Financials of a University System

University Bonds

Universities are interesting creatures financially speaking. They are relevant because they often float general obligation and revenue bonds to finance themselves. These bonds are typically tax exempt and are part of the greater municipal bond universe. As an asset, they are infrequently traded. As a business, they derive a considerable amount of revenues from their medical center operations, government research contracting, government appropriations, and finally tuition. Consider the University of California system, the largest of its kind 302k students and 136k faculty spread across 10 campuses.

University Revenues

The lion's share of the revenues come from the medical centers and government research grants/contracts. Actual state appropriation funding and tuitions contribute only a quarter of the total revenue.

Over the past 5 years, the tuition/fees category grew by about 61%. Medical center and government contracts revenue grew by 38% and 26% respectively. State appropriations and DOE lab contributions actually declined by 6% and 55% respectively.

University Expenditures

The chief risk in to the business is the defined-benefit pension program (amounting to a $2B/year payout). The number of retirees receiving payments may have only increased by 13% over the past 5 years, but the amount of payments has increased by 25.6% over the same period. Two years (2008 and 2009) of massive depreciation of the assets in the plan certainly did not help. Over the same period, the income part of the plan investments (interest and dividends) declined by 41% at least partially due to the low-interest rate environment of recent years.

The California state government budget crisis led to some deferred payments to the university system in 2010-2012, amounting to around $500MM each year.

Saving Up for College Tuition and Hedging, Part 4

Are prepaid tuition programs a great investment? One is right to be skeptical. The programs vary considerably from state to state. Bankrate.com has an article about some of the programs. It turns out that one can be paying anything from 41% to a slight discount to current tuition. Two states, Pennsylvania and Texas offer programs which do not ask for a premium as long as you use the tuition vouchers for state schools. In the Texas case, you receive fund performance if you elect to go to a non-state school. Virginia's program appears to be offering tomorrow's tuition at a slight discount even compared to today's tuition rates if one goes to the most expensive state school. Otherwise, you would be paying a premium. For most of the state programs, tuition inflation will have to accelerate considerably for the programs to be worthwhile. Still, though purchasers of prepaid tuition vouchers pay a premium, the states are still on the hook if tuition inflation does get out of hand.

Saving Up for College Tuition and Hedging, Part 3

Ever since the government permitted it, many private colleges have been hopping onto the tuition prepayment plan bandwagon. Unlike the College Board's IC 500 index, tuition prepayment often does not include room and board increases. Colleges including some of the Ivies (e.g., Dartmouth, Penn, Princeton), MIT, Stanford, UChicago, and USC tout the private college prepaid plan. For a complete list of the 270+ private schools using this plan, see the consortium's website (managed by OppenheimerFunds, which also happens to manage many of the state 529 plans). States sponsor their own, but some are portable and can be used to fund tuition at out-of-state private schools or even select foreign ones.

Saving Up for College Tuition and Hedging, Part 2

To answer the question of college tuition hedging, we need to determine the amount of tuition increases and the variability in that change. Generally, higher education revenues come from federal and state aid, alumni giving, endowment returns, and tuition. For research universities, a big chunk comes from research grants. Thus, changes in funding levels for each of these components must be compensated by the others. How have these factors evolved in the past few decades? Can we explain tuition inflation in terms of these other factors?

This is second in my on-going series of posts on college tuition and investment. See the first post.

Saving Up for College Tuition and Hedging, Part 1

One of the biggest expenses for many American families is college tuition. In fact, it is a component of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), though not a very big component. The other overwhelming expenses are transportation (typically cars) and housing. For transportation and housing costs, you can at least partially hedge against further price increases (however imperfectly) by investing in appropriate securities (crude or RBOB futures and Case-Schiller housing futures). According to the December 2011 CPI report, tuition has increased by almost 7-fold since 1984 (the baseline of the CPI). For comparison, tuition increases have dwarfed even growth in hospital services expenses (only 6.5x). The only component of the CPI that grew more was tobacco (8.4x). Thus, not only is tuition a big expense, it is also one of the fastest growing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)'s analysis, the college tuition inflation rate averages about 6.7% annually for the past 10 years (with a low of 4% and a high of 9.8%), even amidst recession. Recession exacerbated the increases as governments cut funding. Now what kind of investment can give an 8% annual return even in the midst of a massive downturn? A tax-sheltered education savings account such as a Coverdell or 529 Plan helps, but even then a steady 8% pre-tax return from index or mutual fund investing is quite challenging. MyMoneyBlog puts everything in perspective, showing that tuition increases dwarf that of the housing bubble.

In this series of posts, I will be looking into the cause of tuition inflation and the different possibilities for dealing with the phenomenon in investment terms.