University of Puerto Rico-Carolina

Carolina, PR

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.

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

$10,423

$16.9M total debt ÷ 1,625 FTE

Breakdown: $5.1M IPEDS-reported + $11.9M FTE-allocated system

IPEDS-reported debt / FTE · trend

▼ 62% since FY 2004-05 ($8,249)

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 University of Puerto Rico System, 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 2024-25

6.6%

133 athletes ÷ 2,019 UG
Other

% athletes · trend (3 snapshots)

▲ 1.2 pts since AY 2012-13 (5.4%)

Coaching footprint · AY 2024-25

12 head + 0 assistant = 12 total

1 coach per 11.1 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

4.1%

≈ 83 implied athletes ÷ 2,019 UG
vs 6.6% reported (133)
kept-peer range suggests 4–4% (75–87 athletes)

reports 1.6× more athletes per coach than peers — staff-light

Algorithmic peers · trimmed mean 6.9:1 (kept range 6.2:1–7.3:1)

Peer	UG	Ratio
University of Puerto Rico at PoncePR(trimmed)	2,190	6.1:1
University of Puerto Rico-HumacaoPR	2,301	7.1:1
University of Puerto Rico-AguadillaPR	1,732	6.2:1
University of Puerto Rico-AreciboPR(trimmed)	2,525	9.6:1
Yakima Valley CollegeWA	1,787	7.3:1

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

$10K/student in total operating expense across 2,428 fall headcount ($23.6M nominal)

Compare to other schools →

Instruction

$5K/student

51.3% of total$12.1M nominal

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

Research

$115/student

1.2% of total$279K nominal

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

Public Service

$116/student

1.2% of total$281K nominal

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

Student Services

$3K/student

27.9% of total$6.6M nominal

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

Institutional Support

$1K/student

13.4% of total$3.2M nominal

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

Operation & Maintenance

$3K/student

30.7% of total$7.3M nominal

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

Auxiliary Enterprises

$1K/student

11.2% of total$2.6M 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): 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: 5.5% → 11.8% · Instruction: 36.1% → 46.0%

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

37.8:1

1,625 student FTE ÷ 43 full-time admin

17% below Carnegie peer average — more admin-dense than peers

Carnegie reference

45.7:1

Baccalaureate (Diverse Fields) · n=300

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

$15,979

PR HS-only median

Hospitality Administration/Management
Bachelor · 28 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +21K
Criminal Justice and Corrections
Bachelor · 33 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +17K
Clinical Counseling and Applied Psychology
Bachelor · 29 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +10K
Finance and Financial Management Services
Bachelor · 18 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +6K
Business Administration Management and Operations
Bachelor · 24 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +6K

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	25.0%	5 / 25
Pricing Power	$1,579 real net tuition / FTE	8 / 25
Debt Burden	-2.28 viability ratio	23 / 25
Liquidity	-190 days cash on hand	25 / 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)

$28.5M

Total expenses (F1C191)

$22.2M

Net tuition revenue (F1B01)

$2.6M

Auxiliary enterprises revenue (F1B05)

State appropriations (F1B11)

$11.8M

Endowment EOY (F1H02)

—

Long-term debt (F1A10)

$5.1M

Expendable net position (F1N05)

$-11.5M

Interest expense (F1C19IN)

$292K

DSO debt — campus-specific

—

DSO debt — system-level pool

—