Ferris State University

Big Rapids, MI

FY 2023-24 fragility

/ 100

moderate

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

$12,316

$102.1M total debt ÷ 8,293 FTE

IPEDS-reported debt / FTE · trend

▲ 43% since FY 2004-05 ($8,596)

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.

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

5.9%

388 athletes ÷ 6,557 UG
Other

% athletes · trend (3 snapshots)

▲ 1.9 pts since AY 2005-06 (4.0%)

Coaching footprint · AY 2024-25

13 head + 21 assistant = 34 total

1 coach per 11.4 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

5.0%

≈ 327 implied athletes ÷ 6,557 UG
vs 5.9% reported (388)
kept-peer range suggests 4–6% (287–364 athletes)

roughly in line with peer expectations

Algorithmic peers · trimmed mean 9.6:1 (kept range 8.5:1–10.7:1)

Peer	UG	Ratio
Central Connecticut State UniversityCT	6,551	8.5:1
Bridgewater State UniversityMA(trimmed)	6,623	7.3:1
Pennsylvania Western UniversityPA	6,463	10.7:1
Slippery Rock University of PennsylvaniaPA(trimmed)	6,426	19.0:1
California State University-StanislausCA	6,718	9.7:1

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: 6.2% → 8.5% · Instruction: 35.2% → 34.4%

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

49.4:1

8,293 student FTE ÷ 168 full-time admin

5% above Carnegie peer average — in line with peers

Carnegie reference

47.0:1

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

$32,989

MI HS-only median

Health/Medical Preparatory Programs
Bachelor · 16 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +85K
Industrial Production Technologies/Technicians
Bachelor · 164 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +59K
Computer/Information Technology Administration and Management
Bachelor · 48 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +59K
Construction Management
Bachelor · 79 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +58K
Energy Systems Technologies/Technicians
Bachelor · 46 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +56K

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	$13,309 real net tuition / FTE	25 / 25
Debt Burden	2.71 viability ratio	2 / 25
Liquidity	838 days cash on hand	0 / 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)

$295.6M

Total expenses (F1C191)

$227.5M

Net tuition revenue (F1B01)

$102.6M

Auxiliary enterprises revenue (F1B05)

$26.8M

State appropriations (F1B11)

$92.5M

Endowment EOY (F1H02)

$127.5M

Long-term debt (F1A10)

$102.1M

Expendable net position (F1N05)

$522.4M

Interest expense (F1C19IN)

$3.6M

DSO debt — campus-specific

$90.4M

DSO debt — system-level pool

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