Florida International University
Composite Fragility Score over time
Pillar trajectories
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.
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.
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.
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.
Notes
Editorial context drawn from manual review of this school’s data, methodology interactions, and external reporting.
Florida tuition freeze drives system-wide pricing-power signal
The Florida State University System has not raised in-state undergraduate tuition since 2014 by legislative direction. With ~30% cumulative inflation since then, real net tuition per FTE has fallen materially across the system — most FL SUS schools transitioned from a pricing-power score of 0 (growing real tuition) through 2018 to a 25 (>10% real decline) by 2020-21. That contributes a full 25 of 100 points to most FL SUS composites in recent years. The signal is real (revenue per student is materially lower in inflation-adjusted dollars) but policy-driven rather than a market rejection of value — applies system-wide, not as a school-specific finding. FSU is the rare exception (pricing-power 0 in FY 2022-23), likely from non-resident or graduate-program tuition mix offsetting the in-state freeze.
Latest-year breakdown (FY 2022-23)
| Pillar | Raw Metric | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Operating Margin | 25.0% | 0 / 25 |
| Pricing Power | $6,062 real net tuition / FTE | 25 / 25 |
| Debt Burden | 4.17 viability ratio | 0 / 25 |
| Liquidity | 226 days cash on hand | 0 / 25 |
Peer schools
Closest by Fragility Score in FY 2022-23. Financial similarity only — geographic / regional clustering is a separate (future) feature.
Selected raw financials — FY 2022-23
GASB / IPEDS Finance F1A. DSO totals from LLM enrichment of audited financial statements; see /sources for citations.