Tutorial: 2023 Executive Analysis College Viability App

Hi, this is Gary Stocker. Welcome to the tutorial for the 2023 Executive Analysis version of the College Viability App. There are 4 things I want to focus on, on the overview for this tutorial, and that there are now 30 reports in the College Viability App, the Executive Analysis version. We've added some functionality where you can actually drill through to details for individual colleges in one of the 1,300 colleges reported, and we also provide some analysis guidance. Since there are 30 different reports, there's a lot of information there. We've provided some guidance on how to interpret some some of those results. And then finally, there are more than 1,300 private colleges in the 2023 version of the Executive Analysis overview of the College Viability App. The data, of course, is from the National Center for Education Statistics and its IPEDS database. And for the last reported 8 years, we're using 2014 through 2021 data. So this is your first look at the 2023 Executive Analysis College Viability app. Let me show you through the screen. On the left-hand side is, are the selection filters for each one of the 50 states, for over 1,300 individual colleges, and for types of colleges that we've created on our own work for closed, elite, regional, religious, specialty, and others. You'll note we have both elite and super elite, and just for definition, inside College Viability apps, the elite are colleges 26 through 50 for the 2021 endowment value, and the super elite are colleges 1 through 25, again, using the 2021 endowment value for those colleges. You can see we have navigation for the homepage. We can clear our search, and we have some graphics over here on some drill-throughs we'll talk about in a minute, and then instructions on how to use the app are available on the far right-hand side. So let's go ahead and go in, and I'm gonna select the state of Florida. So I'm going to click on Florida, and I'm going to just select regional, regional colleges in Florida. And you're going to see that there are 41 regional colleges in Florida. Very quickly, let's go and look at just one of the 30 reports, and we'll click on FTE Enrollment right here. And we can see for those 41 colleges in Florida, we can see the data for each of the 8 reported years. We can see the change over those 8 years, and we can see the percent change. For example, we can also sort this. These are not in alphabetical order. If I wanted to sort these colleges alphabetically, all of these column headings or field headings are sortable. So I click on College and it sorts it A through Z. And we can do the same thing for the headers across the top. Let's click on the year 2021 and see which colleges had the highest enrollment, 18,000 plus at the University of Miami. We can also go lowest to highest and see that Johnson Wales had none, but City College of Miami was down to 26. The City College of Gainesville was at 84. On and on it goes. You can see the change, the absolute change over 8 years. And of course, to standardize things, we'll click on percent change, and we can see which of the colleges have had the most enrollment growth, which have had mid-range enrollment growth, and which have had negative enrollment growth in these private colleges, regional colleges in Florida. But let's go back home, because we're not going to look at 41 colleges. Let's go back to the homepage, so I'm going to click on Homepage. And I'm just going to select a small subset of these 41 colleges in Florida. So I'm going to just grab some. And now we'll see that our selection is now no longer 41 colleges, but it's a much more manageable number at 7. This time, let's go ahead and look at tuition and fees revenue just for our tutorial example. So I'll click on tuition and fees revenue, and we can see these 7 colleges, and we can see the tuition fees revenue for each of the 8 years reported. We can see the change over those 8 years, and we can also see the percent change over those 8 years. And then for each of the 30 reports, we have added our own guidance for how to analyze each of these reports. So make sure to take a look at that to kind of get our perspective on how to use this data to compare each of the reports. Let's go ahead and, and go back home. And another function to be skilled with is clearing the search. So I'm going to click on Clear Search, and this time we're going to go to Iowa. So I'm going to select Iowa, and I'm still sticking with regional because I know that's a nice representative sample size. And we'll leave it at the 26 colleges for Iowa. And now what I want to do is show the drill-through to details functionality. So in previous years we didn't offer this. We've added this for the 2023 version. You can actually drill down to data for individual colleges. So I've selected our 26 colleges in Iowa. Let's just go look at, um, percent admitted. And you can pick any of these 30 columns. And we're going to see the colleges, the 26 colleges in Iowa. Let's sort them alphabetically and let's take a look at Buena Vista University. So on Buena Vista University, I'm going to right-click and then the new functionality is called drill-through. And you can see the 3 separate reports that we've created inside the 2023 Executive Analysis College Viability app that you can drill through for specific information just on Buena Vista University. So I'm going to select Single College Snapshot, and now what we're going to see is just data for Buena Vista University in Iowa. And we have divided up by admissions and outcome data, financial data, and student focus data. And in some of the categories, we've added our own conditional formatting. So green is good, so admissions yield above 20 is a threshold, is good. 4-year graduation rate is, eh, OK with the yellow indicator, and the 6-year graduation rate at red is below our threshold of 70%. Not all of these fields lend themselves to conditional formatting, but those that do, we've tried to give a quick indication of what we think the comparison is in terms of that particular field. You can look at those on your own, pause the video if you need to do that, to see the individual cells, all of which focus on data for Buena Vista. Let's go back to the report. Now this time, instead of choosing the first report, I'm going to right-click on Buena Vista again. I'm going to click on drill through. This time I'm going to select the 8-year change of snapshot. Now while this is changing, one of the things you'll notice when you purchase your, your license to the College Viability app, the executive analysis version, is the first time you go through, this defaults to a college in Missouri called Fontbonne University. That's just a filler we put in there so some data is available. When you use this drill-down function, when you replace Fontbonne University with your own colleges, those will show up here. It's also important to note that you can have drill-through data for 3 individual colleges at any one time for each of the 3 reports. So anyway, back to the 8-year changes, the snapshot version. There's the 2014 through 2021 data, Buena Vista in Iowa, and the absolute changes. So the admissions yield for Buena Vista is down 3%. The fall enrollment is down a little over 400. The graduation rate is up 21 points. The 6-year graduation rate is up 17 points. You can see that, that data all the way through. Sometimes colleges don't report data. We see that shown here in the percent of bachelor transfer out. And then the percent changes kind of gives us a more standard mix, standard comparison. So we can see the average net price is up 6%. The fall enrollment is down 20%. And on and on the list goes. Let's go back to the report one more time. And this time let's go back to Buena Vista. Let's go through drill-through. And then lastly is, is kind of a new function. We don't have an individual report for expense per category drills, but IPAD reports on some, on the ways that colleges allocate, if you will, funds for expenses. And so what we have done is expenses per category. The categories are academic support, institutional support, instruction support, and student service support. And those 4 are all referenced in these 4 columns. And the first one is from 2014. The academic support as a percentage of total expenses was 14% at Buena Vista. In 2021, that number was 21%— excuse me, it was 9% right here. It was 9%. And what we use this one for, and it's explained in the guidance over here, is to take a quick look to see if a college or university has had substantial changes in how they allocate funds for expenses. And clearly for Buena Vista, we can see there have been some noticeable changes in the way they allocate funds, resources if you will, to support these different functions. This can help both students, college leadership, stakeholders, reporters, and others using this application to ask informed questions of college leaders, saying, why did your student service expense go, for example, from 18% to 24%? And the bottom comparison is simply associated with the absolute value, the dollar amount. So we can see it went from $2,000 and change per student for academic support to a little over $1,600. You know, that's a drop. It's reflected up here. And it gives us, again, more of a reference point that we can use to have an informed and engaged conversation with these college leaders and their organizations about how they're allocating funds to support their organization. Let's go back home. We'll click on the home page, we'll clear the search, and you'll see all 1,300+ private colleges you can use— you can search for to compare the financial health and even the viability of these colleges. So we created the Executive Analysis College Viability app version to provide exceptionally strong comparisons of private colleges across the country. Almost all of us realize that the market in higher education is changing, and we have seen closures, and it is reasonable and fair speculation to assume we'll continue to see closures. The challenge that we face is identifying those colleges that are doing well, and we can do that by comparisons here in the College Viability Apps We can also use this kind of tool to look for colleges who have bad trends, negative trends, concerning trends that suggest their financial health, and yes, even their viability, are in question. The Executive Analysis version of the College Viability App is certainly for college leaders. It is for consultants. It is for admissions guidance, both private and public. It is for reporters who are looking to make sure that the colleges, the private colleges in their region are providing proper information and good information about their health, their financial health and viability. And really for all stakeholders in general, for community leaders, because we know from the examples of colleges that have closed so far that the impact on their communities be it suburban or rural, has been substantial. And to be able to use data like we have made available through the Executive Analysis version of the College Viability App puts all these various stakeholders in a position to know more about how one college compares to another. I have shared many times before, there is no reasonable or fair way to predict when a college will close or if a college will close. But I do believe sincerely that you can look at the data in apps like the College Viability app and compare which ones are stronger, which ones are less than strong, and which ones have some substantial risk associated with their financial health and even their viability. This is Gary Stocker with College Viability. Mm-hmm.