University of Massachusetts-Boston

Boston, 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

$88,978

$1.14B total debt ÷ 12,846 FTE

Breakdown: $424.1M IPEDS-reported + $719.0M FTE-allocated system

IPEDS-reported debt / FTE · trend

▲ 164% since FY 2004-05 ($12,512)

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 UMass 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

3.8%

374 athletes ÷ 9,794 UG
NCAA Division III without football

% athletes · trend (3 snapshots)

▲ 0.4 pts since AY 2005-06 (3.4%)

Coaching footprint · AY 2024-25

15 head + 35 assistant = 50 total

1 coach per 7.5 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

2.8%

≈ 279 implied athletes ÷ 9,794 UG
vs 3.8% reported (374)
kept-peer range suggests 3–3% (259–307 athletes)

reports 1.3× more athletes per coach than peers — staff-light

Algorithmic peers · trimmed mean 5.6:1 (kept range 5.2:1–6.1:1)

Peer	UG	Ratio
Rutgers University-NewarkNJ	6,945	5.2:1
CUNY John Jay College of Criminal JusticeNY	9,616	5.4:1
CUNY City CollegeNY	10,332	6.1:1
CUNY Brooklyn CollegeNY(trimmed)	8,096	4.7:1
Farmingdale State CollegeNY(trimmed)	7,932	9.4:1

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.

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: 6.3% → 10.0% · Instruction: 36.4% → 44.7%

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

74.7:1

12,846 student FTE ÷ 172 full-time admin

156% above Carnegie peer average — leaner than peers

Carnegie reference

29.1:1

R2: Doctoral, High Research · n=97

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

Electrical Electronics and Communications Engineering
Bachelor · 21 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +61K
Registered Nursing Nursing Administration Nursing Research and Clinical Nursing
Bachelor · 401 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +56K
Biochemistry Biophysics and Molecular Biology
Bachelor · 21 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +46K
Computer and Information Sciences General
Bachelor · 238 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +44K
Business Administration Management and Operations
Bachelor · 509 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +33K

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	$12,943 real net tuition / FTE	25 / 25
Debt Burden	0.49 viability ratio	23 / 25
Liquidity	144 days cash on hand	8 / 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)

$552.7M

Total expenses (F1C191)

$527.8M

Net tuition revenue (F1B01)

$166.0M

Auxiliary enterprises revenue (F1B05)

$13.1M

State appropriations (F1B11)

$210.8M

Endowment EOY (F1H02)

$171.3M

Long-term debt (F1A10)

$424.1M

Expendable net position (F1N05)

$207.1M

Interest expense (F1C19IN)

$20.6M

DSO debt — campus-specific

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DSO debt — system-level pool

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