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Scholars = Dollars
HCC quantifies economic impact on downtown Bridgeport
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Business New Haven
3/4/2002
By: BNH
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BRIDGEPORT - Housatonic Community College is touting the results of an economic study that shows its downtown Bridgeport presence pumps more than $60 million into the regional economy and provides its students with a 27 percent return on their tuition investment.
Using computer-modeling techniques developed by CCBenefits Inc. of Moscow, Id., for the Association of Community College Trustees, Housatonic said it was able to quantify for the first time its economic impact in Fairfield County. Besides its $60 million annual infusion into the regional economy, Housatonic asserts that it saves the state some $1.4 million annually in reduced health care, welfare, unemployment and crime costs; while also giving Connecticut taxpayers a 13-percent return on their investment, which they recovered in 8.6 years.
Said Rab Thornton, dean of outreach services at HCC: “[Public] colleges can't really speak any longer just on enrollment. We have to speak in terms that legislators and business people want to hear. We need to address the question of what does it really mean to have Housatonic in the middle of a downtown area.”
Since the two-year community college relocated to downtown Bridgeport in 1997, enrollment is up 60 percent. For the fall 2001 semester, enrollment climbed to 4,247 full-time students.
In recent years in Connecticut, there has been a burgeoning interest in moving colleges to downtown areas to spur economic revitalization. Capital Community College in Hartford and the University of Connecticut's Waterbury campus will be moving to each city's downtown, while interest has surfaced in moving New Haven's Gateway Community College and Norwich's Three Rivers Community College to the downtown in those cities. Such proposals were based on the hope of economic impact, since little or no hard data was available to measure the impact of such moves.
The model Housatonic used for the study, developed by the Moscow, Id.-based CCBenefits Inc. for the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT), permits colleges to quantify their economic impact on the communities in which they are located and the surrounding region. In the past, community colleges had to rely on data such as enrollment and graduation statistics that only hinted at economic impact.
“It's an approach that takes the guesswork out of gauging economic impact, even in cases where a college is a small contributor to a large, complex economic system,” said Housatonic President Janis M. Hadley. Housatonic is the first downtown community college to use the model to develop an economic impact statement.
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