California University of Pennsylvania

California, PA

FY 2020-21 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.

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 2020-21

$39,780

$247.2M total debt ÷ 6,215 FTE

Breakdown: $130.7M IPEDS-reported + $116.5M FTE-allocated system

IPEDS-reported debt / FTE · trend

▲ 738% since FY 2004-05 ($2,511)

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 Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), 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.

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 2017-18

6.8%

307 athletes ÷ 4,531 UG
NCAA Division II with football

% athletes · trend (3 snapshots)

▲ 0.3 pts since AY 2012-13 (6.5%)

Coaching footprint · AY 2017-18

14 head + 27 assistant = 41 total

1 coach per 7.5 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.

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: 10.0% → 13.5% · Instruction: 36.8% → 42.2%

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.

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. 1 program falls below the benchmark.

Benchmark

$35,274

PA HS-only median

Teacher Education and Professional Development Specific Levels and Methods
Associate · 24 completers in earnings cohort
FAIL -2K
Engineering Technologies/Technicians General
Associate · 46 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +121K
Health Services/Allied Health/Health Sciences General
Bachelor · 16 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +48K
Registered Nursing Nursing Administration Nursing Research and Clinical Nursing
Bachelor · 345 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +47K
Industrial Production Technologies/Technicians
Bachelor · 27 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +42K
Computer and Information Sciences General
Bachelor · 99 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +38K

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 2020-21)

Pillar	Raw Metric	Score
Operating Margin	25.0%	0 / 25
Pricing Power	$11,041 real net tuition / FTE	16 / 25
Debt Burden	0.14 viability ratio	23 / 25
Liquidity	57 days cash on hand	16 / 25

Peer schools

Closest by Fragility Score in FY 2020-21. 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 2020-21

GASB / IPEDS Finance F1A. DSO totals from LLM enrichment of audited financial statements; see /sources for citations.

Total revenue (F1B27)

$131.6M

Total expenses (F1C191)

$123.1M

Net tuition revenue (F1B01)

$58.3M

Auxiliary enterprises revenue (F1B05)

$4.5M

State appropriations (F1B11)

$34.2M

Endowment EOY (F1H02)

$32.7M

Long-term debt (F1A10)

$130.7M

Expendable net position (F1N05)

$19.0M

Interest expense (F1C19IN)

$3.8M

DSO debt — campus-specific

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DSO debt — system-level pool

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