University of California-Merced

Merced, CA

FY 2022-23 fragility

/ 100

high

Data-quality note

The University of California system files its balance-sheet (F1A) and operating-margin summary (F1D / F1N) blocks at the UC Office of the President system level, not per campus. Each campus IPEDS filing therefore has revenue, expense, endowment, and pension/OPEB detail but no expendable-net-position or operating-margin block. The Operating Margin pillar at this campus uses an all-in F1B27 − F1C191 fallback (total revenues minus total operating expenses); Debt Burden and Liquidity pillars remain indeterminate from IPEDS alone and default to a neutral score. See the methodology page for the full handling. Methodology →

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).

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: 6.0% → 6.3% · Instruction: 13.4% → 15.1%

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 2022-23)

Pillar	Raw Metric	Score
Operating Margin	-25.0%	25 / 25
Pricing Power	$8,880 real net tuition / FTE	25 / 25
Debt Burden	—	12 / 25
Liquidity	—	12 / 25

Peer schools

Closest by Fragility Score in FY 2022-23. 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 2022-23

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

Total revenue (F1B27)

$537.5M

Total expenses (F1C191)

$707.2M

Net tuition revenue (F1B01)

$81.2M

State appropriations (F1B11)

$255.1M

Endowment EOY (F1H02)

$29.1M

Long-term debt (F1A10)

—

Expendable net position (F1N05)

—

Interest expense (F1C19IN)

$45.3M

DSO debt — campus-specific

—

DSO debt — system-level pool

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