Kent State University at Stark

North Canton, OH

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.

Liquidity

Days cash on hand. Tuition-collapse override prevents 'deathbed cash' from misleading the score (high cash from emergency relief while school is shrinking).

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

$9K/student in total operating expense across 3,433 fall headcount ($30.3M nominal)

Compare to other schools →

Instruction

$5K/student

53.2% of total$16.1M nominal

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

Research

$14/student

0.2% of total$49K nominal

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

Public Service

$17/student

0.2% of total$57K nominal

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

Student Services

$742/student

8.4% of total$2.5M nominal

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

Institutional Support

$809/student

9.2% of total$2.8M nominal

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

Operation & Maintenance

$2K/student

20.0% of total$6.1M nominal

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

Auxiliary Enterprises

$434/student

4.9% of total$1.5M nominal

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

Hospital Services

$343/student

3.9% of total$1.2M 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, Scholarships & Grant Aid, 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: 7.8% → 9.7% · Instruction: 40.9% → 50.4%

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

62.7:1

1,693 student FTE ÷ 27 full-time admin

51% below Carnegie peer average — more admin-dense than peers

Carnegie reference

127.1:1

Carnegie 12 · n=33

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.

Latest-year breakdown (FY 2023-24)

Pillar	Raw Metric	Score
Operating Margin	-8.2%	25 / 25
Pricing Power	$6,262 real net tuition / FTE	25 / 25
Debt Burden	—	12 / 25
Liquidity	—	12 / 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)

$26.5M

Total expenses (F1C191)

$28.6M

Net tuition revenue (F1B01)

$10.6M

Auxiliary enterprises revenue (F1B05)

$780K

State appropriations (F1B11)

$10.0M

Endowment EOY (F1H02)

—

Long-term debt (F1A10)

—

Expendable net position (F1N05)

—

Interest expense (F1C19IN)

$25K

DSO debt — campus-specific

—

DSO debt — system-level pool

$378.1M