Moody's Report on Higher Ed: Nowhere to Turn - Kevin Kiley, Inside Higher Ed

The grass isn't greener on anybody else's quad. Not even Harvard University's. In a report released Wednesday, the ratings agency outlines how every traditional revenue stream for colleges and universities is facing some sort of pressure, a finding Moody's uses as grounds for giving the whole sector a negative outlook. The agency has been pessimistic about much of the sector since its annual outlook in 2009 after the economic downturn began, but Wednesday's report contains a downward shift in how analysts view even market leaders, the elite institutions with high demand and brand recognition. Eva Bogarty, the report’s author. “Most universities will have to lower their cost structures to achieve long-term financial sustainability and to fund future initiatives.” The report's authors and other higher education observers say the individual components of the report come as no surprise and are backed up by a slew of reports in the past year that have called into question the viability of all these revenue sources. But observers note that the breadth of the Moody's report paints a picture likely to capture more attention than the piecemeal analyses. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/17/moodys-report-calls-question-all-traditional-university-revenue-sources