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California State University-Fullerton

Fullerton, CA
FY 2023-24 fragility
33
/ 100
moderate

Composite Fragility Score over time

Pillar trajectories

Operating Margin
(Operating revenue − operating expenses) / operating revenue. Industry-standard debt-rating heuristics — Fitch-style bands for privates, Moody's-aligned for publics. Score reflects current year and 3-year rolling average — single positive years don't erase chronic distress.
Amber dot = unusual single-year shift; smoothed metric attenuates impact. Hover for context.
Pricing Power
Real net tuition revenue per FTE, 5-year change. Falling real net tuition + rising discount rate = market rejection of value proposition. Discount rate is the all-student institutional rate (F2C05 + F2C06 funded + unfunded grants over gross tuition); schools typically publish a first-time-in-college rate which runs 5-10 points higher.
Amber dot = unusual single-year shift; smoothed metric attenuates impact. Hover for context.
Debt Burden
Viability ratio (expendable net assets / plant debt) with debt-acceleration penalty. Catches schools whose covenants are at risk because of recent debt issuance.
Amber dot = unusual single-year shift; smoothed metric attenuates impact. Hover for context.
Liquidity
Days cash on hand. Tuition-collapse override prevents 'deathbed cash' from misleading the score (high cash from emergency relief while school is shrinking).
Amber dot = unusual single-year shift; smoothed metric attenuates impact. Hover for context.

Institutional debt per student

Total institutional long-term debt (not student loans) divided by full-time-equivalent enrollment, nominal dollars. For public-university systems with centralized bond debt (UC, FL SUS), the system pool is allocated across sibling campuses proportional to FTE.

Long-term debt per FTE student · FY 2023-24
$10,405
$349.2M total debt ÷ 33,558 FTE
Breakdown: $336.0M IPEDS-reported + $13.2M FTE-allocated system
IPEDS-reported debt / FTE · trend
▲ 156% since FY 2004-05 ($3,914)

Latest-year debt per FTE student includes IPEDS-reported plant debt plus the LLM-enriched DSO snapshot (off-balance-sheet bonds at affiliated entities — typically FY 2024 audit values). For California State University Trustees, the system bond pool is the sum of all sibling campuses’ DSO_DEBT_SYSTEM values, allocated to this campus by FTE share — not attributed entirely to the flagship UNITID. The trajectory line shows IPEDS-reported debt only (no DSO) for consistency across years — DSO is a single audit-year snapshot, not a time series.

Athletics & enrollment

Share of undergrads who play varsity sports (EADA, U.S. Dept of Education). A rising ratio over time at a tuition-dependent private is the “athletic ratchet” — adding sports or expanding rosters to fill seats as enrollment pressure mounts. Snapshots taken at ~6-year intervals.

Varsity athletes as reported · AY 2024-25
1.1%
348 athletes ÷ 31,693 UG
NCAA Division I without football
% athletes · trend (3 snapshots)
▼ 0.6 pts since AY 2005-06 (1.7%)
Coaching footprint · AY 2024-25
14 head + 39 assistant = 53 total
1 coach per 6.6 reported athletes
Typical varsity-only programs run 6–10 athletes per coach. Ratios well below that often reveal off-roster recruiting pools (JV, developmental, club with serious recruiting) that don’t show up in EADA’s varsity headcount.

What EADA counts: a student who participated in at least one intercollegiate (varsity) competition during the academic year. Excludes redshirts, JV / developmental rosters, and club sports. The actual athletic-recruit footprint can be substantially larger than this count. At D3 schools, “athletic aid” reads $0 in EADA because institutional merit aid that functions as recruitment subsidy isn’t classified as athletic aid — so the discount-rate signal on this page is the right place to look for that money.

Peer-anchored estimated total athletes
1.1%
≈ 351 implied athletes ÷ 31,693 UG
vs 1.1% reported (348)
kept-peer range suggests 1–1% (334–360 athletes)
roughly in line with peer expectations
Algorithmic peers · trimmed mean 6.6:1 (kept range 6.3:1–6.8:1)
PeerUGRatio
California State University-Long BeachCA(trimmed)30,6957.9:1
California State University-NorthridgeCA27,5746.3:1
The University of Texas Rio Grande ValleyTX21,4266.8:1
University of North Carolina WilmingtonNC12,9836.8:1
Florida Gulf Coast UniversityFL(trimmed)11,0295.3:1

Peers chosen by similarity score: same control + NCAA division weighted highest, plus Carnegie classification and UG enrollment band. The highest and lowest peer ratios are trimmed before averaging so one outlier doesn’t shift the range; the implied range is the school’s coach count multiplied by the kept peers’ min and max ratios, capped at UG enrollment.

Where the money goes

Full functional-expense breakdown from IPEDS F1A (public) / F2 (private) filings. Every card shows nominal dollars, share of total operating expense, and dollars per fall-headcount student. Buckets sum to the reported total.

IPEDS functional expense breakdown · fiscal year ending 2023
$17K/student in total operating expense across 41,962 fall headcount ($718.1M nominal)
Compare to other schools →
Instruction
$6K/student
35.7% of total$256.0M nominal
Faculty salaries, benefits, and department operating costs for credit-bearing instruction.
Research
$25/student
0.1% of total$1.0M nominal
Externally- and internally-funded research activities. Grant-funded labs, research centers, staff scientists.
Public Service
$122/student
0.7% of total$5.1M nominal
Extension programs, public broadcasting, community outreach. Big for land-grants (agricultural extension), near-zero for most privates.
Student Services
$1K/student
5.9% of total$42.2M nominal
Admissions, registrar, financial aid administration, career services, counseling, student activities, non-varsity intramural.
Institutional Support
$2K/student
11.3% of total$81.3M nominal
Executive management, HR, finance, legal, IT, general administrative services, PR/development. This is where administrative overhead lives — including enterprise IT.
Operation & Maintenance
$2K/student
13.0% of total$93.0M nominal
Facilities, utilities, custodial, grounds, maintenance. Privates report this inside Institutional Support under FASB.
Auxiliary Enterprises
$3K/student
15.5% of total$111.6M nominal
Housing, dining, bookstore, parking, athletics if separately budgeted. Self-supporting operations that charge users.
Hospital Services
$1K/student
8.5% of total$61.0M nominal
IPEDS 'hospital services' category. At R1s with embedded academic medical centers this is the clinical enterprise. At a small number of institutions without hospitals — NCF is the notable case — this line captures state-required healthcare allocations, student health center operations, or other health expenses that don't fit cleanly into other functional categories. When a small non-medical school shows a non-zero value here, treat it as flagged: check the school's audited financials for what's actually included.
Scholarships & Grant Aid
$2K/student
9.3% of total$66.8M nominal
Institutional grants and scholarships awarded to students — the discount rate applied to sticker price.
Not reported separately for this control type: Academic Support.
Not applicable (reported $0): Independent Operations, Other operating.

Administrative spending

Institutional Support (administration) measured two ways, from IPEDS expense-by-function reporting: as a share of total operating expenses alongside Instruction (faculty/teaching), and indexed against net tuition revenue to show whether admin spending tracks the revenue that funds it.

Admin: 9.2% → 11.3% · Instruction: 42.3% → 34.7%

Instruction and Institutional Support as a share of total operating expenses. Instruction is the IPEDS faculty/teaching proxy; Institutional Support is the administrative proxy (executive management, finance, HR, general admin). A narrowing gap means admin is gaining on teaching.

Student-to-admin ratio · AY 2023-24
73.9:1
33,558 student FTE ÷ 454 full-time admin
68% above Carnegie peer average — leaner than peers
Carnegie reference
43.9:1
Master's Colleges & Universities (Larger) · n=360
Mean students-per-admin across schools in the same Carnegie classification (target excluded). Higher means leaner administrative footprint.

What “admin” means here: Management (OCCUPCAT 300) + Business and Financial Operations (OCCUPCAT 310) full-time staff — the “decision-making admin” headcount. Source: IPEDS S2023_OC survey (Fall 2023). This is a headcount metric, not a dollar metric, so it isn’t contaminated by regional salary differences. Not part of the fragility score; surfaced as descriptive context only.

Program earnings outcomes

From the HEA Group’s January 2026 release of program-level earnings data used in AHEAD negotiations. Each tested program is checked against a same-state high-school-graduate earnings benchmark; programs also subject to OBBBA Gainful Employment lose Title IV eligibility on a fail and are flagged AT RISK.

Earnings by Program
Median earnings 4 years post-completion vs the earnings benchmark. 1 program falls below the benchmark.
Benchmark
$36,082
CA HS-only median
  • Linguistic Comparative and Related Language Studies and Services
    Bachelor · 19 completers in earnings cohort
    FAIL -6K
  • Registered Nursing Nursing Administration Nursing Research and Clinical Nursing
    Bachelor · 313 completers in earnings cohort
    PASS +83K
  • Computer Engineering
    Bachelor · 70 completers in earnings cohort
    PASS +65K
  • Civil Engineering
    Bachelor · 117 completers in earnings cohort
    PASS +60K
  • Electrical Electronics and Communications Engineering
    Bachelor · 79 completers in earnings cohort
    PASS +57K
  • Computer Science
    Bachelor · 283 completers in earnings cohort
    PASS +51K

Source: HEA Group Jan 2026 release using AHEAD-negotiations data. Pooled 2017-18 + 2018-19 completer cohorts; earnings measured CY 2022-23, inflation-adjusted to 2024 (CPI-U). Only programs with sufficient Title-IV completers appear in the test. “AT RISK” = fails the OBBBA Gainful Employment threshold — loss of Title IV eligibility likely, program likely closes.

Latest-year breakdown (FY 2023-24)

PillarRaw MetricScore
Operating Margin25.0%0 / 25
Pricing Power$5,621 real net tuition / FTE25 / 25
Debt Burden1.77 viability ratio8 / 25
Liquidity257 days cash on hand0 / 25

Peer schools

Closest by Fragility Score in FY 2023-24. Financial similarity only — geographic / regional clustering is a separate (future) feature.

Less fragile
Schools scoring below
More fragile
Schools scoring above

Selected raw financials — FY 2023-24

GASB / IPEDS Finance F1A. DSO totals from LLM enrichment of audited financial statements; see /sources for citations.

Total revenue (F1B27)
$787.8M
Total expenses (F1C191)
$818.2M
Net tuition revenue (F1B01)
$187.6M
Auxiliary enterprises revenue (F1B05)
$53.3M
State appropriations (F1B11)
$248.4M
Endowment EOY (F1H02)
$142.2M
Long-term debt (F1A10)
$336.0M
Expendable net position (F1N05)
$595.4M
Interest expense (F1C19IN)
$12.7M
DSO debt — campus-specific
—
DSO debt — system-level pool
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