Gary Stocker analyzes six Missouri private colleges using enrollment trends, graduation rates, and endowment size. Four schools have declining enrollment, none hit a 70% graduation rate, and only Central Methodist and William Jewell have endowments above $50 million. Negative trends can trigger program cuts and faculty layoffs.
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This episode of the College Viability Report focuses on 6 private colleges in Missouri. 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. During this video, I'll show you how to quickly and easily compare the financial health of some of Missouri's private colleges that 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 from 2014 through 2019. To help you create your list of colleges, and even your final decisions on colleges, we're going to focus on just 3 categories. I'm going to show you the results for the 6 private colleges in Missouri here, and then I'll explain the system behind it. You can see the 6 colleges listed on the left-hand side. You can see that we are monitoring their full-time enrollment from 2014 to 2019. That's the last available data from the federal government. And we are measuring to see if it went up or down, if it increased or decreased. And we can see of the 6 that 4 had decreased enrollment. I'll come back to the scoring in a moment. We can see that we use a 70% 6-year graduation rate, meaning 70% or more of their undergraduate students graduate within 6 years. None of the 6 met that. And then we look at the endowment, the gifts, the ability to get donations from alumni, friends, and others. And we use a $50 million threshold. You can alter that threshold, you can see that on the College Viability App. And we can see using that $50 million threshold that Central Methodist and William Jewell met that. There's a scoring system that I'll explain, but the bottom line is of these 6 colleges, we use a battery indicator system, just like you would for any other kind of battery. And of the 6, 3 show us some concerns, the yellow battery indicator, and 3 have some serious concerns based on the point system that we use that we worry about their long-term financial health and yes, even their viability. So here are the 3 basic indicators that we use to help give you a good comparison of the financial health and even viability of these private colleges. There are certainly more indicators, there are certainly qualifications. We're simply trying to create a system where you can more readily create your list of colleges to select from and then ultimately even make that selection. The 3 criteria: Has the enrollment increased over the last 6 years? And again, the reporting period for right now is 2014 through 2019, most recently available. If so, we'll score a point. The most recent, in this case 2019, 6-year graduation rate— we talked about that in previous videos— is it greater than 70%? If so, we'll score another point. And is the endowment value for this private college greater than $50 million? If so, we'll score a point. So here's a quick summary of the point system that we use. Enrollment increased over the past 6 years, score a point. The 2019, the most recent, 6-year graduation rate greater than 70%, score 1 point. And the 2019, again the most recent, endowment value is greater than $50 million, score 1 point. So for comparison purposes, we score 3 points as a green battery indicator, 1 to 2 points as a yellow battery indicator— again, these are for comparisons— and no points across increased enrollment, 6-year graduation rate greater than 70%, and endowment greater than $50 million, 0 points or a red battery indicator. This provides you with a quick glance comparison of any given set of colleges that you bring up in the College Viability app. Here again is the summary screen we use to quickly compare the overall financial health and viability of private colleges. The data you see here comes from the College Viability App. I will remind viewers that this is a comparison tool. It's designed to provide college families like yours with an easier resource to consider a college's financial health. The challenges you will face in selecting any college will involve looking at their comparative financial health. It's not that there is a high risk of a college closing. It's possible, but not likely. There is a much greater risk of a college with negative trends in admissions, lower graduation rates, and minimal endowments will be unable to provide you the college education you might hope for. They may lay off faculty, cut programs, fall behind on routine maintenance, and much more. Use this comparison table to help you make a more informed college choice. There is a link in the discussion below on how to get access to the College Viability App to do your own customized comparison.
