Upstate Medical University

Syracuse, NY

FY 2023-24 fragility

/ 100

low

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

$376,129

$586.0M total debt ÷ 1,558 FTE

Breakdown: $585.0M IPEDS-reported + $984K FTE-allocated system

IPEDS-reported debt / FTE · trend

▼ 34% since FY 2004-05 ($572,213)

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 SUNY (DASNY Construction Fund), 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.

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

$1,582K/student in total operating expense across 1,286 fall headcount ($2.03B nominal)

Compare to other schools →

Instruction

$74K/student

4.7% of total$95.1M nominal

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

Research

$20K/student

1.2% of total$25.1M nominal

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

Public Service

$626/student

0.0% of total$806K nominal

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

Student Services

$26K/student

1.7% of total$33.7M nominal

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

Institutional Support

$7K/student

0.4% of total$9.1M nominal

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

Operation & Maintenance

$34K/student

2.1% of total$43.3M nominal

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

Auxiliary Enterprises

$3K/student

0.2% of total$4.1M nominal

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

Hospital Services

$8K/student

0.5% of total$10.5M 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.

Independent Operations

$1,368K/student

86.4% of total$1.76B nominal

Off-mission operations. Includes major medical centers reported separately (Ohio State Wexner, NYU Langone), JPL at CalTech, APL at Johns Hopkins, etc.

Scholarships & Grant Aid

$42K/student

2.7% of total$54.3M nominal

Institutional grants and scholarships awarded to students — the discount rate applied to sticker price.

Not reported separately for this control type: Academic Support.

Not applicable (reported $0): 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: 0.4% → 0.5% · Instruction: 9.3% → 4.6%

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

6.5:1

1,558 student FTE ÷ 241 full-time admin

50% below Carnegie peer average — more admin-dense than peers

Carnegie reference

12.9:1

Medical Schools · n=46

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

$34,350

NY HS-only median

Registered Nursing Nursing Administration Nursing Research and Clinical Nursing
Bachelor · 27 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +82K
Clinical/Medical Laboratory Science/Research and Allied Professions
Bachelor · 17 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +55K
Allied Health Diagnostic Intervention and Treatment Professions
Bachelor · 92 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +52K

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	15.1%	0 / 25
Pricing Power	$62,453 real net tuition / FTE	16 / 25
Debt Burden	1.55 viability ratio	6 / 25
Liquidity	156 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)

$2.43B

Total expenses (F1C191)

$2.26B

Net tuition revenue (F1B01)

$42.2M

Auxiliary enterprises revenue (F1B05)

$9.2M

State appropriations (F1B11)

$202.9M

Endowment EOY (F1H02)

$113.8M

Long-term debt (F1A10)

$585.0M

Expendable net position (F1N05)

$961.4M

Interest expense (F1C19IN)

$23.9M

DSO debt — campus-specific

—

DSO debt — system-level pool

$35.9M