Strategic intelligence for everyone who answers to the Board.
Athena knows your institution, your real peers, and your accreditor’s calendar — and turns all three into a decision you can defend. In the room, not in two weeks.
Your Composite Financial Index stands at 2.14 for FY 2024 — placing you in the 58th percentile of a Statistical Match of ten comparable masters’-large institutions in the Mid-Atlantic.
The trend has steepened since FY22. Holding enrollment flat, I project CFI of 1.82 by FY27 — still above the SACSCOC threshold, but narrowing the buffer your Board…
Your peers are modeling a future you haven’t.
Three roles. Three calendars. The same missing chapter.
You know enrollment will fall. You don’t know by how much, or which programs to defend first.
Your CFI is trending — and you can’t tell if the slope is a warning your accreditor will see first.
The Board wants a five-year plan by Tuesday. Your IR team is still assembling last year’s IPEDS.
The strategic plan, as a living document.
It updates when the market moves. Athena connects your sources, reads the peers, the news, and the regulation, wires the signals into alerts, and drafts the scenarios with you — so the plan is never more than a day behind the field.
Explore. Plan. Act. One workflow, in that order.
For Provost, CFO, and President — compared to whom, before any number. A peer-calibrated scenario, before any narrative. A published deliverable, before any meeting. Seconds, then two hours, then days — the work moves in one direction.
Find the right peers for the question.
Search a peer cohort by the question you’re actually asking — not by a static list. Pivot between five matching methods, read a percentile or a trajectory against cohort median, and pin a peer set to carry into Plan. Seconds, without IT.
- Peer Atlas snapshot · Benchmark sheet
- 5 matching methods · statistical, size, sector, region, Carnegie
- Always-current IPEDS
Project what happens next.
Move sliders on enrollment, tuition, aid, faculty mix, discount rate, and capex. Watch CFI, DSCR, and operating margin bend three to five years out — peer-median anchored. Every scenario arrives with a Board-readable narrative in your institution’s voice and your accreditor’s tone. Two hours, not six weeks.
- Scenario sheet · CFI · DSCR projections
- Board-ready narrative draft attached to every move
- SACSCOC · HLC · NEASC · MSCHE · NWCCU · WSCUC tone
Publish the deliverable you owe.
Compile a pinned scenario set and a pinned peer set into the document your institution actually owes — a Board pack, an accreditation submission, or a strategic plan doc. Every claim cites back to source IPEDS rows. A human signs every output.
- Board pack · PDF + editable source
- Accreditation submission · section drafts per standard
- Strategic plan doc · five-year, peer-calibrated
| INSTITUTION | CARNEGIE | REGION | FTE | CFI | MATCH |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your institution | M2 | MidA | 3,200 | 2.14 | — |
| Allegheny-class A | M2 | MidA | 3,100 | 2.31 | 96% |
| Hamilton-class B | M2 | NE | 3,450 | 1.98 | 93% |
| Skidmore-class C | M2 | NE | 2,980 | 2.45 | 91% |
| Wooster-class D | M2 | GLk | 3,200 | 1.72 | 88% |
| Whitman-class E | M2 | PNW | 3,310 | 2.02 | 86% |
Westfield University’s Composite Financial Index of 0.9 reflects a declining but actively managed financial position. The primary reserve ratio of 0.22 remains above the generally accepted floor of 0.10, indicating that the institution retains operational resilience despite the CFI declining below the 1.0 threshold in FY2024 for the first time since FY2019.
The decline is attributable to a contraction in net tuition revenue (−7.2% in real terms) and increased reliance on draw from unrestricted reserves…
Athena is already at every moment
of your planning year.
Higher education runs on a predictable calendar. So does Athena — ready with the right data at the right moment, before Provost, CFO, or President has to ask.
Your board will ask: “How does our CFI compare to our peers? Are we on the right side of the enrollment cliff?” Athena has the answers before the retreat begins.
What discount rate can we sustain? What does a 5% enrollment drop do to our operating model? Peer benchmarks tell you whether your assumptions are defensible or dangerous.
HLC Criteria 5.A, SACSCOC Standard 13 — financial sustainability sections require ratio trend analysis, peer context, and a management response narrative. Athena generates a complete draft from your IPEDS data.
Program mix decisions, market positioning, revenue diversification — every strategic choice needs peer context. Athena maps where your peers are going so your plan goes somewhere different.
Your CFO’s CFI question needs different peers
than your Provost’s enrollment question.
A single static cohort gives you the wrong answer for every question. Athena rebuilds your peer group from scratch for each analysis — matching the five dimensions that actually matter to that decision.
Best for: financial benchmarking, accreditation prep.
Best for: cost structure benchmarking, staffing ratios, operating expense comparisons.
Best for: tuition pricing, discount rate, financial aid strategy.
Best for: enrollment competition, feeder school benchmarking, demographic exposure.
Best for: academic program comparison, accreditor-expected peer groups, strategic plan benchmarking.
Athena watches more than a dashboard shows.
Athena has read every Composite Financial Index ever filed in IPEDS, every accreditation finance standard, and fifteen years of federal data — and she remembers your institution between conversations. Brief her the way you’d brief a consultant who already knows your file.
Question in. Peer-calibrated board pack out. One workflow, not three vendors.
$20K / yr · vs. $200K+ across 3 vendorsThe cliff is already affecting 40% of U.S. institutions.
High-school graduates in eighteen key states will fall fifteen to twenty-five percent by 2030. Your Provost is rebuilding the program portfolio against it; your CFO is stress-testing tuition revenue around it.
See how your peers are absorbing the shelf — before your Provost has to defend enrollment and your CFO has to defend tuition revenue at the next Board.
Run my free benchmark →Three cadences. One advisor at the center.
Pick your cadence. Chat-only on Atlas. Board-cycle reporting on Advisor. The full Sept–Aug planning cycle on Integrated.
For the Provost or CFO with a first Explore question. Ask Athena anything in seconds, then claim your one free board-ready benchmark in two hours — calibrated against ten matched peers.
- Public IPEDS data
- 10-peer Statistical Match
- One Athena CFI report
- WICHE feeder exposure
For the Provost, CFO, and President working a full board cycle. Explore as a daily habit, unlimited board-ready reports in two hours not two weeks, and scenario sweeps drafted in time for every committee.
- Unlimited Athena queries
- 20+ scenario modules
- Board-ready narrative export
- SACSCOC · HLC · NEASC tone
- All 5 peer methods
For the CSO and IR team owning a full Sept–Aug planning cycle. Everything in Advisor, plus accreditation packages and strategic plans assembled over days — Explore queries running against your own Workday & Banner taps that IR owns and the Board sees.
- Workday & Banner connectors
- Private workspace + SSO
- Quarterly advisory hour
- Custom peer methodology
$20K replaces what most institutions currently spend across three separate vendors and 40 hours of IR staff time.
See full pricing and feature details →See where your institution stands — in two hours.
A paginated PDF on your institution’s composite financial health — drafted by Athena, reviewed by a human, delivered to your inbox. One artifact, one delivery, no recurring cadence.
- PAGES
- Eight to twelve pages, paginated. Long enough to seat the six required sections; short enough that it does not drift into our paid strategic-plan tier.
- SECTIONS
- Cover and executive summary · CFI trend with peer percentile · Component ratios (Primary Reserve, Net Operating Revenues, Return on Net Assets, Net Income) · Peer-cohort detail · Three-year flat-enrollment projection · Methodology and source citations.
- SOURCES
- IPEDS federal surveys, on public record at NCES. No proprietary data, no survey panels, no opinions. Every numeric claim is cited back to a survey row you can open yourself.
- SAMPLE REDACTION
- Your institution’s row is real — name, IPEDS UNITID, ratios, percentile, projection. Peer institutions appear as “Peer A · 3,100 FTE · CFI 2.31”. Cohort medians and percentile math are real; peer identities unlock at the Advisor tier.
- DELIVERED BY
- Athena drafts from your IPEDS submissions; a human reviewer signs off before the PDF leaves our queue. Arrives at the email address you provide, within two hours of submission.
- HOW TO REQUEST
- Fill out the form below — institution name, IPEDS Unit ID (optional, speeds matching), email, role. No sales call. No card. One report per institution.
No spam. No sales call required. Benchmark data sourced from IPEDS federal surveys.
Three roles. Three artifacts.
One peer-anchored answer each.
And three more chiefs whose planning hinges on the same intelligence.