<p>Thank you! Appreciate the clarification..maybe we'll check out both..!</p>
<p>Northeastmom, your comment on the small endowment for the University of Tampa tempted me to look up the bond rating, since that is a more complete proxy for the overall financial health of an organization. Since I recently left my job, I no longer have access to the Bloomberg, S&P, Moody's and Fitch databases so I just did a Google search. (For some reason, I thought anybody could get ratings for free so was really surprised by the lack of access for nonsubscribers on those websites, but that is another issue.) </p>
<p>Anyway, Fitch rates Univ. of Tampa at BBB, down from BBB+ in March 2006, essentially citing high debt levels, which explains the nice campus. While still investment grade, that is not a strong rating for a college. My takeaway is that the recent positive enrollment trends will need to continue past the current demographic bubble to keep the campus solvent over the long term. Other Google articles indicate a seriously troubled financial history, with the college doing better now than it has in the past, but at least in Fitch's mind perhaps overreaching itself in terms of debt.</p>
<p>"Fitch Downgrades University of Tampa, Florida Rev Bonds to 'BBB'
Business Wire, March 24, 2006
[url=<a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2006_March_24/ai_n16112574%5DFitch">http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2006_March_24/ai_n16112574]Fitch</a> Downgrades University of Tampa, Florida Rev Bonds to 'BBB' | Business Wire | Find Articles at BNET.com<a href="I'm%20not%20sure%20how%20to%20post%20a%20link%20so%20I%20just%20copied%20the%20cite%20of%20the%20whole%20article.">/url</a></p>
<p>UCF has a 5 year graduation rate of about 52%, with a huge price differential for the OOS student. This is one reason that I am not looking into further. I would not expect instate tuition, but instate tuition is under 4k, and OOS jumps to over 17k. Also, 22% of classes contain over 50 students in the class.</p>
<p>TheAnyalyst, Thank you for taking the time to do this. That endowment just did not sit well with me. LOL, I always thought when reading your posts that you were a psychologist, not a business analyst.</p>
<p>Florida State is in Tallahassee, not Tampa. University of South Florida and University of Tampa are both in Tampa. New College is in Sarasota. Gainesville's UF is about an hour and half north of Orlando.</p>
<p>woops! I knew Tallahassess--guess I needed my coffee!</p>
<p>One thing that might be helpful when considering Florida schools is the AP credit and its impact on number of semesters. They are quite generous with AP credit; it's not unreasonable to expect up to a year's worth of credit, if you've taken 5 or 6 AP classes, especially if you've taken Calculus and sciences (for example, a 5 in AP Bio gets you 8 hours of Bio credit (2 classes plus 2 labs). So when you're looking at an 8 or 9 semester degree program, you might be able to carve off a year.</p>
<p>Just anecdotal, but I live about an hour from UCF and can understand the low 4/5 year grad rates. Many students are part time (I went part time in the evenings in their MBA program), and I've known at least half dozen adults who have gone back to school for education, business, or engineering while working. My aunt went part time for undergrad with FOUR kids under the age of 10 before moving into UF's pharmacy program. Orlando is a huge city and UCF makes perfect sense for someone already working who wants to go back to school and pick up another degree. It would be interesting to see graduation rates without part-time/evening students included.</p>
<p>Interesting...thanks again for that great info!</p>