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Monday, May 27, 2019
Financially Troubled Private College Accreditation Notices, Warnings, and Probation
Financially Troubled Private College Accreditation Notices, Warnings, and Probation
What Does An 18-Month Closure Warning Look Like for Struggling Private Colleges?
What Does An 18-Month Closure Warning Look Like for Struggling Private Colleges?
In response, the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education convened a working group to study the issue. Its recommendations, which were released in a report earlier this year, centered around a new system for screening nonprofit colleges’ finances and warning students at least 18 months before a college is at risk of closing.
The
group hopes the recommendations will be implemented by this fall, but details
of the plan still need to be ironed out. The group did not advise which entity
should actually carry out the screenings, what metrics would be used to determine
which schools need closer monitoring, and how an 18-month warning would be put
into practice.
College Viability Commentary:
There is a difficult and delicate balance needed to warn students, families, faculty, staff, and communities. While financial data is available on private colleges, it is not timely - nor easy to read and understand.
A good first step would be to require private colleges to post their audited financial statements no more than 90 days after then end of each fiscal year. Currently, this information is not publicly available until 12-16 months after the end of a fiscal year. Even then, it is posted in a complex data base from the National Center for Education Statistics.
A system that relied on private initiatives to identify financially troubled colleges would serve as a better approach. College leaders would know that their financials - and all of their competitor's financial data would be available more timely and more readable.
Sources like CollegeViability.com are available to analyze and simplify the financials.
Source: Metro West Daily News
The first two paragraphs above are from Brianna McKinley.
Sunday, May 26, 2019
The hidden statistic that should worry us most
From The Atlantic:
The statistic that should worry us most is this one: According to a 2014 study by Gallup and Purdue University, only 3 percent of students have the kind of transformative experience in college that fosters personal success and happiness. Three percent. Even as the pressure of college admissions haunts students throughout their adolescence, whispering premature anxiety into questions of what to learn and how to spend time, the admissions process as we know it often misses the heart of the matter: What kind of education is really worth investing in? What is it that students should be doing, not just to get into college but to succeed there and live a good life after they graduate?
College Viability Commentary: The article goes on to suggest the three factors present in the successful 3%. We offer that a continued run of stories like this one will continue to haunt the efforts of smaller and private colleges to attract students at a tuition rate that will keep these colleges in business.
At some point, those alumni and others who can afford to subsidize operations with financial gifts will grow weary or unable.
Friday, May 10, 2019
“I didn’t think this school (college) could possibly run out of money,”
| “I didn’t think this school could possibly run out of money,” |
This quote from a student was reported in a Boston Magazine story about a private college that has closed in the past two years in the Northeast.
It is beyond obvious that there are too many small and medium-sized private colleges in financial chaos. It is equally obvious that there are too many students, families, and others living their lives without any knowledge that their college is not going to survive.
It is beyond obvious that there are too many small and medium-sized private colleges in financial chaos. It is equally obvious that there are too many students, families, and others living their lives without any knowledge that their college is not going to survive.
Releasein90 is the hashtag being used to demand that private colleges release their audited financial statements within 90 days of the end of their fiscal year. Currently, it is 12-18 months before these finances appear in the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) database. Private colleges can post their financial statements to their web site without having the excuse of waiting for the NCES to publish.
Other industries release their financial statements every 90 days and 4 times per year. It is no longer acceptable for private colleges to delay and hide their finances to the point that their students, families, and other stakeholders cannot access the information in a much more timely manner.
While it is unlikely many parents or the college counselors in high schools will have the time or skills needed to analyze this data, there is an abundant supply of higher education industry-watchers to do that reporting - including collegeviability.com.
Financial results from the fiscal years 2017-2018, most of which ended in June 2018, are still not available to the public. Those critical financial results won't be released by the National Center for Education Statistics until the Fall of 2019. That will be too late for students who have already chosen their college for this academic year.
If you are a student, family member, faculty, staff, or community member, contact your private college today and ask them to send you their audited 2018 financial statements. Those same colleges have timely information about your finances. You should have the same timely access to theirs.
You can share them with gary@collegeviability.com
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