For the last several months, almost every college and university has been transparent about the need for one thing: money. Many institutions lost millions after the coronavirus pandemic led them to suddenly shut down their campuses and the many revenue-driving activities that schools partake in there.  

But some colleges and universities are much better positioned than others to weather the cost of coronavirus. The Financial Fitness Tracker, a new tool from The Hechinger Report, can tell you if your institution was more or less financially fortunate before Covid-19, and how much financial stress it’s facing now. 

Using federal data and established metrics, my colleague Pete D’Amato created a tool that can put colleges through a “financial stress test,” examining enrollment, tuition revenue, public funding, endowment health and other metrics. He and Sarah Butrymowicz reviewed the data for a total of 2,662 schools (four-year publics, two-year publics and four-year nonprofit privates) which are included in the tool’s dashboard; of these, 2,264 had enough data to be evaluated in every metric category, and more than 500 showed warning signs in two or more categories. The data was collected before the coronavirus pandemic. 

“More than 50 public and nonprofit institutions have closed or merged since 2015, and experts expect to see more closures in the coming academic year,” my colleagues wrote. “Even if colleges manage to stay open, they may have to make deep cuts to do so, which could ultimately hurt students as well.”  

Their story on the fiscal health of colleges and universities was accompanied by three other articles elaborating on the problems that have led colleges to this point. One detailed how higher education’s own management decisions in the last decade left it vulnerable to the pandemic crisis; another examined the oversight processes that should – but often don’t –  protect students when colleges close abruptly; and the third reported on the closing of Marygrove College in Detroit, a 112-year-old institution that shut down suddenly, and the impact this had on students, faculty and the college’s inner-city community.    

Nationwide, some of the institutions most at risk include colleges and universities in Ohio, a 
state that never restored funds for higher education after the 2008 recession. The health of endowments, which the tool tracks against operating costs, could also be critical to some of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities, which have median endowments half the size of their non-BCU counterparts, Butrymowicz and Damato wrote.  

As Congress, college presidents and policy experts try to figure out how to help college students and student loan borrowers in the next stimulus package, I hope they add the Financial Fitness Tracker, as well as the detailed articles that go with it, to their reading lists. 

How can local and national government help colleges and universities that are in dire financial straits? What can institutions do to improve their finances during the recession? Email or tweet me your thoughts. 

• With higher ed in crisis, the lack of financial oversight is glaring 
• How higher education’s own choices left it vulnerable to the pandemic crisis 
• Getting a college degree was their dream. Then their school suddenly closed