enrollment down over 1,300 students over the last 8 years? At Canisius, why is it down 1,200? At Excelsior, why is it down almost 10,000 students? Big concern. It's not just because the enrollment has gone down, but the tuition and fee revenue associated with that has gone down as well. So take a look. There are other, you know, there's 70-some-odd private regional colleges in New York. The full version of the College Viability app has all those. I'll make sure to include a link to that app in the show notes for this week's Top Bottom Report. Let's move on and look at graduation rates. Good numbers. You can see the list on the left for yourself. The minimum threshold we have at College Viability, our number is 50% undergraduate graduation rates for 4 years. And you can see all of these easily, easily top that. Good colleges in terms of being able to have the systems and processes in place, and I'll add even the students capable of doing college work and graduating in 4 years, because when we go to the next one, That's not the case. And let's look at the third from the right column, and keeping in mind again that our minimum threshold is 50%, not a single one of these 10 colleges are even close to that. Let's pick on Mercy College here in the middle. Here's a way to analyze that over 4 years. So from 2018 through 2021, for every 100 students that started at Mercy College, 35 Only 35 out of 100 graduated after 4 years. Now some have continued on to other colleges and maybe graduated from those. Some have graduated in 5 years or 6 years, but this is a comparison. And if I'm comparing colleges, I'm considering Mercy College, for example, with Union College. 80% graduation rate, right, over the course of the last 8 years for Union College, and Mercy College at 35%. Make your own Determination. If you're comfortable with a college that can only graduate 35% of its students, go for it. And maybe the tuition rate, maybe the discounted tuition they give you makes it worthwhile. If so, go for it. But they can only graduate, they have a historical record of only graduating 35 out of 100, and that's not good. And the next one is, technically it's called the admissions yield. You can see the title up at the top. I call it the popularity indicator. And again, if you've listened to these Top Bottom podcasts before, admissions yield, the definition is a percentage of students who accept a college's offer of admission, show up, pay tuition, take classes. I call it a popularity indicator because it does that. It effectively says a college has said to a student, We accept you. And if the student says, no, I've got a better deal, I've got a better offer, I found a better college, to me that's the market saying there are better options. Let's start at the top. And the first 4 I think are all religious colleges and they probably have systems and processes in place. I left that in there just as an example. But really starting at Bernard College, you know, you can see that Bernard College has gone up 19 points. The 8-year change has gone up 19 points. That probably happened. Interestingly, the King's College, which is in all sorts of trouble in New York and may or may not survive, started at 4% admissions yield, which is awful, really low, and probably is indicative of their issues beyond that. And the data shows, and I say that with intent, the data shows it's up to 13%. So up 9 percentage points over the 8 years reported. Either they reported the data wrong, incorrectly in 2014, or these data points are generously applying the admissions yield. I have no idea which, but that's a big jump from one year to the next. And maybe what they did in all these years, which is reasonable, is they really discounted the tuition to get students to accept their offer. Fine, great colleges, feel free to do that. But if you don't have the revenue to keep the lights on because you've discounted tuition so much, if you don't have revenue to meet payroll because you've discounted tuition so much. That's a consequence. And then on the bottom end of the popularity indicator, the admissions yield, look at the negative trend across the board. Again, this is a pattern, this is a trend. This is not a single-year snapshot that most reporters and most analysts use. This is a trend. That's the real value in the College Viability App and the College Viability data. It shows you 8 years' worth of data. You can't say, "We'll be better next year," and be believable when you haven't been better the previous 7 or 8 years. And each of these colleges, you can look at the list on your own, has become less popular when using the admissions yield, again, from the National Center for Education Statistics and its IPEDS database. You decide, of course, which of these colleges you're willing to consider. There are many other data points, but if they're becoming less popular by this data when others are making their decisions, you really want to think about including that as well. And then the endowment, of course, the gifts from alumni, friends, and others— some strong. We'll look at the 2021 numbers. You can look at the patterns on your own. You know, a billion for 3 of the colleges. And all the numbers are really strong. The bare minimum we use here at College Viability is $50 million. They all do fine. And as you might have guessed, when we go to the bottom, a couple things to look at here, uh, we look at the 2021 value, and none of these are even close, even close, even in the same ballpark as $50 million. And so if some of these colleges say, and when in desperate financial straits, when the last dollar is about to go down the financial drain, and they say, "We're gonna raise $10 million or $20 million or $30 million," guys, not gonna happen. If over the history of decades, and in some cases centuries, they've only been able to raise, in the case of Nyack College or Madiag College, $5 million or $2 million, don't buy for a second they can raise multiples of that on short notice. And more importantly is some of these colleges are borrowing against their endowment. Now, the King's College endowment, again, pathetic, really bad, but they borrowed a little bit against it, some to couch money. But look at Maria, look at Manayat College. They've borrowed— they borrowed against that is my, my interpretation. They could have just made bad investments, but they're borrowing against their endowment which, keep in mind, is in existence to help keep the college stay alive into perpetuity, just to keep the lights on. They're borrowing against the endowment just to meet payroll, unless of course they've just made bad investments in their endowment fund. And then this week I added something that I don't normally do, and this is a private screen that I created inside the College Viability app for my purposes because I summarize and look at so many different colleges. These are the two colleges that over this past summer have been in all sorts of financial trouble as reported by a variety of media sources, Paul Smith's College and King's College, and both are in dire straits. Neither will probably survive, especially in its current form. Paul Smith's, I believe, did try a merger over the summer. That didn't work out. But in the red, I've highlighted the numbers that are of concern. In the yellow, goldish kind of, just a note. And in the green something positive to look at. And I want to focus on the tuition and fees revenue because it's good. It's more good— that's proper— for Paul Smith, up about $3 million. Again, that's over 8 years, so do the math to see how much over those 8 years. That probably doesn't even cover inflation. I'd have to do the math on that. The King's College isn't up much more than, than couch money. But they, at least they've had some growth. But I'm guessing, and I don't have expenses showing here, that it doesn't match with their expenses. But this is kind of a quick screen you can look at on your own. You can see the 4-year graduation rates. I added the 6-year graduation rates here. These are colleges that are in trouble, and you can kind of use their data points to compare your college using the College Viability app. And so what's the takeaway? Again, like I said before, there are 78 regional private colleges in New York. And I just posted the top 10 or so. That full version of the app, and I'll give you a link to acquire that, to purchase that, in the show notes, would let you look at all of the private colleges in New York, really all the private colleges in the country. But as I say week after week, as a parent or student, if I'm in your shoes, I focus on the stronger private colleges, the one on the top lists. I would caution you that those colleges that are consistently in the bottom And the bottom of that list should be considered only with aggressive questioning. Why are you at the bottom of the enrollment list? Why are you at the bottom of the popularity list? Why are you so low on endowments? Why is your graduation rate so bad? And then judge those responses accordingly. This is really that age-old caveat emptor, the Latin saying for buyer beware. If you choose one of those colleges, the data suggests Eh, that's a risk. And I will always make the case, and that's the essence behind the College Viability app, that bad history equals bad future. If you have some specific colleges, some specific states you want to look at, either on the public or private college side, or any comments, concerns, challenges, feel free to send those to me at gary@collegeviability— that's one word— gary@collegeviability.com, and we'll have next week's Top Bottom Report from College Viability posted on Sunday. We'll talk to you then. Mm-hmm.