Covering a College or Its President? Here Are a Few Useful Tips From the Wall Street Journal's John Hechinger

Covering a College or Its President? Here Are a Few Useful Tips From the Wall Street Journal's John Hechinger

SEC FILINGS: For stories aboutcollege presidents who serve on corporate boards—or any articles involving companies and colleges—Securities and Exchange Commission filings are a gold mine. Use the Edgar database for free online searches for information on presidents, administrators and professors at http://www.sec.gov/.

You can also use a commercial service such as www.10kwizard.com/.

For presidents who are corporate directors, read the corporation's annual proxy statement, which details directors' fees, stock awards and stock options, also available on the Edgar database or on 10Kwizard.com.

Then, look for insider filings that show how much presidents have earned by selling stock. For presidents with multiple stock sales, download information onto Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. For other officials, do searches to see if they own stock or sit on boards of companies with business relationships at the college.

SEC filings are especially helpful because they are always instantly available electronically on Edgar or the commercial service. Yet, amazing nuggets can lie hidden for years because there are so many of them. In the student loan scandal, for example, financial aid officers and an official with the U.S. Department of Education owned stock in a student loan provider. That fact came out after their holdings came to the attention of New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. But the filings had been there online for years.

990 IRS TAX FORMS:Along with information about the compensation of college presidents, 990 tax filings can list compensation of other highly paid officers and employees. The forms also list the amount of money paid to the school's top contractors. Is there any relationship between contractors and university officials?Ask for 990s directly from the university—they are required to give them to the public--or check them out online at http://www.guidestar.org/.

LAND RECORDS: Universities are in the middle of a building boom. You can find great stories by examining land records of major building projects that are readily available ingovernment real estate offices. How much do projects really cost? Who is doing the work? How are contractors being selected? Is that work being done by companies connected to trustees or friends of the president?

BOND PROSPECTUSES:When universities borrow money to issue bonds, the prospectuses for these offerings can be tremendously revealing.Compare what colleges say about fund-raising, the average SAT scores of incoming freshmenand other statistics with what they are telling the public.Colleges also have to tell investors about any pending lawsuits or government investigations—problems they may never have discussed before. One place to find such records is www.moodys.com. It's free to sign up, and you can look up the bond rating of any university or college you cover - along with what may be reams of accompanying data and narrative.

CIVIL COURT RECORDS:Checkfor lawsuits involving a university and itsofficers, trustees and professors. Make sure to track them over time for detailed disclosures and evidence that canprovide a window into the way the institution works.

John Hechinger spoke at the Hechinger Institute's annual seminar for higher education reporters in New York City in November, at a session entitled: "Pay, Perks and Performance: The New College President." Hechinger is the son of Fred Hechinger, a former New York Times editor and Teachers College trustee for whom the Hechinger Institute is named. He has written widely about education, including a story that examined outside income earned by Stanford University President John Hennessy that can be found at http://www.signallake.com/innovation/Hennessy022407.pdf