Gary Stocker analyzes private colleges in Alabama and Mississippi using enrollment, graduation rates, admissions yield, and endowment data from 2014-2021. Birmingham-Southern and Samford lead; University of Mobile and Tuskegee lag. Declining enrollment often precedes mergers or closures.
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It's the December 17th, 2023 top-bottom report from College Viability. Hi, my name is Gary Stocker. Today we're looking at two colleges— two states, excuse me— looking at the states of Alabama and Mississippi. There are so few private regionals in those areas, I just combined those two states together. And as always, you can see the four fields that we use to look at the top 10, for the most part, and bottom 10, for the most part, private colleges in these two states. The data, of course, is from the National Center for Education Statistics, from its IPEDS database from 2014 to 2021. And to the data we go, and we always start with enrollment. And we use FTE enrollment, and you can see some decent performers for sure in these two states. And the state category is listed on the far left-hand side. But even here we can see some decent performance from the top 5. But Southern— Southeastern Baptist, Armory Ridge Heritage, you know, that's 50 students over 8 years. They can have credit for growing their enrollment, but really that's not much. And even at the bottom, University of Mobile, and Huntsville Bible with small enrollment. We can't even get 10 private colleges in Mississippi and Alabama with positive enrollment growth over the last 8 reported years. And again, you can see the reported years here. You can look at the individual years on your own. Because when we go to the bottom of the list, we can see 10 colleges, and you can see their enrollment loss again over the course of 8 years. This is a pattern. Now, in most cases, but not every case, every single year is a downward trend. And we have to ask the question, at what point do leaders in these organizations say, "Gosh, we have a problem." But no, in my experience and what we see reported in the media, they just wait too long for merger opportunities. They wait too long for— in hopes that things will change, and it just rarely, if ever, works out. Let's continue the look. Let's look at graduation rates. You've heard me say before, this is the hidden tragedy. Although, interestingly, in these two states, Alabama and Mississippi, we have 5 of the top 10 are above our minimum threshold of 50%. So the definition of that, for every 100 students, for example, who started at Birmingham Southern in 2018, 65 graduated. Now some may have gone on to graduate somewhere else, they may have graduated in 5, 6, 7, or 8 years, well not 8 years, but 5 or 6 years. So that's the way those definitions are. Interestingly, Birmingham Southern, which appears to not gonna be able to survive in its present business model, does alright with a 65% graduation rate. That appears to be the trend over the last couple years. They've done something right to grow that rate in the last few years, but it. They've messed up a lot of ways on their finances. It's unlikely they survive in their current business model. And when we go to the low end, the bottom level of the 4-year graduation rates, why would anyone send their child— why would anyone go to a college that doesn't even graduate 3 out of 10 students in 4 years? We don't go to colleges for the courses. We go to colleges for the diploma, and if in the case of Tuskegee or Talladega, 27% and 20% graduate after 4 years. Of course, make your own decisions, but the data tells us that's not a good, that's not a good number at all. We always look at the admissions yield. Of course, I call that the popularity indicator. It reflects the percentage of students who actually show up once the college accepts them, and we've got some good numbers here. You can look at the numbers on your own, but Blue Mountain, William Carey, some good admissions yield numbers. I always look at the percent change, and the top 4, 4 out of the top 5, show some good numbers. Blue Mountain, William Carey, for whatever reason, more students are accepting their offers of admissions. You can look at the rest of the numbers by yourself, because when I go to the bottom list, you can see without exception the top 10 or so, I've got a longer list than 10—have decreased admissions yield, which means fewer students are accepting their offers of admissions. And those students are either going to other colleges, which certainly happens in some cases, and my speculation is many students are applying to college, it's based on nothing now, just my gut feeling, many of these students are going the route of applying to colleges, getting accepted, and then not going up anywhere. Because I see so many colleges with a decreased admissions yield. And then we look at endowment as the last field that we look at. Our minimum endowment value here at College Viability is $50 million, and we can see that 5 of the top 10 get there. Huntington and Birmingham Southern hover right around 50. Samford doing well. Interestingly, both Millsap and Tuskegee have negative numbers, as does Birmingham Southern. That's usually not a good indicator. That's usually an indicator of either they've done a really bad job investing their funds or they're borrowing those funds to keep the lights on. And then at the bottom of that list, we can see some colleges with not much more than couch money. You can look at the numbers yourself, but the $50 million is the minimum, and the highest of the bottom is Stillman at not even $20 million. So that's the quick look at the private colleges, the tops and bottoms in both Alabama and Mississippi. You can get your own version of the app, and I'll make sure to include a link in the YouTube notes. And as I share almost every week when I do this, focus on the stronger colleges. If you're looking at private colleges and Alabama and Mississippi is the geography you're looking at, the ones in the top are going to provide you a more financially stable experience. The ones at the bottom may or may not close. It's tough to call. I have my own list, but that's for my use. But they're certainly not going to be able to provide the same kind of financial support in terms of resources for conducting colleges, for paying faculty, for keeping the buildings up. And it's still kind of a buyer beware, caveat emptor situation. If there's a bad history a bad financial history in just the 4 fields that we look at for these top/bottom reports, I can make an educated speculation that it's going to be a bad future. That's not always going to be the case, but if I'm a parent, I'm looking at these numbers, I'm focusing on the tops, and I'm leaving the bottoms alone. Some questions you can ask for those bottom-performing colleges is: why did the enrollment decrease so much? Or why did your enrollment decrease so much? Why is your endowment so far below the $50 million minimum? What have you done to improve your graduation rates? 'Cause we saw some abysmal ones here. So those are the kind of questions that you ask. If you have specific questions or wanna suggest a state or even specific college or colleges to look at, drop me a note at gary@collegeviability.com. That's one word, collegeviability.com. I'll be sure to add that to the list and get those answered. This is Gary Stocker with College Viability with another Top Bottom Report for December 17th, 2016. 2023.
