College Financial Risk Reports

One-page financial viability summaries for mostly private colleges your clients may be considering. Built from public data, updated as new information appears, and written for counselors who advise families.

Small private colleges are under real financial pressure, and a family choosing one deserves to know what the public record shows. These reports pull that record together in one page per institution: IRS filings, audited financial statements, federal financial responsibility scores, IPEDS data, bond disclosures, accreditor actions, court rulings, and news coverage, screened through a consistent rubric and summarized in plain language. They are a starting point for your own due diligence, not a prediction that any school will close, and not financial advice.

Subscriptions are $100 per person per year, with per-person discounts for firms. Your subscription also supports my desire to have a pro bono only practice: career and college counseling for families who could not otherwise afford it.

What a report contains

Each report is one page, and every report follows the same layout. A header line gives the identifiers (IPEDS, OPE, EIN), the institution type, and the date the screen was run. A box headed What this means for a student summarizes the situation in plain language and says what a family should ask before depositing. A table then works through the signals: institution profile, Heightened Cash Monitoring status, the Kelchen ten-year trend, the Forbes grade, the federal FRCS score, the Risk Level from our rubric with a confidence rating, and what changed since the prior screen. Key Concerns and Mitigating Factors follow, each point tied to its public source and date, and a closing Verify First section lists the open questions the screen could not settle. Every page carries a watermark with the subscriber's email address.