CIC’s second annual Financial Indicators Tool (FIT) was released in April 2008. The FIT is a confidential benchmarking report prepared individually for each CIC member president. Designed to complement CIC’s Key Indicators Tool (KIT), the FIT provides customized comparisons with more than 700 baccalaureate and master’s-level private colleges and universities. Developed by CIC with support from the William Randolph Hearst Foundations, the preparation and distribution of the 2008 report has been sponsored by TIAA-CREF.

The FIT report uses a set of financial performance measures that rely on the Composite Financial Index (CFI), developed for NACUBO by KPMG and Prager, McCarthy and Sealy. Four core ratios of financial health—measuring resource sufficiency, debt management, asset performance, and operating results—along with the fifth composite indicator (the CFI), are presented in a unique comparative format covering the most recent six years. The FIT is the first benchmarking report to apply the CFI methodology to a national group of colleges and universities.

Each CIC institutional member’s FIT report can be downloaded from a secure server using a unique username and password. Previous FIT and KIT reports are also available from the same password-protected website.

The Austen Group prepares CIC’s benchmarking reports at no cost to members. Additional information about the FIT and CIC’s other benchmarking services is available here.