2010-2011 Enrollment

[zooropa]

Re: 2010-2011 Enrollment

That dollar figure includes the 'multiplier effect' which takes into account the fact that the same dollar can be spent more than once in a single year.

You get paid. You pay taxes. Your taxes pay the salary of a school teacher. The school teacher buys groceries. That money pays the salary of the grocery workers, and so on and so forth.

[filbert]

Re: 2010-2011 Enrollment

That dollar figure includes the 'multiplier effect' which takes into account the fact that the same dollar can be spent more than once in a single year.

You get paid. You pay taxes. Your taxes pay the salary of a school teacher. The school teacher buys groceries. That money pays the salary of the grocery workers, and so on and so forth.

Hate to quibble, but the "multiplier effect" is mythical, representing simply a highly selective application of the concept of opportunity cost.

All the "multiplier effect" represents is a displacement of economic activity from one area (geographic and/or sector of the economy) to another one.

It's a variant of the "broken window" fallacy.

Ask yourself: Where would that dollar have gone, if it had not been taxed?

It's difficult (bordering on impossible) to know for certain. It might have been spent on more groceries. It might have purchased a new pair of shoes for Junior rather than a second-hand pair. It might have been put in the bank (and made available for a loan). It might have been donated to the college. That's what opportunity cost is: all of the other things you could have done with the money other than what you actually did with it.

Therefore it is difficult, bordering on impossible to know what the economic impact is of diverting that dollar from what the taxpayer would otherwise have done with it to what the taxing authority does with it, other than knowing that any alternative economic activity of the taxpayer has been reduced by at least that dollar.

(Sorry for the digression into neo-Austrian (or at least, anti-Keynsian) economics. Play on, all . . .)

[zooropa]

Re: 2010-2011 Enrollment

All the "multiplier effect" represents is a displacement of economic activity from one area (geographic and/or sector of the economy) to another one.

Of course, I wasn't really taking a stand on the validity of the $766M figure. I was explaining the means by which it was derived.

My personal opinion is that these studies are somewhat suspect, not only for the reasons you suggest, but also because the alternate assumption has no plausibility.

We're not talking about the economic impact of opening a new factory that will employ 50 people in a town of 100,000, where you can make reasonable assumptions about what those 50 people mean in terms of civic services and the consumption of goods and services, we're talking about 13,000 students and ~2000 employees in a state of ~850k. It's not a good question and therefore produces an answer that isn't very useful.

[filbert]

Re: 2010-2011 Enrollment

Of course, I wasn't really taking a stand on the validity of the $766M figure. I was explaining the means by which it was derived.

My personal opinion is that these studies are somewhat suspect, not only for the reasons you suggest, but also because the alternate assumption has no plausibility.

We're not talking about the economic impact of opening a new factory that will employ 50 people in a town of 100,000, where you can make reasonable assumptions about what those 50 people mean in terms of civic services and the consumption of goods and services, we're talking about 13,000 students and ~2000 employees in a state of ~850k. It's not a good question and therefore produces an answer that isn't very useful.

Yup. I was just in Pedant Mode when I read it, and had to pedanticize . . .

[zooropa]

Re: 2010-2011 Enrollment

Yup. I was just in Pedant Mode when I read it, and had to pedanticize . . .

Hey. You should learn something new every day. Even if it's mostly unrelated to all the stuff you already know.

[slosho]

Re: 2010-2011 Enrollment

It's not a good question and therefore produces an answer that isn't very useful.

Which is what I found out buy running the #'s, it's the engineer in me.

Assume no conclusions until the data has undergone some math.

[zooropa]

Re: 2010-2011 Enrollment

Which is what I found out buy running the #'s, it's the engineer in me.

Assume no conclusions until the data has undergone some math.

Well, in fairness to the dismal science, the concept of viewing each university employee in terms of economic impact is legitimate (e.g. 50 jobs @ $50k = 50 families @ 2 kids per = 100 kids = 5 teachers and 5 classrooms, etc.)

In that respect saying that a position like a professorship equates to such and such an economic impact over and above his/her salary *is* legitimate, because you can actually measure that and tweak the multiples, etc.

But to apply those formulae to an entire institution kind of stretches them beyond their useful limit.

[Prairiehaas]

Re: 2010-2011 Enrollment

So then, given a full time load of 12 credit hours*, the average number of credit hours per student at each institution is.

SDSU 9.8
USD 8.4
BHSU 5.2
NSU 7.6
SDSMT 7.7
DSU 8.7

*the assumption does not account for the graduate full time load of 9 credit hrs

[JackJD]

Re: 2010-2011 Enrollment

Yup. I was just in Pedant Mode when I read it, and had to pedanticize . . .

Chambers of Commerce do not like people who think like that.

[JimmyJack]

Re: 2010-2011 Enrollment

So then, given a full time load of 12 credit hours*, the average number of credit hours per student at each institution is.

SDSU 9.8
USD 8.4
BHSU 5.2
NSU 7.6
SDSMT 7.7
DSU 8.7

*the assumption does not account for the graduate full time load of 9 credit hrs

Interesting. Also interesting is that you can estimate the total credit hours produced by each university. By that calculation, DSU and NSU added together come out at about half the number produced by SDSU's College of Arts & Sciences. It gives you an idea of what's really happening on these campuses.

[Nidaros]

Re: 2010-2011 Enrollment

The multiplier effect is something I left nearly 50 years ago in Lyman Smythe's classes. Its something, I never encountered in my 40 year working career, but I must admit its something of importance and the arguements and counter arguements are very interesting. For you guys to bring this up really forces one to clear 50 years of cobwebs.

[Prairiehaas]

Re: 2010-2011 Enrollment

Interesting. Also interesting is that you can estimate the total credit hours produced by each university. By that calculation, DSU and NSU added together come out at about half the number produced by SDSU's College of Arts & Sciences. It gives you an idea of what's really happening on these campuses.

Unfortunately I cannot locate it now but, there was a 2008 or 2009 report on the BoR web site that mapped, by county, the percentage of high school grads from each county at each university. SDSU was the only school that pulled a double digit percentage from each coiunty (except Buffalo). And, the only counties where SDSU wasn't pulling the highest percentage of grads were the local counties for each university.