Wright State University-Lake Campus

Celina, 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).

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

4.8%

32 athletes ÷ 665 UG
USCAA

% athletes · trend (3 snapshots)

▼ 1.1 pts since AY 2014-15 (5.9%)

Coaching footprint · AY 2024-25

2 head + 1 assistant = 3 total

1 coach per 10.7 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

3.3%

≈ 22 implied athletes ÷ 665 UG
vs 4.8% reported (32)
kept-peer range suggests 3–3% (22–23 athletes)

reports 1.4× more athletes per coach than peers — staff-light

Algorithmic peers · trimmed mean 7.4:1 (kept range 7.2:1–7.7:1)

Peer	UG	Ratio
University of Cincinnati-Clermont CollegeOH(trimmed)	1,062	9.3:1
Kent State University at TuscarawasOH(trimmed)	409	4.6:1
Pennsylvania State University-Penn State ScrantonPA	734	7.3:1
Pennsylvania State University-Penn State YorkPA	595	7.7:1
Pennsylvania State University-Penn State SchuylkillPA	578	7.2:1

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.

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

$7K/student in total operating expense across 1,398 fall headcount ($9.5M nominal)

Compare to other schools →

Instruction

$3K/student

50.6% of total$4.8M nominal

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

Research

$64/student

0.9% of total$89K nominal

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

Public Service

$2/student

0.0% of total$3K nominal

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

Student Services

$78/student

1.1% of total$109K nominal

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

Institutional Support

$481/student

7.1% of total$673K nominal

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

Operation & Maintenance

$1K/student

22.0% of total$2.1M nominal

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

Scholarships & Grant Aid

$1K/student

18.2% of total$1.7M 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): Auxiliary Enterprises, Hospital Services, Independent Operations, 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: 11.0% → 7.2% · Instruction: 48.6% → 49.3%

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	15.9%	0 / 25
Pricing Power	$6,155 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)

$12.4M

Total expenses (F1C191)

$10.4M

Net tuition revenue (F1B01)

$5.6M

Auxiliary enterprises revenue (F1B05)

State appropriations (F1B11)

$3.1M

Endowment EOY (F1H02)

—

Long-term debt (F1A10)

—

Expendable net position (F1N05)

—

Interest expense (F1C19IN)

DSO debt — campus-specific

—

DSO debt — system-level pool

—