Orbuculum — Higher-Ed Financial Fragility

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.

Tuition discount rate

The share of gross tuition revenue that’s offset by institutional grant aid (scholarships funded from the operating budget plus endowed scholarships). A rising discount rate combined with falling real net tuition is the canonical signal that a school is buying enrollment with aid that the market won’t support.

Tuition discount rate · FY 2022-23

29.3%

$53.5M institutional aid ÷ $182.5M gross tuition

Discount rate · trend

▲ 4.3 pts since FY 2004-05 (25.0%)

Institutional grant aid (F2C05 funded + F2C06 unfunded) divided by gross tuition revenue (F2D01 net tuition + grants). This is the all-student, institution-wide rate. Schools and NACUBO typically publish a first-time-in-college (FTIC) freshman rate, which runs 5–10 points higher because recruitment merit aid is front-loaded onto incoming classes and steps down for upperclassmen.

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: 11.2% → 17.6% · Instruction: 15.0% → 41.2%

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.

Latest-year breakdown (FY 2022-23)

Pillar	Raw Metric	Score
Operating Margin	—	12 / 25
Pricing Power	$38,776 real net tuition / FTE	25 / 25
Debt Burden	—	12 / 25
Liquidity	—	12 / 25

Peer schools

Closest by Fragility Score in FY 2022-23. 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 2022-23

FASB / IPEDS Finance F2.

Total revenue (F2B01)

—

Total expenses (F2B02)

—

Net tuition revenue (F2D01)

$129.0M

Endowment EOY (F2H02)

$360.6M

Plant debt (F2I06 / F2A03A)

—

Expendable net assets (F2I05)

—

Interest expense (F2E136)

$305K

Depreciation (F2E135)

$5.2M