The Trump administration spent much of 2025 threatening the higher education sector. And few schools had it worse than Columbia University.
The university was investigated for civil rights violations, had hundreds of millions of dollars of grants threatened, and had its accreditation threatened.
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Columbia is now in the midst of going to the market with $487 million of bonds, hoping that investors will buy its comeback.
Columbia is issuing the deal in two series across two weeks.
The first series, $200 million of taxables, priced on Wednesday.
The taxable series, issued under the university's name, is set to mature in 2031 and 2033.
Goldman Sachs was the sole bookrunner for the taxable series, with BofA Securities and J.P. Morgan as co-senior managing underwriters.
The second series, $286.89 million of tax-exempt revenue bonds, is set to price this week. It will be issued through the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York.
The tax-exempts will mature from 2027 to 2046. This series will fund various capital projects, refund certain outstanding tax-exempt commercial paper notes, and refund all or a portion of two series from 2016.
BofA Securities is the senior manager for the second series, with Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan as co-senior managing underwriters; Ramirez & Co and TD Financial products are co-managing underwriters.
The Yuba Group is the municipal advisor for both series. Columbia is rated AAA by S&P Global Ratings and Aaa by Moody's Ratings, but Moody's lowered its outlook on the university to negative ahead of the deal.
Pat Luby, head of municipal strategy at CreditSights, said he expects Columbia to have no difficulty placing the taxable series of the deal.
"When a deal comes, particularly a deal like this that is a recognizable name, a lot of investors will want to add a non-corporate credit risk into their portfolio. It's a great way to diversify credit risk in those portfolios," Luby said.
The university's conflict with the federal government did not dissuade students from applying, and Luby said that now that the case is settled, investors may feel able to look past the incident.
"There's less uncertainty," Luby said. "I think that was a lot of the source of the turmoil, was the uncertainty of how, is this going to unfold?"
Although Columbia's revenue increased 2.1% in fiscal 2025, expenses increased 5.3%, the university
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That change, along with the risk of continued federal actions, drove the negative outlook Moody's assigned May 1.
"The revision in the outlook to negative from stable reflects the potential for a softening operating performance," Moody's analysts wrote in their rating report. They also highlighted "the university's comparatively lower wealth and liquidity relative to expenses as compared to other Aaa private universities."
In 2025, the university's total cash and investments compared to operating expenses was 2.7x, according to Moody's. The agency's median Aaa-rated private university has a ratio of 10.7x.
S&P analyst Stephanie Wang acknowledged "there has been a little bit of compression" in Columbia's finances. But in S&P's view, the university's 2025 performance demonstrated resilience. It assigns a stable outlook to Columbia's AAA rating.
"Even despite additional expenses that they had to pay to seek out, additional legal fees and additional expertise to address some of the government inquiries, they were still able to manage expenses and post the surplus," Wang said.
In some aspects, the university skated by last year's challenges unscathed.
The university reported in its investor presentation for the deal that it received 61,031 applications for its fall 2026 entering class, up from about 59,000 the year before, and offering admission to 2,581, a 4.2% acceptance rate.
Its total revenue from government grants was $1.3 billion in the year ending June 30, 2025 — just a $16 million drop from the prior year.
Annual tuition at Columbia is $70,000, with room, board and fees bringing the figure to $92,000, Luby noted.
"And you look at the volume of applications, it tells you how strong the perception of the Columbia brand is," Luby said.
The higher education sector remains "in tremendous flux," Luby said. Many of the problems the Trump administration created for universities last year remain unresolved. The administration's pressure on higher education is poised to continue, Luby said, although the pace seems to have slowed.
"[Columbia] and all the other schools have had plenty of time to be thinking about it, considering what are the appropriate steps to take," Luby said. "That is probably why we're seeing $200 million of corporate issuance."
Columbia remains exposed to some of the sector-wide
Trump administration policies to reduce the number of international students and
The university is working with private lenders to help its graduate students secure financing, Wang said.
The school also plans to expand its undergraduate population, Wang said, to help with headwinds on the graduate side and lean into what university leadership considers a strength of the institution.
University leadership has been working to diversify its research funding to reduce its reliance on the federal government, Wang said, although the private portion of its research revenue is still small.
Columbia feels it's still well-positioned to receive federal research grants going forward, Wang said, although the total amount of grants will likely decline for all universities.
"Generally, the research that they do is still in areas that the government wants to provide funding for," Wang said.
The optimistic view, Wang said, is that after settling with the Trump administration, Columbia is at lower risk of future federal threats.
"Hopefully the worst is behind them," Wang said.
Luby said Columbia's high profile means it will continue to be a target of the Trump administration. But, considering its strength relative to other universities, and the existential pressures on the sector, he said the school's future still looks strong.
"It's hard to imagine that Columbia University won't get through all of the demographic challenges over the next 10 years," Luby said, "as one of the top schools still in the market."
