Each factor below is one of the signals used to score financial health. Open one to see how institutions are distributed across it, and what a high or low number actually means.
Flagged below 65% (public) or 60% (private non-profit)
Retention is the share of first-year students who return for a second year. It is the earliest visible sign of trouble, because students leave before finances deteriorate on paper: each one who does not return removes several years of expected tuition, and the gap has to be filled by recruiting a replacement, which costs more than keeping the original student would have.
Flagged below 40% (30% for for-profit)
The share of a starting cohort that completes a credential within the standard window. Low completion signals both weak student outcomes and unstable revenue, and it carries regulatory weight: persistent underperformance can put federal aid eligibility at risk, which for most institutions is existential.
Flagged above 50% (public) or 70% (private non-profit)
The share of operating revenue that comes from tuition. High dependency means enrollment and revenue move together with nothing to absorb the shock: a single weak admissions cycle passes straight through to the budget. Institutions with endowment income, state appropriations or research funding have somewhere to absorb a bad year.
Flagged below 1.0x for private non-profits
Endowment measured against one year of operating expenses - roughly, how long the institution could run on reserves. Below 1.0x there is less than a year of cushion, so a bad year has to be met with cuts rather than savings. This is a better measure than endowment per student, which moves with enrollment mix rather than with actual financial resilience.
Flagged above 25% for private non-profits
The share of students who are nonresident. This is a concentration risk rather than a judgement about the students: enrollment that depends on a population whose ability to arrive is set by visa policy can change between admission cycles, and the revenue does not reappear domestically. Note this is a visa-status category, so it excludes international students who are permanent residents or refugees.
The share of applicants offered admission. On its own a high rate is not a problem - many institutions are open by design and admit nearly everyone. It matters as a trend: a rate climbing year over year usually means the applicant pool is shrinking and the institution is admitting deeper into it to hold class size.
Flagged below 15% for private non-profits
The share of admitted students who actually enroll. Low yield means the institution is being used as a backup: it must admit many more students than it needs, which makes class size hard to predict and tuition revenue hard to budget. Falling yield is often the first place a reputation problem shows up in the numbers.
Persistent negative margin is flagged (3+ of the last 5 years)
Operating revenue minus expenses, as a share of revenue. A single negative year is normal and often deliberate. A sustained run of them is the clearest signal of distress, because it means the institution is drawing down reserves or borrowing to cover ordinary operations rather than to invest.