University of California-Merced

Merced, CA

FY 2023-24 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).

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

2.5%

210 athletes ÷ 8,236 UG
NAIA Division II

% athletes · trend (3 snapshots)

▲ 1.8 pts since AY 2011-12 (0.8%)

Coaching footprint · AY 2024-25

12 head + 15 assistant = 27 total

1 coach per 7.8 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

2.7%

≈ 225 implied athletes ÷ 8,236 UG
vs 2.5% reported (210)
kept-peer range suggests 2–3% (185–286 athletes)

roughly in line with peer expectations

Algorithmic peers · trimmed mean 8.3:1 (kept range 6.8:1–10.6:1)

Peer	UG	Ratio
Southern Oregon UniversityOR	2,278	6.8:1
Oregon Institute of TechnologyOR	2,162	7.6:1
Indiana University-NorthwestIN(trimmed)	2,024	5.0:1
Indiana University-EastIN	1,682	10.6:1
Peru State CollegeNE(trimmed)	935	17.9:1

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.

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% → 9.0% · Instruction: 13.4% → 19.8%

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

20.5:1

9,148 student FTE ÷ 446 full-time admin

Carnegie reference

Not enough peer schools in this Carnegie classification to compute a meaningful reference.

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

$36,082

CA HS-only median

Computer Engineering
Bachelor · 136 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +66K
Mechanical Engineering
Bachelor · 160 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +59K
Biomedical/Medical Engineering
Bachelor · 34 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +53K
Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering
Bachelor · 36 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +47K
Applied Mathematics
Bachelor · 21 completers in earnings cohort
PASS +46K

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	-14.7%	25 / 25
Pricing Power	$9,840 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)

$518.3M

Total expenses (F1C191)

$594.7M

Net tuition revenue (F1B01)

$90.0M

Auxiliary enterprises revenue (F1B05)

$53.3M

State appropriations (F1B11)

$263.1M

Endowment EOY (F1H02)

$32.7M

Long-term debt (F1A10)

—

Expendable net position (F1N05)

—

Interest expense (F1C19IN)

$42.5M

DSO debt — campus-specific

—

DSO debt — system-level pool

—