Will my College Close? College Comparisons Side by Side Wisconsin private colleges

Hi, my name is Gary Stocker. For the past 5 years, I have been researching the financial health and viability of private colleges throughout the United States. In 2020, I created and released the College Viability App. Are you looking at this video for information about the financial health of your private college? Or are you concerned private colleges you are considering might be in financial trouble? They might close. Or maybe they're just struggling to provide a quality education. During this video, I'll share with you how to quickly and easily compare the financial health of some Wisconsin private colleges you may be considering. I can help you become more informed, more comfortable, and more confident in your final college decision. The data I use, by the way, is from the National Center for Education Statistics. Today's episode is on some private colleges in Wisconsin. Those colleges are Stritch University, Lakeland University, Lawrence University, Marian University, Bellin College, and Beloit College. By the way, if you would like to see my financial comparison of private colleges you are considering that's not on today's list, leave the list of 3 to maybe 7 in the comments below, and I'll be sure to add that combination to my reviews in the coming weeks and months. You will see during each of these videos that some of these private colleges compare well to others, and some that don't compare so well. I'm not doing predictions whether they will survive or not. I don't do guesses. I just provide simple comparisons of data 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 education, a quality college education. I want to give you information to help you make the best possible college decision that includes comparisons of a private college's financial health and viability. You will have almost certainly looked at majors, and the campus, and the faculty, the online offerings, the amenities. Let's simply add a comparison of the college's finances to your decision-making process. So let's take a look at the 6 private Wisconsin colleges on our list for today. And you can see in the full version of the College Viability app that I have on the screen, they're from Wisconsin. I have chosen both regional and religious private colleges, although there's no particular religious ones on this list. And you can see the list down below: Belen, Beloit, Cardinal Stritch, and as I scroll up, Lakeland University, Lawrence University, and Marian. Let's go ahead and look at the 6-year changes. It's important to note that we're looking at data from a 6-year period. It's from 2013 to 2018, the most recent data available from the federal government, and we're comparing 6 years' worth of changes for these fields across the top of the screen. I've sorted them initially alphabetically, but we can sort each of these headings. So let's start looking at the 12-month enrollment. It's a standard comparison. That's what our focus is always on. It's not an absolute value, but how does one college and their admission over the last 6 years compare to another private college and their admission for the past 6 years. So, we can see that since 2013 through 2018, that both Bellin College and Beloit College have had modest enrollment gains, 100-some-odd students over 6 years. Let's reverse the order and just kind of sort it by, from least to worst, and we can see that Cardinal Stritch, Lakeland, Marian, and to a lesser extent, Lawrence University, have had some enrollment issues. This is the comparison that we're talking about. If I'm looking at Bellin College versus Cardinal Stritch University, we can see something is going on in the enrollment trends. Let's apply the same logic. This time let's jump over to graduation rate. And we can see from 2013 to 2018 that the graduation rate changed quite a bit for some of these. But let's go and look at another part of the College Viability app, and I'm going to click on this right-hand side on graduation rates. Now we're going to see that same set of 6 colleges. I'm going to sort by the most recent year, which is 2018, and you can see that some of these universities have graduated students over 6 years at a much better rate than others. Let me give you an example of what this 6-year graduation rate is. If you had 100 students that started at, for example, Lawrence University in 2013, 79 of them graduated from Lawrence University within 6 years. Take it to the bottom of that list, the same 100, only 45 graduated from Marian University in that same 6-year period. Again, an important comparison. An argument can be made that colleges above 60, 70% have better systems and processes in place to graduate students than others. Let's go back to 6-year changes. And this is a little bit more sophisticated, a little bit more complex, but I think we can do this. And I want to look at expenses and how they changed from 2013 to 2018, and revenues. Again, this data is from the national government, from the federal government, and provides a consistent reporting basis for all these. We can see, for example, that Cardinal Stritch spent $26 million less over the 6-year period. But going to the next column over for revenues, they earned in total revenues $22 million less. All right, so there's a $4 million gap there. They clearly knew they had issues because they cut $26 million in spending. And we can look at all the colleges with that same context. Let's look at Marion. Their expenses went down $2 million, not bad. Their revenues went up, essentially it's flat, but up about $100,000. Again, remember this is over 6 years. Nothing to write home about, but better than situations where we see at Lawrence University where their expenses have gone up over $8 million over these 6 years and their revenues have not even gone up $1 million. So take a look at these comparisons. Again, we see similar patterns with Beloit and Bellin where their expenses over the last 6 years have gone up more than their revenues. And finally, let's look at endowments. So I'm going to click on the left-hand side over here for the endowments. And again, this may— we're going to look at the change, but we're also going to start by sorting this by the last year reported, 2018. And we can see some substantial differences. Lawrence University has a $340 million endowment as of the end of their fiscal year in 2018. Marian University, not quite $8 million. We can also see the changes over that 6-year period in that Lawrence University has gone up almost $130 million, Cardinal Stritch up a little over $3 million, and again, Marian University essentially flat. I'll go back to pointing out it's the comparisons that matter. Does that make Marian University not as good a university as Lawrence University? I'm not making that judgment. I'm not making that call. I'm giving you the data to make comparisons for the colleges you're considering. So before completing the last comparisons for these 6 Wisconsin private colleges, It's important to, to really note that colleges have been historically really slow in, first of all, completing and releasing their financial statements. Many go 6 to 9 months after their financial or fiscal year has ended. And it's very difficult, even after these financial statements are released, to find that information on a college's website. It's there in some cases, I use a site called the Federal Audit Clearinghouse for access to some of this kind of data, but it's difficult to find this kind of information. Granted, very few people have the skills or the interest in analyzing a college's finances. That's why I have made these comparisons simple and relatively easy to use in the College Viability App. And down below, I'm going to give you a link to the free version of the College Viability App so you can take a look at it on your own. The last parameter that I want to check on this video has to do with tuition and fees. And so I'm going to click on the button on the right-hand side for tuition and fees. And again, we're going to see each of our 6 colleges. Let me just separate it and sort it by the change. And again, this is from 2013 to 2018. And we can see that Beloit College increased their tuition fees about $1.5 million over those 6 years. We can also see that Cardinal Stitch went down. Their tuition and fees total collected went down almost $17 million over the course of these 6 years. Again, in comparison, there's a big difference between those two. And even as we look at the 6 colleges, we can see that only Beloit and only Bellin had a positive growth in tuition and fees revenue over the 6 years. So now that you know how to compare the financial health of private colleges you are considering, 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.