Lake Forest Graduate School of Management

Private nonprofitSpecial Focus: EngineeringGraduate/Professional

Fin. Resilience

Resilience score

vs. 13 peers in its group

Lake Forest Graduate School of Management is a private nonprofit institution in Lake Forest, IL, classified by Carnegie as “Special Focus: Engineering.”

It is benchmarked here against 13 peer institutions (Special Focus: Engineering · Private nonprofit).

On Ibex's Financial Resilience score it rates 70 out of 100 within that peer group, a transparent composite of endowment per undergraduate, net tuition revenue per student, and instructional spend per student.

Its strongest standing relative to peers is net tuition revenue / fte ($19,356, 77th percentile).

Its weakest is field-demand outlook (10-yr) (+2%).

Peer group

Special Focus: Engineering · Private nonprofit

13 institutions

No cross-metric risk flags triggered.

Policy & demographic exposure

How exposed Lake Forest Graduate School of Management is to the structural shifts reshaping higher ed: a composite structural-risk index plus the 2025 federal budget law’s endowment excise tax and Grad PLUS elimination and the demographic enrollment cliff. Only signals that apply to this institution are shown.

Structural risk index

Elevated

Enrollment cliff (home state)

-31.5%

Severe decline

Indicative signals, not forecasts — see each metric’s definition and the methodology. Endowment-tax and Grad PLUS figures appear only where the institution is actually exposed; “nationally” compares against all schools that report each signal.

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Financial Health Index

1.4

on a −4 to 10 scale

Financial Health IndexWatch

NACUBO Composite Financial Index — the balance-sheet health score accreditors and institutional boards use to gauge financial health; bond-rating agencies track similar ratios. 25th percentile of 13 peers. Carries little or no plant debt, so the viability ratio is excluded and weights re-normalized.

Primary reserve 55%9 mo

Return on net assets 30%-7.2%

Operating result 15%-12.8%

Composite of four ratios on a strength-factor scale (−4 weak → 10 strong): below 3 falls short of the threshold for financial health, below 1 signals acute stress, and above 6 is strong. Computed from IPEDS FY2022-23, the most recent finance release (it lags the current year by 2–3 years). Branch campuses that report finances at a parent/system level can show distorted ratios. For informational benchmarking, not a credit rating or financial advice.

Revenue composition

Where the money comes from $7.7M total revenue · IPEDS FY2022-23

Other revenue is the largest single source at 48% of revenue.

Other revenue47.8%

Tuition & fees37.4%

Private gifts & grants8.7%

Investment return6.1%

Where each dollar of revenue comes from, as a share of total positive revenue. Sources are standardized across public (GASB) and private (FASB) reporting; a net investment loss in a down market is shown as 0% and excluded from the mix.

Financial Health

Net tuition revenue / FTE

Strong

$19,356

77th percentile in peer grouppeer median $14,579

Instructional spend / FTE

Average

$6,629

62nd percentile in peer grouppeer median $5,946

Endowment (end of year)

Below peers

$500,497

14th percentile in peer grouppeer median $20.6M

Avg monthly faculty salary

Strong

$9,927

69th percentile in peer grouppeer median $8,840

Average monthly salary of full-time faculty, as reported to IPEDS.

Operating margin

Deficit

-14.4%

23rd percentile in peer grouppeer median -0.3%

Net surplus as a share of total revenue (IPEDS FY2022-23): (total revenues − total expenses) ÷ total revenues. A surplus above 4% is strong; a thin surplus near 0% leaves little margin for shocks.

Tuition dependency

37.4%

23rd percentile in peer grouppeer median 49.6%

Tuition & fees as a share of total revenue (IPEDS FY2022-23). Higher = more exposed to enrollment swings.

Tuition discount rate

Moderate

13.4%

46th percentile in peer grouppeer median 24.7%

Institutional grant aid as a share of gross tuition & fee revenue (IPEDS FY2022-23, FASB): allowances applied to tuition ÷ (net tuition revenue + those allowances) — the tuition-discount rate enrollment leaders track, i.e. the share of sticker tuition handed back as institutional aid. Private nonprofit institutions only; public (GASB) institutions report tuition differently and are not shown. The national private-college average is roughly 56% (NACUBO); above ~60% signals heavy price competition.

State appropriations share

100th percentile in peer grouppeer median 0%

State appropriations as a share of total revenue (IPEDS FY2022-23). Material for public institutions; ~0 for private.

Administrative cost share

27.5%

38th percentile in peer grouppeer median 30.1%

Institutional support — central administration, executive management, governance, general administration, fundraising and (under FASB rules) operation & maintenance of plant — as a share of total expenses (IPEDS FY2022-23, FASB). Private nonprofit institutions only: public (GASB) institutions report functional expenses on a different basis and frequently consolidate large hospital and auxiliary operations, which makes a comparable ratio unreliable, so they are not shown. Because FASB folds plant operations into institutional support, this runs higher than a narrow 'central-office' figure, and schools with sizable hospital or auxiliary operations show a lower ratio as those costs enlarge total expenses. An informational benchmark of administrative intensity, compared within the peer group — not a measure of waste or quality.

Months of operating cushion

Strong

9 mo

50th percentile in peer grouppeer median 10.2 mo

How many months of operating expenses the institution could cover from expendable reserves (IPEDS FY2022-23 primary reserve ratio × 12). About 5 months — one semester — is the accreditor benchmark for solid footing; below ~3 months is thin. A negative figure means expendable reserves are themselves negative.

Return on net assets

Weak

-7.2%

25th percentile in peer grouppeer median 0.2%

Change in total net assets ÷ net assets (IPEDS FY2022-23) — whether the institution grew wealthier over the year. 2–4% is adequate; above 4% is strong.

Endowment per FTE student

$3,071

— percentile in peer group

End-of-year endowment ÷ 12-month FTE enrollment — endowment wealth per full-time-equivalent student. The FTE-correct companion to endowment-per-undergraduate; FTE counts graduate and part-time load, so research universities look less wealthy on this basis than on a headcount basis.

Structural risk index

Elevated

— percentile in peer group

An indicative 0–100 structural-risk index (higher = more pressure), an equal-weight blend of the stress signals we measure: thin or negative operating margin, low months of operating cushion, high tuition dependency, and a shrinking home-state high-school-graduate pipeline (enrollment cliff). Averaged over whichever signals are available (at least two required). It screens for the financial and demographic pressures that precede closures and mergers — a directional indicator, NOT a prediction that any institution will close, and not a credit rating.

Enrollment & Pipeline

Program concentration (HHI)

Highly concentrated

10,000

— percentile in peer group

How concentrated the institution's degree and certificate output is across academic fields (CIP 2-digit families), as a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index on the latest year's completions: 10,000 means every completion is in one field; lower means output is spread across many. A higher value means the school leans on fewer fields and is more exposed to demand shifts in them; a lower value reflects a broad program portfolio. Shown for institutions reporting at least 100 annual completions. A structural-diversification signal, not a measure of quality.

12-month FTE enrollment

163

31st percentile in peer grouppeer median 446

Full-time-equivalent enrollment over the full 12-month year (IPEDS 12-month enrollment, 2022-23). Counts part-time students at their fractional load, so it runs above fall full-time headcount and is the denominator used for per-student finance measures.

Enrollment cliff (home state)

Severe decline

-31.5%

— percentile in peer group

Projected change in the number of high-school graduates in the institution's HOME STATE from the class of 2025 (the national peak) to 2041, per WICHE's Knocking at the College Door, 11th Edition (Dec 2024). The 'enrollment cliff' is the post-2008 birth decline reaching college age; the U.S. total is projected to fall about 13% over this window. A college recruits from many states, so its home-state projection is an indicative directional signal of feeder-market pressure, not a forecast of that institution's own enrollment.

Student Outcomes & Risk

3-yr cohort default rate

Strong

27th percentile in peer grouppeer median 2.1%

Share of borrowers who defaulted within three years of entering repayment (U.S. Dept. of Education official cohort default rate). Shown for the FY2017 borrower cohort — the most recent cohort whose full three-year default window closed before the 2020-23 federal student-loan payment pause. More recent cohorts are reported by the College Scorecard at essentially 0%, but that reflects the payment pause (no payments were due, so almost no one could default), not borrower health, so the pre-pause cohort is the last meaningful reading. Lower is better.

Full-time faculty share

Below peers

1.6%

10th percentile in peer grouppeer median 19.7%

Field-demand outlook (10-yr)

Below job-market average

+2%

2nd percentile in peer group

Projected 10-year (2024-34) change in U.S. employment for the occupations this institution's degrees and certificates feed, blended across its program mix. Built by mapping each CIP 2-digit field to its occupations via the NCES CIP-SOC crosswalk, taking the employment-weighted average of each occupation's BLS-projected percent change, then weighting fields by the institution's latest-year completions. The U.S. all-occupations benchmark is 3.1%, so a higher value means the school's graduates concentrate in faster-growing labor markets. An INDICATIVE field-level signal at broad-field granularity — not a program-specific or graduate-specific projection, and not a placement or earnings guarantee. Structurally diffuse CIP families whose crosswalk maps to 'any job' are excluded from the signal: 05 Area/Ethnic/Gender Studies, 24 Liberal Arts & Humanities, and 30 Multi/Interdisciplinary. Shown where at least 50% of completions fall in fields with a coherent occupational mapping and the school reports 100+ annual completions.

Top fields of study (all levels)

Lake Forest Graduate School of Management’s largest fields by completions, with graduate earnings (4 years out) and debt benchmarked against the same field at its peer group. Sparklines show the 8-year completions trend.

Field	Completions / yr	Median earnings, 4 yrs out	Median debt	Earnings premium	Risk score
Business, Management & Marketing	127	$157,852 83th pct · 6 peers	—	Above benchmark +130%	Moderate · 50
Business, Management & Marketing	25	—	—	—	—

All 1 top fields shown clear the IL state earnings-premium benchmark (indicative).

Earnings-premium status is an indicative estimate: median graduate earnings four years out vs the IL state median earnings of a high-school graduate (undergraduate credentials) or a bachelor’s-degree holder (graduate credentials) from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (2022 ACS 5-year). The official U.S. Department of Education determination uses its own cohort definition and may differ.

The risk score (0–100) is an indicative blend of earnings-premium margin and the five-year completions trend—higher means a field pays closer to (or below) the benchmark and is shrinking. A directional screen, not an official determination.

See the interactive dashboard for all fields and credential levels (associate through doctoral). Source: College Scorecard Field of Study.

Frequently asked

How financially healthy is Lake Forest Graduate School of Management?

On the NACUBO Composite Financial Index — the −4 to 10 balance-sheet score accreditors and institutional boards use — Lake Forest Graduate School of Management scores 1.4 (Watch), computed from its IPEDS FY2022-23 finances. This is informational benchmarking, not a credit rating.

Are Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's programs at risk under the federal earnings-premium test?

Indicatively, at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, the single largest field with available earnings data clears the IL state earnings-premium benchmark used by the 2025 federal test (effective July 1, 2026) — median graduate earnings (four years out) exceed those of a typical worker without the credential. This is an estimate using College Scorecard earnings vs ACS medians; the official Department of Education determination may differ.

Which schools are Lake Forest Graduate School of Management's peers?

Lake Forest Graduate School of Management is benchmarked against 13 institutions in the Special Focus: Engineering · Private nonprofit peer group; all percentiles and medians on this page are computed within that group.

Compare with peers

California Institute of Advanced Management Williamson Christian College Pacific States University Claremont Lincoln University Oak Valley College Lincoln University

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Source: U.S. Department of Education — College Scorecard & IPEDS (most recent releases), with the U.S. Census Bureau (ACS), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Employment Projections, field-demand outlook) and WICHE (enrollment-cliff projections). Figures lag the current academic year by roughly two to three years. Percentiles and medians are computed within the institution's peer group. Financial Resilience is a transparent composite — see each component above. Compiled by Ibex Insights.