University of California-San Diego

La Jolla, CA

FY 2023-24 fragility

/ 100

high

Data-quality note

The University of California system files its balance-sheet (F1A) and operating-margin summary (F1D / F1N) blocks at the UC Office of the President system level, not per campus. Each campus IPEDS filing therefore has revenue, expense, endowment, and pension/OPEB detail but no expendable-net-position or operating-margin block. The Operating Margin pillar at this campus uses an all-in F1B27 − F1C191 fallback (total revenues minus total operating expenses); Debt Burden and Liquidity pillars remain indeterminate from IPEDS alone and default to a neutral score. See the methodology page for the full handling. Methodology →

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.

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.

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.

Liquidity

Days cash on hand. Tuition-collapse override prevents 'deathbed cash' from misleading the score (high cash from emergency relief while school is shrinking).

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

1.7%

563 athletes ÷ 34,114 UG
NCAA Division I without football

% athletes · trend (3 snapshots)

▼ 1.1 pts since AY 2005-06 (2.8%)

Coaching footprint · AY 2024-25

23 head + 59 assistant = 82 total

1 coach per 6.9 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

1.7%

≈ 582 implied athletes ÷ 34,114 UG
vs 1.7% reported (563)
kept-peer range suggests 2–2% (574–587 athletes)

roughly in line with peer expectations

Algorithmic peers · trimmed mean 7.1:1 (kept range 7.0:1–7.2:1)

Peer	UG	Ratio
University of California-IrvineCA	29,552	7.2:1
University of California-Santa BarbaraCA(trimmed)	22,673	7.4:1
University of California-RiversideCA	22,095	7.0:1
University of Illinois ChicagoIL	20,187	7.1:1
Virginia Commonwealth UniversityVA(trimmed)	18,610	6.8:1

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

$187K/student in total operating expense across 42,376 fall headcount ($7.92B nominal)

Compare to other schools →

Instruction

$27K/student

14.2% of total$1.13B nominal

Faculty salaries, benefits, and department operating costs for credit-bearing instruction.

Research

$29K/student

15.3% of total$1.21B nominal

Externally- and internally-funded research activities. Grant-funded labs, research centers, staff scientists.

Public Service

$1K/student

0.7% of total$52.3M nominal

Extension programs, public broadcasting, community outreach. Big for land-grants (agricultural extension), near-zero for most privates.

Student Services

$20K/student

10.7% of total$844.8M nominal

Admissions, registrar, financial aid administration, career services, counseling, student activities, non-varsity intramural.

Institutional Support

$5K/student

2.6% of total$203.7M nominal

Executive management, HR, finance, legal, IT, general administrative services, PR/development. This is where administrative overhead lives — including enterprise IT.

Operation & Maintenance

$7K/student

3.9% of total$311.2M nominal

Facilities, utilities, custodial, grounds, maintenance. Privates report this inside Institutional Support under FASB.

Auxiliary Enterprises

$2K/student

0.9% of total$71.8M nominal

Housing, dining, bookstore, parking, athletics if separately budgeted. Self-supporting operations that charge users.

Hospital Services

$15K/student

8.0% of total$632.6M 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.

Independent Operations

$67K/student

35.9% of total$2.84B nominal

Off-mission operations. Includes major medical centers reported separately (Ohio State Wexner, NYU Langone), JPL at CalTech, APL at Johns Hopkins, etc.

Scholarships & Grant Aid

$15K/student

7.8% of total$620.5M 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): 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: 2.2% → 2.8% · Instruction: 19.1% → 13.8%

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

15.0:1

43,418 student FTE ÷ 2,898 full-time admin

20% below Carnegie peer average — more admin-dense than peers

Carnegie reference

18.7:1

R1: Doctoral, Very High Research · n=107

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.

Benchmark

$36,082

CA HS-only median

Computer Science
Bachelor · 384 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +123K
Computer Engineering
Bachelor · 116 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +113K
Mathematics and Computer Science
Bachelor · 252 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +101K
Biomathematics Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Bachelor · 41 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +87K
Electrical Electronics and Communications Engineering
Bachelor · 186 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +82K

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)

Pillar	Raw Metric	Score
Operating Margin	6.8%	15 / 25
Pricing Power	$19,578 real net tuition / FTE	25 / 25
Debt Burden	—	12 / 25
Liquidity	—	12 / 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)

$8.90B

Total expenses (F1C191)

$8.30B

Net tuition revenue (F1B01)

$834.6M

Auxiliary enterprises revenue (F1B05)

$274.3M

State appropriations (F1B11)

$572.1M

Endowment EOY (F1H02)

$1.56B

Long-term debt (F1A10)

—

Expendable net position (F1N05)

—

Interest expense (F1C19IN)

$211.8M

DSO debt — campus-specific

—

DSO debt — system-level pool

—