What we can show you, and what we can prove.

What each institution is judged on

Every kind of educational institution is judged on one metric that moves real money, and the metric differs by sector more than most retention pitches account for.

August 2026

What a lost student costs depends on whether the seat can be refilled

A departure removes about $5,300 of tuition at a community college and about $224,000 at a private medical school, and the difference is how many years the empty seat repeats the loss.

August 2026

Every college buys its class twice

The recruiting budget is the smaller of the two payments an institution makes to enroll each student; the larger payment is set one award letter at a time each spring, and it never appears in anyone's acquisition math.

August 2026

The new federal loan caps go by catalogue code, and the gap lands on the scholarship budget

On July 1, 2026, Grad PLUS ended and fixed borrowing caps took its place.

August 2026

Universities now pay for a quarter of their own research

American universities spent $30.2 billion of their own money on research in fiscal 2024, and $7.07 billion of it was overhead they had earned under negotiated federal rates and never collected.

August 2026

Online students expect an answer within three hours, and one program in four sends one

48% of online students expect a response within three hours of submitting an inquiry, and 25% of online programs report delivering one; both figures come from paired 2024 surveys by the enrollment research firm Ruffalo Noel Levitz.

August 2026

The same empty seat hits a Texas budget this year and a California budget in full three years later

California and Texas both fund school districts on attendance, but Texas reprices the money every six weeks while California pays on the highest of three years, so only one of the two superintendents can see the loss in this year's budget.

August 2026

In Ohio, the median balance keeping a stopped-out adult from re-enrolling was $735

Eight Ohio institutions cleared old student balances, and the new tuition that followed was about 21 times what they would ever have collected.

August 2026

A postcard that goes to families beats a portal that waits for them

In a randomized trial published by the Institute of Education Sciences, a single $0.22 postcard cut student absences by about 2.4 percent (2017).

August 2026

The federal grant works out to eighty dollars a student, and the state money follows the federal paperwork

Money under the Carl D.

August 2026

Two colleges can charge a family the same price and run on completely different money

For a family earning $30,000 and under, a private historically Black college (HBCU) and a private college outside the sector land on nearly the same net price, which is the amount the family actually pays after grants and scholarships.

August 2026

The same online institution can pay $8,800 or $48,800 a year for the same programs, depending on its home state

SARA, the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement, lets a college enroll online students across state lines under one membership instead of separate approvals from every state.

August 2026

Every intervention that reduced summer melt could answer a student back

Between 8 and 40 percent of admitted students who intend to enroll never start, and the rate climbs as family income falls.

August 2026

Where the IT dollar goes

Central IT, the technology department the whole institution shares, costs reporting institutions a median of $1,601 per full-time-equivalent student.

August 2026

The database grew faster than the donor file

Alumni giving participation fell from 12.4 percent to 8.3 percent between 2005 and 2014, the last year its publisher reported a national rate.

August 2026

The full price of a graduate has never been published

Every component of what a student costs, from first contact to diploma, appears in some published study.

August 2026

Nobody keeps a national count of the students lost before census day

The enrollment count that state funding follows is taken on the census date, a day set a few weeks into the term when each college certifies who is enrolled.

August 2026

Every recommended caseload in education is public, and every measured caseload sits far above it

School counselors carry 376 students against a recommended 250, and school social workers carry 2,106 against the same recommended 250.

August 2026

The only published count of what happens after a student is flagged comes from the company that sells the flags

An early-alert system is campus software that lets an instructor, or an algorithm watching grades, flag a struggling student so an adviser can reach out.

August 2026

Reaching out first costs more per student and less per degree

In randomized trials, the programs that put a person on each student, an adviser, a coach, or a tax professional, kept more students enrolled and nearly doubled graduation.

August 2026

One major gift officer works about forty prospects a year

The published evidence converges on roughly forty prospects that one major gift officer actually works in a year, against assigned lists of 75 to 150 names.

August 2026