Estimated Profit: A Look at the Excess Revenues of Private Four-Year Nonprofit Postsecondary Institutions

In this study, we use institution-level data for the period 2004 to 2016 from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System to examine the excess revenues of private, four-year nonprofit institutions. We present data on the magnitude of excess revenues for these institutions over this period, examine how excess revenues are associated with different types of private institutions, and how within-institution excess revenues are affected by changes in time-varying factors, such as their size, selectivity, revenue structure, and expense distribution. We find that across most years in our sample, private, four-year nonprofits averaged double-digit excess returns. The results show that variations over time in excess revenues are related to a number of factors, including institution size, yield rates, net tuition revenue, and tuition discount rates.