The pandemic’s damage to colleges’ revenue streams was sizable and quantifiable: nearly $13 billion in 2021, according to annual reports filed with the Department of Education. The Chronicle analyzed the documents to learn more about the losses higher education — and individual institutions — sustained.
How colleges spent billions in federal relief.
The data outlines a sometimes-murky picture of the pandemic-driven revenue holes that higher ed plugged with federal aid. Some categories of revenue loss overlapped, and the self-reported claims may have been larger than the actual losses that the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, or Heerf, helped colleges to recover.
Overall, about eight in 10 colleges used money from Heerf to replace lost revenue. Of the roughly 2,400 public and private colleges that did so, public doctoral institutions reported the largest share of lost revenue replaced. Their $4.8-billion total made up 37 percent of the claimed losses.
Colleges could claim lost revenue in two broad categories: academic sources and auxiliary services. In the Heerf reports that colleges filed, room and board was included among academic sources of revenue. In our analysis, however, we broke out lost revenue from room and board as its own category. Lost revenue from academic sources — which includes tuition and fees, enrollment declines, and supported research — was nearly double that of any other source.
The relative share of lost revenue among the three broad categories — academic sources, auxiliary services, and room and board — varied widely by institution type. For example, room and board made up less than 10 percent of the lost revenue claimed by two-year public and private colleges and by public institutions that primarily award associate degrees. But for private baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral institutions — which predominantly operate residence halls and offer dining services to students — the financial hit from room and board accounted for nearly 50 percent of their losses. For public baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral institutions, declines in revenue from room and board made up 32 percent of the losses they claimed.
Lost revenue from auxiliary services — such as canceled events, bookstore operations, and parking — was highest at public institutions. They spent $2.8 billion replacing auxiliary-services revenue, or nearly 30 percent of their 2021 total. Private institutions overall spent 7.6 percent of their funds replacing revenue from auxiliary services.
Some interrupted revenue streams weren’t eligible to be declared as losses — like contributions from donors, investment income, and revenue linked to marketing or recruitment activities.
Among the institutions that claimed the biggest losses in certain categories, nearly all were public. For example, San Diego State University reported $36 million in lost revenue under academic sources — some of that money was used to “cover the decrease in state funding which supports the core academic environment,” a spokesperson said. The university also used Heerf money to offset a decline in the enrollment of out-of-state students.
Of the 10 biggest losses claimed by institutions under “academic sources,” five attributed their entire revenue loss to enrollment decline: Ohio State and St. John’s Universities, as well as the Universities of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Central Oklahoma, and Kentucky.
Other forms of revenue loss that were categorized under “academic sources” included money colleges would have earned from summer terms, supported research, and facilities use.
The largest institutional losses in each of these broad categories is as follows.
Methodology
The Chronicle analyzed Heerf filings for public and private non-profit degree-granting institutions. For-profit and non-degree-granting colleges are omitted from our analysis. Lost revenue declarations were made by the institution for any lost revenue they were able to replace with Heerf funds. Lost revenue included general categories like academic sources, auxiliary services, and other operating as well as specific categories, like enrollment declines and parking. Room and board is described in the documentation as an academic source of revenue, while dorm services and disruption to food services were listed as auxiliary services, but we’ve grouped them together for our analysis.
