COLLEGEMAP — College Market Investment Screen

What's Live

All figures sourced from public government data or explicit NULL — no fabrication.

What COLLEGEMAP Is

COLLEGEMAP is a companion to MILBASE. Where MILBASE uses BAH — a DoD-published housing allowance — as a mechanical rent-floor signal near military bases, COLLEGEMAP uses enrollment as the demand-durability signal near universities. Large, stable enrollment drives persistent rental demand in college towns independent of the broader housing cycle.

The enrollment thesis

A college with large, stable enrollment creates a structural rental demand floor analogous (not identical) to BAH near a base:

• Demand durability: ~6,000 colleges enroll students every fall; enrollment demand is relatively inelastic to local economic cycles in ways that private-sector employment demand is not.
• Endowment as stability: institutions with large endowments per student are less likely to downsize rapidly — a proxy for demand persistence. The enrollment-shock analog to BRAC is rapid enrollment decline or campus closure.
• Price-to-rent screen: college towns vary widely in how expensive local housing is relative to achievable rent. The screen surfaces markets where demand is durable and prices are reasonable.
• Risk flag: the college-dependence ratio (enrollment ÷ town population) is the base-monoculture analog — a town where students dominate population is exposed to enrollment shocks exactly as a base-town is to BRAC. Flag it; do not hide it.

Key difference from MILBASE

BAH is a published dollar rate that directly sets a housing budget. Enrollment is a headcount, not a dollar amount — the rent-floor analogy is structural (demand durability), not mechanical (a set payment per occupant). The yield calculation differs: COLLEGEMAP compares market rent vs. local home values, with enrollment and endowment as stability weights, not as a direct yield input. No enrollment-to-rent conversion is fabricated.

Institution breakdown (live data)

6,253 Title IV-eligible institutions as of IPEDS 2022:

• By control: 2,016 public · 1,855 private non-profit · 2,352 private for-profit · 30 unknown
• By level: 2,866 four-year+ · 1,753 two-year · 1,604 less-than-two-year · 30 unknown
• All 6,253 plotted on the map. Dot color = control type. Dot size = fixed until enrollment lands (Y-COLLEGE.enrich).

How the Screen Will Work

When enrollment + endowment data is available, COLLEGEMAP will rank institutions using logic that mirrors MILBASE's scoring model:

• Demand score: normalized enrollment size × enrollment stability (YoY trend). Large + stable = highest demand signal. NULL where enrollment absent — never fabricated.
• Endowment gate: institutions below a minimum per-student endowment threshold are flagged as higher-risk. This is a multiplicative risk gate (same pattern as MILBASE's closure-risk multiplier), not an additive term.
• Yield screen: market rent / local home value for surrounding feeder towns — same price-to-rent logic as MILBASE. NULL where RE data absent.
• Composite rank: demand × yield × stability, with the endowment gate as multiplicative risk. Score shown with coverage% — sparse-data colleges return "insufficient data," not a guessed rank.

Views: College Explorer (sortable by rank / enrollment / endowment) · Map (all 6,253 plotted now; dot size = enrollment when available) · All-Colleges scatter (enrollment vs. price-to-rent; endowment vs. yield, etc.).

Honest Caveats

Enrollment ≠ BAH

The rent-floor analogy between enrollment and BAH is structural, not mechanical. BAH is a published dollar rate that directly sets a housing budget. Enrollment is a headcount that creates demand — but the translation to rental pricing depends on campus housing policies, off-campus inventory, and local economics in ways BAH does not. The screen uses enrollment as a demand signal, not a rent guarantee.

For-profit risk

For-profit institutions have materially different risk profiles than public or non-profit colleges. Several large for-profits have closed rapidly (Corinthian Colleges, ITT Technical Institute). The screen flags control type and applies a higher risk multiplier to for-profits — 2,352 of the 6,253 institutions in the current data are for-profit. Do not treat enrollment at a for-profit as the same signal as at a public flagship.

Endowment data lag

NACUBO endowment data is published annually with a 6–12 month lag. Endowment values can move rapidly (market-driven). The screen uses endowment as a slow-moving stability indicator, not a current-value precision metric. Source date stamped with every value.

No backtest (same as MILBASE)

The thesis that high-enrollment, low-price-to-rent college markets outperform is designed but unvalidated. No return claims are made until a pre-registered backtest runs. The screen is a discovery tool, not a return forecast. Any score is a transparent model on partial public data — not a prediction.

Research & Spec Docs

Pink-lane specifications driving the build. Pre-rendered from source docs — no CDN, no fetching.

Data & Coverage

Current live data as of 2026-05-17. All sourced or explicit NULL — no fabricated values.

See Also: MILBASE

MILBASE is the military-installation analog — same architecture, BAH as the rent-floor signal, 459 active US military installations, 2013–2026 data, live scoring. The pattern COLLEGEMAP is built on.