<p>The list of colleges with their bond ratings is included in the back half of the report. Then, there is a list organized by state.</p>
<p>I offer this information because it is valuable to know about the financial stability of a college before committing to 4 years of your life.</p>
<p>Thank you for this. You’d probably get more response if you posted the list of the AAA’s and AA+'s or something on the thread.</p>
<p>Thank you for posting this!!!</p>
<p>Interesting that the highest rated universities are HYPSM plus Columbia, and three schools located halfway between the East and West Coasts – Rice, Wash U, and Northwestern. </p>
<p>Very interesting.</p>
<p>As any issuer rated BBB or above is investment grade, the vast majority of these institutions are in very good shape. Makes sense, since the schools in better financial shape would be the one’s paying for an issuer rating and they have a very steady, virtually guaranteed stream of revenues.</p>
<p>“Interesting that the highest rated universities are HYPSM plus Columbia, and three schools located halfway between the East and West Coasts – Rice, Wash U, and Northwestern.”</p>
<p>Why do the locations strike you as interesting? Money is money. </p>
<p>What is interesting to me is how closely these ratings reflect the US News rankings. It’s popular on CC to berate US News as unscientific, meaningless, biased, rigged, etc. However, when you tease apart the individual ranking factors, and even when you consider ratings like this one that USNWR does not use, you find that very often they point to the same set (if not the exact same ordering) of top schools. HYPSM, Columbia, AWS, Pomona, Wellesley: these same schools appear at or near the top of the bond ratings, and at or near the head of the US News rankings. It seems there are not too many “Little Engine That Could” colleges (schools with, say, a BBB bond rating that nevertheless make the US News top 100). Conversely, among all the AA and better schools, I see very few that do not make the USNWR top 100 LACs or national universities.</p>
<p>Well, you can’t do much without money, that’s for sure! A financially well-managed / sound campus opens the door for all those opportunities, both in and out of the classroom.</p>
<p>That’s the one thing that strikes me from visiting Grinnell (which is at the top of the bond ratings, I think it was #2 or #3 if I remember correctly). Yes, it is in the cornfields of Iowa, a million miles away from anything. But MAN, when you get on that campus, it is apparent that there is tons of money there (thank you, Warren Buffett). And that enables it to “punch above its weight class.” </p>
<p>USNWR seems to be the best of the rankings as far as I’m concerned. The other ones seem to be all about silly things (what do people in other countries think? like, who cares? they don’t know what they’re talking about) or weighted towards STEM fields. The problem isn’t USNWR; it’s the kind of stupid people who can’t think in bands and instead obsess over the difference between #8 and #14 or whatever. So it’s no surprise to me that these rankings were pretty close to USNWR. </p>
<p>So how do they decide which schools are listed?
In looking over the top us news LACs for example, I see several of the 10 that aren’t listed at all on the financial ranking, like the Claremont colleges that aren’t Pomona.( & schools in Minn are completely left out, like #7 Carleton)
Colby is the only school listed for Maine, but Bowdoin is Usnews rank #4.
I am waiting for new glasses so I didn’t carefully read the whole thing, do they review ratings every year?</p>
<p>Not a very comprehensive list…</p>
<p>@emeraldkity4 - Entities usually only receive issuer ratings from S&P and Moody’s if they pay for it.</p>
<p>The most common reason to obtain an issuer rating is that you are issuing a bond. </p>
<p>If you are issuing a bond, you then have to get rated by the rating agencies, as a lot of investing institutions (such as mutual funds, insurance companies, and pension funds) have minimum credit ratings they require and will not purchase bonds that have not been rated by either (sometimes both) Moody’s or S&P (or, sometimes Fitch).</p>
<p>Usually, S&P and Moody’s will at least meet with each issuer each year. The extent of their review both before meeting and after meeting with the issuer will vary, based upon the circumstances. They may just affirm the current rating and that would be it for another year, unless new circumstances / news warranted it.</p>
<p>Interesting that there are 13 AAA rated colleges and universities, but there are only three US corporations with AAA ratings.</p>
<p>Interesting that among the colleges DS was admitted into, 3 of them have AAA ratings. This was many years ago.</p>
<p>No, he is not a bit like the two students who were admitted into multiple Ivies this year (two CC threads were about these two students.) He actually only applied to a single Ivy school in his application year.</p>
<p>My understanding is that some of the least financially stable colleges don’t have bond ratings. As noted above, you have to participate in the process. Some colleges borrow money privately, vs. through the bond market.</p>
<p>Here’s Moody’s list of the public universities with the highest bond rating:</p>
<ul>
<li> Indiana University</li>
<li>Purdue University</li>
<li>Texas A&M University system</li>
<li>University of Michigan</li>
<li>University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill</li>
<li>University of Texas system</li>
<li>University of Virginia</li>
<li>University of Washington </li>
</ul>
<p><a href=“Many state universities face fiscal challenge - CBS News”>http://www.cbsnews.com/news/many-state-universities-face-fiscal-challenge/</a></p>
<p>One of the downsides of US News is that they put too much emphasis into how much a college spends, instead of the cost-efficiency of the colleges. </p>
<p>If you google it, sometimes you can find the bond rating report for an individual college online, which summarizes the analysis and discusses issues for that college.</p>
<p>The bond ratings certainly consider endowment (like US News) and other resources, but put much more emphasis on proper management of debt and discipline in spending. The bond ratings also typically consider whether there is strong demand for the seats in a college, in terms of acceptance rate, yield, etc. They are worried about colleges that could suffer declining enrollments in the future, and therefore have trouble paying back their debt. </p>
<p>There are some colleges that appear to have a large endowment, but their debt is actually greater than their endowment. Some debt is proper for long-term capital improvements, but excessive debt levels can strangle a college over time. I’ve heard of one private university that has debt with giant balloon payments due in the near future, and people wonder how they will pay for it. </p>
<p>Liberty U rated AA and second highest private in Va. Pretty amazing for young school that once was nearly broke.</p>
<p>Online expansion has been pretty profitable.
<a href=“http://m.timesdispatch.com/news/liberty-university-s-net-assets-headed-for-billion-thanks-to/article_a65b5604-745e-5d13-98f0-f1ed2eb6dd8d.html?mode=jqm”>http://m.timesdispatch.com/news/liberty-university-s-net-assets-headed-for-billion-thanks-to/article_a65b5604-745e-5d13-98f0-f1ed2eb6dd8d.html?mode=jqm</a></p>
<p>Yup, that was a big reason. I was just back in Lynchburg and the new construction on the LU campus is amazing. They are using the online profits to build the brick and mortar campus–literally. Also met a couple of new med school faculty that have been hired to start the new med school. Both came from very good med schools where they previously were on the faculty so they must be paying quite well.</p>
<p><a href=“Liberty breaks ground on Center for Music & the Worship Arts » Liberty News”>Liberty breaks ground on Center for Music & the Worship Arts » Liberty News;
<p>Do you have to be a creationist to work there?</p>