Fitchburg State University

Fitchburg, MA

FY 2023-24 fragility

/ 100

high

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

$57,427

$280.5M total debt ÷ 4,885 FTE

Breakdown: $91.6M IPEDS-reported + $189.0M FTE-allocated system

IPEDS-reported debt / FTE · trend

▲ 550% since FY 2004-05 ($2,884)

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 Massachusetts State College Building Authority, the system bond pool is the sum of all sibling campuses’ DSO_DEBT_SYSTEM values, allocated to this campus by FTE share — not attributed entirely to the flagship UNITID. 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.

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

16.2%

363 athletes ÷ 2,237 UG
NCAA Division III with football

% athletes · trend (3 snapshots)

▲ 6.7 pts since AY 2005-06 (9.5%)

Coaching footprint · AY 2024-25

17 head + 40 assistant = 57 total

1 coach per 6.4 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

20.4%

≈ 457 implied athletes ÷ 2,237 UG
vs 16.2% reported (363)
kept-peer range suggests 17–24% (381–547 athletes)

roughly in line with peer expectations

Algorithmic peers · trimmed mean 8.0:1 (kept range 6.7:1–9.6:1)

Peer	UG	Ratio
Framingham State UniversityMA	2,379	7.8:1
Plymouth State UniversityNH	3,091	9.6:1
University of Massachusetts-DartmouthMA	4,616	6.7:1
SUNY Buffalo State UniversityNY(trimmed)	4,684	11.1:1
William Paterson University of New JerseyNJ(trimmed)	5,236	4.2:1

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

$19K/student in total operating expense across 6,296 fall headcount ($121.3M nominal)

Compare to other schools →

Instruction

$8K/student

40.1% of total$48.7M nominal

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

Research

$15/student

0.1% of total$95K nominal

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

Public Service

$255/student

1.3% of total$1.6M nominal

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

Student Services

$2K/student

11.9% of total$14.5M nominal

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

Institutional Support

$4K/student

20.9% of total$25.4M nominal

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

Operation & Maintenance

$3K/student

15.5% of total$18.8M nominal

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

Auxiliary Enterprises

$584/student

3.0% of total$3.7M nominal

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

Hospital Services

$2K/student

10.8% of total$13.1M 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.

Not reported separately for this control type: Academic Support.

Not applicable (reported $0): 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: 11.1% → 20.9% · Instruction: 35.0% → 40.5%

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

87.2:1

4,885 student FTE ÷ 56 full-time admin

86% above Carnegie peer average — leaner than peers

Carnegie reference

46.8:1

Master's Colleges & Universities (Larger) · n=218

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

$39,449

MA HS-only median

Registered Nursing Nursing Administration Nursing Research and Clinical Nursing
Bachelor · 111 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +53K
Computer and Information Sciences General
Bachelor · 21 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +36K
Industrial Production Technologies/Technicians
Bachelor · 47 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +27K
Biology General
Bachelor · 61 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +27K
Business Administration Management and Operations
Bachelor · 129 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +25K

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	25.0%	5 / 25
Pricing Power	$6,559 real net tuition / FTE	25 / 25
Debt Burden	0.60 viability ratio	23 / 25
Liquidity	147 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)

$128.4M

Total expenses (F1C191)

$128.9M

Net tuition revenue (F1B01)

$32.0M

Auxiliary enterprises revenue (F1B05)

$12.0M

State appropriations (F1B11)

$58.9M

Endowment EOY (F1H02)

$26.8M

Long-term debt (F1A10)

$91.6M

Expendable net position (F1N05)

$54.5M

Interest expense (F1C19IN)

$3.5M

DSO debt — campus-specific

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DSO debt — system-level pool

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