Dive Brief:
- Moody’s Investors Service officially upgraded its outlook for higher education, raising it from the "negative" outlook it has given since January 2013 to a "stable."
- In its announcement, Moody’s said that overall operating revenue growth across the four-year college sector is expected to stabilize and provide a level of predictability that has been absent since 2009.
- While the outlook for the overall higher education landscape is relatively positive, Moody’s specifically pointed to regional public universities and small private colleges as the ones most likely to feel financial stress.
Dive Insight:
When Moody’s assigns a ‘stable’ rating, it does not expect a change for at least the next year. The outlook upgrade is not a surprise, given the generally positive report about the state of higher education finances released by the firm earlier this month. It found that the median public and private colleges were doing well and seeing modest revenue growth, in some cases due to greater state funding or enrollment growth. That report, too, cautioned that certain portions of the higher education sector are not doing well, facing the opposite scenario of revenue declines and enrollment losses.