Public university economic impact reporting

Hi Inder. We agree that you should separate Construction and equipment purchases from operational and student spending because these are reoccurring expenditures, whereas Construction and other Capital Expenditures are usually periodic. The following are just some casual comments and questions about your approach for you to think about. Did you enter the value of payroll as Industry Sales or did you enter is Employee Compensation? Technically because of caveats of this Sector 348, payroll value should be place in compensation. If you had visitor spending, is that students, parents, other? One common criticism of a lot of university impact studies is that they count student spending when that spending would occur in the economy whether the university was there or not. Did you take in consideration locality of students, and whether they might be there regardless of your universities presence? It is also important to be sure that you are double counting purchases like housing costs that are in the dorms, university sporting games, food on campus, books from university book stores (often part of the university's operational values). If you are you examining the impact of Financial Aid, did you split this from college operations you are likely double counting, since financial aid is primary driver of operations. With equipment, likely little or none of equipment is manufactured locally. How did you assign these costs? If you assigned to producing Sectors did you apply Margins and Local Purchase Percentage? Did you zero out the retailer if these were purchases from a wholesaler? If you assigned these to wholesale, it is probably best to see what the Local Purchase Percentage is for the wholesale Sector for your region? It may also not be safe to assume that the wholesalers of equipment are local. You may also want to separate Visitor expenditures from operational expenditures so that you better describe these types of Employment. The Local Purchase Percentage should be set to SAM Model Value for things that are margined, all capital expenditures, and any budgetary purchases. Hopefully these comments will help you in rethinking how you model the results and make adjustments if needed. But overall, your approach looks fine.

HiInder. We agree that you should separate Construction and equipment purchases from operational and student spending because these are reoccurring expenditures, whereas Construction and other Capital Expenditures are usually periodic. The following are just some casual comments and questions about your approach for you to think about. Did you enter the value of payroll as Industry Sales or did you enter is Employee Compensation? Technically because of caveats of this Sector 348, payroll value should be place in compensation. If you had visitor spending, is that students, parents, other? One common criticism of a lot of university impact studies is that they count student spending when that spending would occur in the economy whether the university was there or not. Did you take in consideration locality of students, and whether they might be there regardless of your universities presence? It is also important to be sure that you are double counting purchases like housing costs that are in the dorms, university sporting games, food on campus, books from university book stores (often part of the university's operational values). If you are you examining the impact of Financial Aid, did you split this from college operations you are likely double counting, since financial aid is primary driver of operations. With equipment, likely little or none of equipment is manufactured locally. How did you assign these costs? If you assigned to producing Sectors did you apply Margins and Local Purchase Percentage? Did you zero out the retailer if these were purchases from a wholesaler? If you assigned these to wholesale, it is probably best to see what the Local Purchase Percentage is for the wholesale Sector for your region? It may also not be safe to assume that the wholesalers of equipment are local. You may also want to separate Visitor expenditures from operational expenditures so that you better describe these types of Employment. The Local Purchase Percentage should be set to SAM Model Value for things that are margined, all capital expenditures, and any budgetary purchases. Hopefully these comments will help you in thinking how you model the results and make adjustments if needed. But overall, your approach looks fine.

Thank you, your comments were very helpful. I did not include the visitors' spending because no survey data was available. I am not sure about your comment: "Did you enter the value of payroll as Industry Sales or did you enter is Employee Compensation? Technically because of caveats of this Sector 348, payroll value should be place in compensation." You mean sector 438 (employment and payroll only:state and local govt.edu) instead of 348. Also, I don't quite understand what you mean by " payroll value should be placed in compensation. Would you please elaborate? I thank you in anticipation. Inder

Hi Inder. Yes, you are correct. We meant to say sector 438 (employment and payroll only:state and local govt.edu) instead of 348. As far as payroll is concerned, we just wanted to make sure that you model it in the "Employee Compensation" field. It sounds like you did. We hope this explains these two points.

Hi Inder. Yes, you are correct. We meant to say sector 438 (employment and payroll only:state and local govt.edu) instead of 348. As far as payroll is concerned, we just wanted to make sure that you model it in the "Employee Compensation" field. It sounds like you did. We hope this explains these two points.