University of Puerto Rico-Utuado
Composite Fragility Score over time
Pillar trajectories
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.
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.
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.
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.
Notes
Editorial context drawn from manual review of this school’s data, methodology interactions, and external reporting.
Low tuition + 25% margin = heavy state subsidy, not exceptional health
UPR-Utuado is a small UPR campus (368 FTE undergrads) where students pay symbolic tuition — real net tuition per FTE is about $884, against operating expenses of ~$22K/student. Puerto Rico effectively funds the entire operation: state appropriations (F1B11) of $10.1M make up 75% of total revenue ($13.45M). On the books that produces a $5.6M operating surplus — a 41% all-in margin, which the model clamps to its +25% ceiling. The Cash Position pillar still scores 5 rather than 0 (very good) because the state-appropriation-share modifier floors heavily-subsidized publics at "workable" — the headline surplus is real but entirely dependent on continued state funding. One PR-government budget decision away from collapse, not three.
$135K/FTE debt despite tiny size — concentration risk
UPR-Utuado ranks #2 on the per-public debt-per-student leaderboard despite being one of the smallest schools by enrollment. The math: ~$47M in DSO-captured campus-and-system debt (UPR system bonds, after netting against the $4.8M IPEDS-reported F1A10) divided by 368 FTE = ~$128K/FTE. The leaderboard reading is honest — small enrollment + outsized leverage produces real concentration risk. UPR's well-documented system-wide financial crises over the past decade make the underlying signal credible.
Latest-year breakdown (FY 2022-23)
| Pillar | Raw Metric | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Operating Margin | 25.0% | 5 / 25 |
| Pricing Power | $723 real net tuition / FTE | 16 / 25 |
| Debt Burden | 0.24 viability ratio | 23 / 25 |
| Liquidity | 335 days cash on hand | 0 / 25 |
Peer schools
Closest by Fragility Score in FY 2022-23. Financial similarity only — geographic / regional clustering is a separate (future) feature.
Selected raw financials — FY 2022-23
GASB / IPEDS Finance F1A. DSO totals from LLM enrichment of audited financial statements; see /sources for citations.