The University of West Florida
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.
Operating shortfall is real, but the negative net position is GASB accounting
FY 2022-23 operating margin including state appropriations: -8.9%. UWF runs ~$235M in operating expenses, covers ~$95M from operating revenue, ~$99M from state appropriations, and ~$45M from investment income and gifts — barely break-even after all non-operating sources. That is genuine fragility for a school with thin liquidity (26 days cash). Separately, the deeply-negative total net position (-$69.6M) is driven by GASB 68 / GASB 75 pension and OPEB allocations from the Florida Retirement System ($131M combined). Net of those allocations, UWF's net position is +$61M. The model treats leverage as indeterminate (default neutral score) when pension/OPEB dominates the negative net position so that FRS underfunding doesn't get read as institutional debt distress.
Latest-year breakdown (FY 2022-23)
| Pillar | Raw Metric | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Operating Margin | -8.9% | 25 / 25 |
| Pricing Power | $6,343 real net tuition / FTE | 25 / 25 |
| Debt Burden | — | 12 / 25 |
| Liquidity | 26 days cash on hand | 25 / 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.