I think that I repress the fact that most/all colleges and universities are corporations, maybe because I think a school is something different from a business, the recent move to "student as customer" model notwithstanding. So it came as a bit of a surprise to me to learn that the financial ratings company Moody's rates the financial credit worthiness of colleges. This came to my attention because of an article on the Wall Street Journal website that was based on a Moody's report on the wealth of colleges. Yes, Virginia, there are rich colleges and poor colleges and, just like the case with real people, the rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting poorer. The WSJ article by Melissa Korn can be accessed here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/for-u-s-universities-the-rich-get-richer-faster-1429156904
Quoting from the article: | The 10 richest institutions held nearly one-third of total |cash and investments at four-year schools in fiscal 2014, |while the top 40 accounted for two-thirds. ... | |Schools on Moody's top-40 list saw assets grow by 50% |between fiscal 2009 and fiscal 2014, significantly outperforming |other schools with strong credit ratings but smaller asset bases. | |Moody's rates the debt of more than 500 public and private |schools, which enroll about 80% of all four-year students. NOTE: The wealth of a college is determined by its endowment and other assets. The article allows one to see the Top 40 (Harvard is #1) as well as top 100.(I believe NYU is #19 and here I thought NYU was going through economic rough times). I keep forgetting that colleges put out bonds for construction and other things and their creditworthiness has to be evaluated like any other business. I tried to find the original report on the Moody's website but was unable to do so. I did find, however, reports of the credit scores for various colleges. I guess that makes us all businesspersons or workers (depending upon whether we're management of not). By the way, public universities are also on the list, with the University of Texas system, Florida State University system, and University of Virginia being the richest (none in the top 10). So, how's business where you are? ;-) -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=44034 or send a blank email to leave-44034-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
