Ohio Valley University Closing. Will my college close? College Viability App

The December 2021 news reports that Ohio Valley University in West Virginia is closing immediately sent me to the College Viability app to compare Ohio Valley with other private West Virginia colleges. Data from the last 6 reported years shows some concerning financial and enrollment patterns for these 7 private colleges. There's decreasing enrollment in 6 of the 7. There's really a low graduation rate, below the threshold of 70% that I use. The endowments are almost all below the minimum threshold of $50 million. Just 1 of the 7 is barely above that. And most of the 7—5 of the 7—had a 6-year imbalance in expenses to revenues, meaning they had expenses increase more than their revenues increased or decreased. And as you'll see as we look at the actual data for Ohio Valley University, all of those factors and more came into play. Their enrollment is low to start off with, they've had decreasing enrollment, They have serious expense-to-revenue imbalances, a ridiculously small endowment at barely $4 million, poor 6-year graduation rates, low retention rates—they can't keep students. Interestingly, we have high administrative costs, and compared to the other 6 private colleges in West Virginia, they don't provide as much support for instruction activities. You'll see the data here in a moment. Hi. My name is Gary Stocker. For the past 5 years, I have been researching the financial health and viability of private colleges in the United States. In 2020, I created and released the College Viability App that I'm going to share with you today. During this video, I'll show you how to quickly and easily compare the financial health of West Virginia private colleges, some of which you may be considering. And the focus will be on Ohio Valley University and the financial, enrollment, and graduation challenges that the data shows they faced. I think I can help you become more comfortable, more informed, and more confident in your final college decision. And by the way, this data comes from the National Center for Education Statistics for the most recently reported data from 2014 to 2019. Our 7 colleges today are Alderson Broadus University, Bethany College, Davis Elkins College, Ohio Valley University, the University of Charleston, West Virginia Wesleyan College, and Wheeling University. This is a summary screen of the 7 private colleges in West Virginia, and I've sorted this first page by the change in enrollment over the last 6 years. And again, the reported period is 2014 to 2019. And we can see that just 1 of the 7 had an increase in enrollment. Let's focus though on Ohio Valley. Their enrollment was down 70 students, as you can see, not as bad as some of the other private colleges in West Virginia. But as I click on the enrollment tab in the College Viability app, we'll see The total Ohio Valley University enrollment is less than really any of the other colleges. So the loss of about 70 students over 6 years is a much more significant impact than it would be for, say, a college like University of Charleston with over 2,000 students enrolled. So this is one of the ways that the College Viability app lets us compare not just the change in enrollment, but how big these colleges were in 2013-14 and what their enrollment is or how big they are in 2018-19. In the last reported data available. Let's look at graduation rates. And I have shared in previous videos that if there's one substantial and substantive measure of a college's quality, it's its ability to graduate students. Now you look at this screen and you see 6-year graduation rates. What happened to 4-year graduation rates? What is happening is the 4-year graduation rates are even lower than what we're going to see here for the 6-year graduation rates. And colleges have changed their focus from reporting on 4 years to 6 years in many cases. But even with that, as we look at the data for these 7 West Virginia colleges, we can see that each of the 7 West Virginia private colleges has a 6-year undergraduate graduation rate lower than 70%. Now, 70% is a threshold that I, and I think many others, use as a cutoff for a minimum acceptable 6-year graduation rate. And as we look at Ohio Valley University, we can see it is in the middle of a whole set of low graduation rates. But let's put this in perspective, and we'll focus on Ohio Valley. For every 100 undergraduate students who started at Ohio Valley in 2013-2014, Only 36 graduated from Ohio Valley with their undergraduate degree in 2018-2019. Now, some have transferred, some may still be studying, probably somewhere else, but that's a really low number. Barely over a third of the students who started at Ohio Valley graduated. And you can see across the board, those numbers are, are dismal, really, for all 7 colleges, even the high end. At West Virginia Wesleyan College, 54% is nothing to write home about. The third key indicator that I use is the endowment. So as we look on the endowment for all 7 of these colleges, let's look at the third column from the right, the value of the endowment, the endowment assets at the end of the fiscal year, the last reported fiscal year, 2018-2019. Let me sort these. And again, the minimum threshold that I use for private colleges is an endowment of $50 million, 5-0, or more. And then we can see that of these 7, only one, and barely, does West Virginia Wesleyan College meet threshold. Again, let's look at the endowment for Ohio Valley, and this is miserable. This is not good. And it's not just that the value is ridiculously low. An inability to drive an endowment above $50 million readily suggests that this college, and in this case, these colleges, don't have the systems, the processes, the alumni, the friends or others who they can draw on to provide financial support to the organization. This is not a one-year thing. This is a chronic thing. Each of these colleges show a long-term inability to drive gifts, if you will, cash gifts, grants, donations from their friends and alumni. In this last part of the analysis of Ohio Valley University and 6 other private colleges in West Virginia, I want to focus on some of these bottom links. And these each compare how much a college is investing or spending on each of these Let's look at academic support, and let's sort this from the 2019 number. And we can see that it ranges from $4,400 per student for academic support— you can define that many ways, and the colleges do— all the way down to barely over $1,000. Again, this is a comparison that you can use to say, hey, which of these colleges is investing more than others, more than their competitors, in academic support? Let's look at institutional support. Also known as administrative support. Let's sort on this last year. And this one is startling. We can see that in terms of academic dollars spent per student, Ohio Valley University is the next highest of all 7 in what they spend on administrative support. Draw your own conclusions, but for a college that's about to close its doors with very short notice, it is stunning to see this high of a number, especially compared to those colleges who for now suggest and say and indicate they don't have to close their doors. And then I want to look at instruction expense, similar to what the academic support was, but this is more the direct expense, salaries if you will, of faculty. And again, we'll go to the 2019 number, and we can see that Davis and Elkins at about $9,000 per student And we go to the bottom of the list and look what we see. Ohio Valley University at just over $4,000 per student. This is the type of critical comparison that students, friends, faculty, staff need to do for their college. It shows what they're investing in in terms of supporting academic or instructional costs versus administrative costs. And it gives you an indication of what you can consider, what you can expect if you choose those colleges. And then finally, let's just look at retention rate, and that's not obviously a financial indicator. Let's go to the 2019 number here as well. Let me sort that, and we can see that the retention rate of second-year students, undergraduate students, goes from 76%, decent number at West Virginia Wesleyan, down to 46% at Wheeling. And Ohio Valley at 54% is not at the bottom, but none of those numbers in the last the bottom half of this list are impressive at all. It just suggests again that a college, by comparison, doesn't have the systems and processes in place to keep students who start at that college coming back year after year after year. By the way, if you would like to see my financial comparisons of private colleges you are considering that are outside of West Virginia, leave the list of 3 to 4 7 in the comment section below. I'll add them to the list of financial health and viability reviews that I do. You'll note, as in all of these videos, that some colleges compare well to others and some colleges don't compare so well. I don't do predictions. I don't do guesses. I just provide simple comparisons of basic data that colleges themselves have provided to the federal government, and information from the auditors the colleges themselves have hired to prepare their financial statements. It's all publicly available information. You deserve a quality college education. I want to give you information to help you make the best possible decision by comparing the financial health and viability of these colleges. You will have already looked at the majors, at the campus, listen to, talk to the faculty, looked at the online offerings, the amenities on campus. Let's add that final comparison of the college's finances, its financial health, and even its viability to your decision-making process. Mm-hmm.