Comparing Colleges side by side - Ohio private colleges

Hello, my name is Gary Stocker. For the past 5 years, I have been researching the financial health and viability of private colleges across the United States. In 2020, I created and released something called the College Viability App or application. As you see here, are you looking for more information about the financial health of your private college or colleges you're considering? Or are you concerned private colleges you might be considering could be in financial trouble? Maybe they'll close, or maybe they'll just struggle to provide a quality education. During this video, I'll share with you how to quickly and easily compare the financial health of some Ohio private colleges you may be considering. I can help you become more informed, more comfortable, and more confident in your final college decision. This data, by the way, is from the National Center for Education Statistics. The colleges are Lourdes University, Otterbein, Otterbean University, Ohio Wesleyan University, Malone University, John Carroll University, The University of Dayton, and Ohio Christian University. By the way, if you would like to see my financial comparison of other private colleges you are considering, feel free to leave a list of those colleges down below in the comments section—3 to 5 to 7, something like that—and I'll be glad to add that to my list for future videos. What you are seeing here is the home screen of the College Viability App. And I have selected Ohio as the states, and I've selected both regional and religious types of colleges, and you can see that I've selected Lourdes, Malone, Ohio Christian, Ohio Wesleyan, and the others that we mentioned earlier. On the right-hand side is a set of tabs, including an Understanding tab that explains all the stuff that I'm about to talk about. But I'm going to focus on 6-year changes initially. And keep in mind, this is from the National Center for Education Statistics, It is 6 years worth of data, so that's why we focus on comparisons. And the data happens to be from 2013 to 2018. You can see our 7 colleges right here. And these are the 6 basic categories that we, that we monitor over the 6-year period. We're going to look at each of those in some form or fashion over the next couple minutes. So the first is enrollment, and I'm using something called FTE, or full-time equivalent enrollment. And I've already clicked on that to sort to sort the list of colleges by 12-month enrollment change over those 6 years. And we can see that Ohio Christian University has gained not quite 1,000 students, Dayton is up 250, and then Ohio Wesleyan, Otterbein, John Carroll, Lourdes have lost a couple hundred, and at the bottom of the list we see Malone University has lost 675 students. These are simply comparisons. These are not commentaries on the quality or lack thereof of any of these colleges in our sample set. So let's go over here and look at the actual enrollment for each of those 6 years from the— for these 7 colleges. And again, we can see the changes over the 7 years. As we look at this, the one thing that we note is the University of Dayton is substantially larger than really the rest of the colleges in this comparison. It impacts this number a little bit. You can make the case that essentially Dayton has had flat enrollment even though they've grown about 250. But you can also make the case that Ohio Christian is doing something right in terms of enrollment, having grown almost 1,000 students over the last 6 years reported from the federal government. On the other end of the spectrum, we can see in red, it's just kind of some comparative color here, that each of these other colleges have lost enrollment. Maybe it picked up in 2019, maybe it picked up in 2020, but for this 6-year reporting period, it was headed in a direction I'm not sure any of these colleges were comfortable with. It is the comparison that we focus on, not the absolute value. Let's take a look then next at graduation rates. And I'm going to do this a little bit differently. I'm going to click on the 6-year graduation rate for 2018. And I'm going to go down this list here in a second. But let's keep in mind what a 6-year graduation rate is. We'll use John Carroll University as our example. For every 100 students, who started at John Carroll University in 2013, 76% of them graduated from John Carroll University by the end of 2018. On the other end of the spectrum, both Ohio Christian and Lord's University have less impressive numbers. Does it mean they're bad colleges? I don't know. Does it mean they're good colleges? One could wonder. Does it mean that John Carroll is a great college because they graduate 76% of their Students after 6 years, no, but it does suggest that colleges like John Carroll University have systems and processes in place to graduate more students, these are undergrad students, than the others that we see on the scale. The other colleges demonstrate a 6-year graduation rate that suggests they haven't quite figured out those systems and processes yet. Yet. And then finally, I want to take a quick look at the endowment. And again, I will sort this by from highest to lowest. And you can see that University of Dayton, half a billion dollars in endowment in 2018, and they have grown their endowment about $117 million over these 6 years. Ohio Wesleyan is up 50. Carroll, John Carroll's up 44. And the other 4 while there has been some growth, not nearly as much as we've seen in the top 3. This simply reflects a college's capacity to get funding sources from gifts. It's one of the many comparisons that we use to try and make a determination on the financial health and viability of any individual college as it compares to another. So today it means you need to check. You need to check on and compare the financial health of private colleges you are considering. Granted, very few people have the skills or the interest in analyzing a college's finances. I know that. And that's why I have made the comparisons easy and simple for you to use in the College Viability App. And you'll see some more details on access to the free version down below. So let's go back to the College Viability App and let's look at tuition and fees. And I'll click on that button on the right-hand side, and it's going to bring up the tuition and fees for our 7 Ohio private colleges. And let's sort these from highest to lowest. And so you can see that Ohio Christian, from 2013 with $22, almost $23 million in tuition and fees revenue, went up to $30 million. About $7 million plus in increased revenue. And you can see the numbers for John Carroll, uh, University of Dayton is down a couple of million from this over the 7 years, and then more substantial losses from tuition and fees for Otterbein, Ohio Wesleyan, Malone, and Lord's Universities. Again, as I will say many times, doesn't differentiate a good college or a bad college, but it continues to build the case that if you compare one college to another the financial health, the financial viability is an important consideration so that you don't choose a college, or more likely lower your risk of choosing a college that is not as financially healthy and viable as maybe others on your list. So you can see this is for tuition and fees. And finally, let's click back over on the right-hand side and let's look at core expenses. Now these are the individual years. These are our 7 colleges. Let's look at the changes. So we can see that from 2013 to 2018, that the expenses at the University of Dayton went up $90 million. And we can see the numbers for Ohio Christian, John Carroll, Otterbein, and all the way down. I'm going to bring up the individual revenue screen next so we can look at each of the individual years Then I'm going to go back and show you what the 6-year change summary looks like. So let's look at core revenue. And we can see again, here's our 7 colleges. And we can see that the revenue at Dayton went up not quite $79 million. And we can see the numbers for the rest. Lourdes University, their core revenue from tuition and all the revenue sources that they have went down not quite $10 million over the 6-year period. For the final screen, let's go back to 6-year changes. And I think this is, in addition to graduation rate and enrollment, this is one of the more significant indicators. Because remember, even though the most recent data is from 2018, it's still a pattern. We're looking at expenses and the revenue for each of the colleges. So let me go through each of the 7. Essentially, Ohio Christian University matched expenses, up $7.5 million. With revenues up a little bit more than that. Otterbein had expenses of $5 million, but revenue was down $3 million, again over 6 years. But that's a trend, that's a pattern. Dayton, expenses up $90 million, revenues up not quite $80 million, so a $10 million gap, $10 million gap over those 6 years. Malone University, they knew they had issues, it looks like. Their expenses went down $7 million, Their revenues only went down $5 million. Give them credit. Malone University did a good job of managing their expenses over this 6-year reporting period. John Carroll, expenses up $6 million, revenues up $8.5 million. Again, nicely done. Lourdes University, expenses down $4 million and change, revenue down almost $10 million. You can make the argument just looking at the data that Lourdes knew they had issues with revenue, but they didn't— they weren't quite able to cut, to decrease expenses as much as the revenue went down in that 6-year reporting period. And then finally, Ohio Wesleyan had expenses up $4 million, revenues down $3 million. Again, not a good pattern. Yet another factor to consider when looking at these private colleges and comparing one to the other. Now you know how to compare the financial health of private colleges you are considering. You can feel more comfortable with whatever your final decision might be. Remember, I have also created a link in the description below to the free version of the College Viability App. I would encourage you to grab the app, take a look at it, and see what it can do for you. If you found this video helpful in providing you with more information on private colleges you are considering, click on the like button below. And click on the subscribe button to have easier access to my other college viability videos. And while you're at it, share this video with your family and friends and others entering that college decision time period in their lives. I'll see you next time.