Will my college close? Comparing Colleges Side by Side - 6 New Jersey private colleges

Are you looking for information about a private college's financial health? Or are you concerned private colleges you may be considering might be in financial trouble, might close, or maybe just struggle to provide a quality education? 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 easily and quickly compare the financial health of some of New Jersey's private colleges. I can help you become more informed, more comfortable, and more confident in your final college decision. The data, by the way, is from the National Center for Education Statistics, and it's for the years 2014 to 2019, the most readily available newest data from the federal government. The 7 colleges we'll look at today are Bloomfield College, Centenary University, College of St. Elizabeth, Drew University, Pillar College, Pillar College, and Rider University. I don't do predictions. 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 have hired to prepare their financial statements. It's all publicly available information. You deserve a quality college education. I want to give you the information to help you make the best possible college decision. The first New Jersey private college we're going to look at is Bloomfield College, and we can see the 6-year enrollment has dropped about 270 students over the 6 reported years, and this is from 2014 to 2019. This is the most recent data available from the National Center for Education Statistics. We can see in that same time period that they've lost about $6.5 million in the tuition and fees they collect from their students. And again, the prime business of a college is to educate students, but the prime source of revenue in almost all colleges is tuition and fees. So if that's gone down over the period of 6 years that we're looking at here, that's an indicator that the market is forcing prices down, forcing tuition costs down, for these students. Good for the students, not so good for the college. And then when we look at something I like to focus on for some additional analysis. Over the course of these 6 years, over the course of these 6 years, the revenue for Bloomfield College, over the course of these 6 years, the total expenses, total core expenses has gone up about $1 million. But you look right next to it and the revenues, the core revenues have gone down about $7.5 million. When we do the math, that's a negative number. So the expenses-to-revenue ratio is a decrease, or negative, about $8.5 million. Of course, you want that number to be positive. You always want to have revenues higher than expenses. And then let's take a look and go ahead and go to the graduation rates. And we use a 6-year graduation rate. Others use a 4-year graduation rate. When we look at Bloomfield, their 6-year graduation rate and that's the number of students who started at Bloomfield in 2014 and had graduated no later than 2016, was just 35%, or 35 out of 100. The threshold that we use for an acceptable 6-year graduation rate is 70%. Let's explain what that looks like. For every 100 students who started at Bloomfield 6 years ago, 2014 for our net purposes, Only 35 graduated with their bachelor's degree from Bloomfield in that time period. Now there's some minor considerations here. Some may be continuing to pursue their degree. Some may have transferred and graduated elsewhere. But again, this is a comparison we can look at. As you look at the other colleges, it goes as high as 69%. Rider University at 67%. The Pillar number is just a bad number. I'm thinking they reported that wrong. And a couple are around 50%. If there is any single indicator about the quality of college education, it's what percentage of their students, of their undergrad students, graduate in that 6-year period. And then let's look at the endowment for Bloomfield College, and we'll look at the one for 2019. $14 million is a really low number. The minimum threshold we have as we look at endowments is $50 million, so considerably below that. You'll see that a couple of the other colleges have really low endowment values here. The only one with a really decent one is Drew. Uh, Rider University at $66 million, $67 million almost, is above our threshold but not that much. And then a new feature we've added to the College Viability App is something called expenses or support per FTE, or per student. So when I click on Academic Support, this is effectively how much did this college spend per student on supporting academics. And we can see Bloomfield has gone from $2,800 in 2014 down to $2,500 in 2019, or it has decreased about 11%. And as compared to the other 5, the other 6 colleges, the 5 colleges, it's a negative indicator. It's red, it's not as good as the others. So their investment in academic support has gone down about $300 per student over the last 6 years. Retention rate at Bloomfield at 64%. Again, by comparison, we can see it is lower really than all the others. Again, by comparison, it's got a red indicator. Something tells us that the retention systems and processes at Bloomfield are not as strong as those of its competitors. How much did an organization spend on administrative costs, the institutional support per student? Bloomfield has gone from $4,300 per student in 2014 all the way up to $6,300 and change per student, up not quite 50%. Now you can see we have a green indicator for that, and that's just reflecting the growth of the number, but in all honesty, when we look at this, this suggests that Bloomfield spent more for administration per student over the last 6 years, or the rate increased more per student, than almost any of the other colleges in this comparison. And let's quickly take a look at the instruction expense. From $8,200 up to $9,600, you like to see that to grow. It has grown a little bit. It's a modest number compared to the others in this, in this sample. Tuition and fees, It's gone from $18,000 down to $17,000. That was reflected earlier. They're not collecting the revenue that they would like from tuition and fees. Again, compared to the others in this sample, it's not a good number. It's gone down not quite $1,000 over the 6 years we're looking at. And then student services, student support expenses, has gone up from $3,700 up to about $4,200. So again, it's gone up a little bit more than maybe some of its competitors, but not all of them. It's gone up about $500 per student over the 5— excuse me, over the 6-year period that we're looking at. In light of all this data, we're going to give Bloomfield College in New Jersey a yellow battery indicator. We have concerns certainly about their, their current financial health. Their inability to have any substantial endowment is a big concern. It just takes away the buffer that they have. And so compared to others, although many in this sample will— you'll find will be having a yellow battery indicator. They're not as well positioned as others for long-term financial health and even ultimately viability. Let's look at Centenary University. And again, we see the enrollment has gone down almost 600 students. When we actually look at the enrollment tab, we can see Centenary University has gone from about 2,200 down to about $1,600. When you do the math, that's about a 30% decline over 6 years. They, they can't be happy with that. That's concerning because again, this is where colleges drive tuition from. We can see that their 6-year change in tuition and fees collected is down over $10 million. Not a good number. We can look at their expense-to-revenue ratio, And it's, it's a negative number to the tune of about $15 million. Not a good number. Let's look at the graduation rates for Centenary at 56%, well below our threshold of 70%. Better than some, but still not a good number to look at. Let's look at the endowment. And again, for Centenary, we see a number around $13 million, well below the threshold we have of $50 million. You can see the comparisons with the green and yellows that we've talked about before. Let's look at the— quickly at the comparisons per student. And we can see academic support has gone up about $500 per student. We can see that the retention rate at Centenary University has, for the most part, stayed flat from 71 down to— from 75 down to 71%, down just a little bit. We can look at institutional support, how much spent on administration. It has changed from $4,400 up to $12,000. That's a really big growth. That may actually be the case. I am more concerned that there is a math error or they changed the way they accounted for institutional expenses. But something to ask, why are your institutional expenses per student so high? Compared to where they were in 2014. Let's take a look at instruction expenses. And we look at the number for Centenary from $5,500 to $7,800, a nice increase for what they're paying faculty and staff. Still concerns about the overall revenue, but they're trying to invest the resources they have in instruction. That's a good thing, even though there's some serious concerns about financial health and viability. Let's take a look at tuition and fees for Centenary. It's gone from $15,000 per student, from $15,500 per student down to $14,800, down a little bit. Again, we see that reflected in the total tuition and fees revenue collected. And student service expenses from $4,600 all the way down to $2,100, a substantial decrease, more than half. In that 6-year reporting period. Again, we can make the case maybe they changed their accounting method, but it's a fair question to ask. It's a big drop in the, in the resources they've dedicated to student services. Based on this analysis, we're going to give Centenary University a red battery indicator compared to the other 5 colleges from New Jersey that we're looking at today. The decrease in enrollment, the decrease in tuition fees, the, the negative expense-to-revenue ratio, the average at best 6-year graduation rate, and the really, really low endowment— really, these combinations make me really concerned about the financial health today and tomorrow and the long-term viability of Centenary University. Let's look next at the College of St. Elizabeth. We're going to give this College of St. Elizabeth a yellow battery indicator rating. Here's why. Their enrollment is down about 130 students, and again, this is over a 6-year period. That's not a good trend. The fees they have collected from tuition and fees is down about $3.5 million, a negative number, not good. The total change in expenses is not as bad as we've seen from others, Clearly they anticipated some revenue going down, so they tried to adjust for it by lowering their expenses about $1,200. But expenses went down, excuse me, about $1.2 million. Expenses went down about $1.2 million, revenues went down about $2.6 million. So the difference between that is about $1.2, $1.3 million. So not as bad as we've seen from others, still not the right trend. Let's take a look at the graduation rates for the College of St. Elizabeth, hovering around 53%, well below the threshold of 70% that we use. About in the middle of this set of 6 colleges. Better than some, worse than some. Let's take a look at the endowment for St. Elizabeth. Again, a low number. It's been pretty flat at about $19 million and change since 2014. It's up a little bit. Uh, excuse me, down a little bit but not much. Anytime that endowment goes down, it's not a good indicator. You can see where it compares to the others, not as bad, but still the absolute number of $19 million is not good. Let's look at how much they invest per student for academic support, um, from $2,600 down to $2,500, essentially flat over the 6-year period. Their full-time student retention rate is at 69%. You know, not exceptional but not awful compared to these other colleges. Not as good as we'd like to see. Institutional support for College of St. Elizabeth has gone down from $7,000 and change per student down to about $6,500. So they've modified their administrative costs a little bit. That looks better compared to others. Let's take a look at instruction expense for St. Elizabeth, and it's gone up About $1,500, yeah, about $1,500 per student. Again, a good, when you're looking at that comparison, they are investing more in instruction and faculty, support services, those kind of things. Let's look at tuition and fee revenue. From $18 million, excuse me, $18,800 per student down to about $17,700, so down a little bit. It would be concerning, but we saw that number in the initial comparison. And then looking at student services, For College of St. Elizabeth, it's gone up from $4,400 per student up to about $5,500 per student, so some good increases. That's a positive, but in the overall scheme, we're looking at providing College of St. Elizabeth with a yellow battery indicator rating. It's just not where I'm sure they want to be, but again, in comparison to others, in comparison to their competitors, they're not as financially healthy, and we have concerns about their long-term viability when compared to others. And let's compare these last 3 New Jersey private colleges that we have on this comparison list: Drew University, Pillar College, and Rider University. We'll compare them together. At the end of the day, each of the 3 is going to have earned a yellow battery indicator ranking, rating, based on our system. You can see that there are some disparities for sure. That Drew and Pillar have been able to grow their enrollment a little bit. Rider University has suffered a serious decrease in revenue. When we actually look at the enrollment numbers for the three, Rider has gone from 4,800 to 4,300 and change. Pillar is a really small college, so to have grown 58 students is a good thing, and you can see that reflected in the green indicator. Let's go back and look at the tuition and fees. And again, we see 2 of the 3 have a decrease. So those fees they have collected from tuition and fees, down almost $5 million for Drew and a little over $9 million for Rider. Pillar has been able to grow theirs a little over $2 million to their credit. And the expenses, we're going to see it is a negative $29 million for Drew University pretty flat for Pilar, give them credit, and down about $3 million, a negative $3 million in expenses over ratios for Rider University. So both Drew and Rider in this summary screen don't compare as well to Pilar as they would like, I'm sure. Let's take a look at graduation rates, and we can see, you know, we have to throw out the Pilar number. I just data comes straight out of the national government, the federal government's numbers, these aren't right. So we'll assume that there's some issues here. We could make an assumption that it's not a good number, but again, I am hesitant to give that a lot of credit without some more research. Probably just a data entry error on their part. But both Drew and Reiter, give them credit, right below our threshold of 70%. I see way too many private colleges with a number in the 50s and lower. So give them credit on that. Let's take a look at endowment. And again, we're going to see— this is why Pilar is yellow. Their graduation rate we don't know about, and their endowment is essentially zero. It's not much at all, and it's gone down from about $1 million to about $100,000 and change. So something's going on there. That's not good. But when we look at Drew and we look at Rider, you know, both are above our $50 million threshold. Drew's about double that. Rider University, not as much. But again, they're above the threshold that shows some capacity to be able to raise funds from alumni, from the community, from friends of the college, those kind of things. When we look at the academic support per student, we can see that Drew's has gone down about $1,100 per student. Pilaros, again, to their credit, has gone up about $1,100. Riders up about $400. So 2 of the 3 have moved to increase their support of academics. The full-time retention rate of the 3 is, you know, similar numbers for the most part. All deserve some credit. Each of the 3 have a higher number than what we saw for the first 3. Institutional support, we look at the numbers and Drew University has gone up about $3 million, almost 40%. Pilar College, Pilar College is essentially flat and going down $300. And Rider University per student spending has gone up about $1,100, almost $1,200 for administrative type expenses. For tuition and fees, we can see that Drew has some significant issues, down almost $3,000 per student. On the other hand, Pilar is up $2,700. I still have concerns about their data. And for the most part— and then lastly, let's look at student services. And we can see that Drew and Pilar have invested about the same changes over the course of 6 years. Drew started off, Drew ended off at about $7,500 per student, Pilar considerably less than that, but they both increased it about the same amount over the last 6 years. And then we can see that of the 3, Rider University increasing their investment in student services has gone up, not as much as many of their competitors on this list. So again, for these 3, each of them We're going to give a yellow battery indicator rating. They just don't present that consistent financial profile that we like to see. And a big part of that is graduation rate. A big part of that is the growth or lack of growth in their enrollment. And of course, we're looking at how many dollars they collect from tuition and fees. And in each of these cases, outside of Pilar, The number has decreased over the last 6 years. Not a good pattern. As more private colleges start to succumb to financial pressures, you want to be able to compare one against the other in terms of their financial health and viability. I don't do predictions here. I don't do guesses. I just provide simple comparisons. Of data that colleges themselves have provided to the federal government and information from the auditors that colleges 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 that includes not just the majors the programs and the athletics and the dorms and the tuition and the faculty, but that financial health indicator. Keep in mind, colleges collect financial information on their students and families through the FAFSA. This is just kind of the reverse of that—information about the colleges for you to use in deciding which one is not just the best fit, but the best opportunity to get a a complete, high-quality education based on the financial health of the colleges you're considering. By the way, if you have liked this video, I would encourage you to click the— by the way, if you like this video, I would encourage you to click the like button down below. If you'd like to get notified every time I do an updated video presentation of a set of private colleges, click on the alert button or the alarm button, and you'll be notified when those are posted. If there's a set of private colleges you are considering and you haven't seen it in the videos I have posted previously, drop me a comment down below, list the names of those colleges, 3, 4, or 5, and I will add that to the list of comparisons and analysis I do in the coming weeks and months. The app that you saw today on this video is a college viability app that I created, and it's available to you. It's available for you to easily do your own customized comparisons of the colleges you are considering. I'll make sure there's a link to that app in the comments section and discussion section down below. It's available on an annual subscription for $47. I would encourage you to check it out. To let. Now that you know how to compare the financial health and even viability of private colleges, you can feel more comfortable with whatever your final decision might be. If you'd like, invite me to a meeting at your high school for the parents of juniors or seniors, as appropriate, and I'll provide a virtual review of private colleges in your region just for your group. You can contact me through The link at the website at collegeviability.com or at gary@collegeviability.com.