Ohio University-Lancaster Campus

Lancaster, OH

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.

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

$4K/student in total operating expense across 1,977 fall headcount ($7.7M nominal)

Compare to other schools →

Instruction

$3K/student

68.5% of total$5.2M nominal

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

Public Service

$43/student

1.1% of total$85K nominal

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

Student Services

$590/student

15.2% of total$1.2M nominal

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

Institutional Support

$242/student

6.2% of total$478K nominal

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

Operation & Maintenance

$132/student

3.4% of total$261K nominal

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

Auxiliary Enterprises

$216/student

5.6% of total$427K nominal

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

Not reported separately for this control type: Academic Support.

Not applicable (reported $0): Research, Hospital Services, 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: 5.0% → 7.3% · Instruction: 44.0% → 70.6%

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.

Latest-year breakdown (FY 2023-24)

Pillar	Raw Metric	Score
Operating Margin	9.0%	0 / 25
Pricing Power	$4,923 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)

$9.0M

Total expenses (F1C191)

$8.2M

Net tuition revenue (F1B01)

$3.7M

Auxiliary enterprises revenue (F1B05)

State appropriations (F1B11)

$3.6M

Endowment EOY (F1H02)

—

Long-term debt (F1A10)

—

Expendable net position (F1N05)

—

Interest expense (F1C19IN)

DSO debt — campus-specific

—

DSO debt — system-level pool

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