Arapahoe Community College

Littleton, CO

FY 2023-24 fragility

/ 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

$25,432

$163.3M total debt ÷ 6,422 FTE

Breakdown: $21.6M IPEDS-reported + $141.7M system DSO

IPEDS-reported debt / FTE · trend

▲ 595% since FY 2004-05 ($484)

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 schools in public systems not yet in our curated map (CSU, UT, TAMUS, etc.), the system pool is currently attributed entirely to the flagship campus per the dedupe pass; per-student numbers at those flagships are overstated until allocation is added. 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.

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

$6K/student in total operating expense across 13,978 fall headcount ($81.1M nominal)

Compare to other schools →

Instruction

$3K/student

43.5% of total$35.3M nominal

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

Public Service

$11/student

0.2% of total$157K nominal

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

Student Services

$512/student

8.8% of total$7.2M nominal

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

Institutional Support

$681/student

11.7% of total$9.5M nominal

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

Operation & Maintenance

$680/student

11.7% of total$9.5M nominal

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

Auxiliary Enterprises

$226/student

3.9% of total$3.2M nominal

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

Hospital Services

$78/student

1.3% of total$1.1M 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

$1K/student

18.8% of total$15.2M 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): Research, 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: 6.5% → 11.7% · Instruction: 44.6% → 44.5%

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

66.9:1

6,422 student FTE ÷ 96 full-time admin

28% below Carnegie peer average — more admin-dense than peers

Carnegie reference

93.4:1

Carnegie 5 · n=23

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

$39,174

CO HS-only median

Registered Nursing Nursing Administration Nursing Research and Clinical Nursing
Associate · 85 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +44K
Computer Systems Networking and Telecommunications
Associate · 18 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +34K
Computer and Information Sciences General
Associate · 20 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +32K
Business Administration Management and Operations
Associate · 17 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +23K
Health and Medical Administrative Services
Associate · 46 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +22K

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	9.3%	0 / 25
Pricing Power	$8,723 real net tuition / FTE	0 / 25
Debt Burden	0.11 viability ratio	23 / 25
Liquidity	71 days cash on hand	16 / 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)

$98.2M

Total expenses (F1C191)

$91.9M

Net tuition revenue (F1B01)

$56.0M

Auxiliary enterprises revenue (F1B05)

$1.3M

State appropriations (F1B11)

$4.0M

Endowment EOY (F1H02)

—

Long-term debt (F1A10)

$21.6M

Expendable net position (F1N05)

$18.0M

Interest expense (F1C19IN)

$875K

DSO debt — campus-specific

—

DSO debt — system-level pool

$141.7M