Posted: Friday, July 23
By Staff Reports
The draft of a major study showing the economic impact of the state’s public universities on South Dakota’s economy reveals that South Dakota State University generates a staggering quarter-billion-dollars in economic activity each year.
SDSU and the other state universities, said President David Chicoine, represent “the most valued asset the state has to create a prosperous future.”
Chicoine, himself an economist, said the university’s annual economic impact has been calculated at $256.6 million.
Janelle Toman, director of Information and Institutional Research for the South Dakota Board of Regents, said the regents commissioned the impact study. It is being conducted by the University of South Dakota’s Government Research Bureau, which is associated with USD’s business school.
Toman cautioned that numbers are preliminary and still subject to revision. But the study, even though its in draft form, reveals the overwhelming importance of the university system to South Dakota’s economy.
“The vested interest of eastern South Dakota is aligned with that of higher education, because of the economic impact, not only in this part of the state, but statewide,” said Chicoine in a radio interview this week.
He said SDSU has 2,285 direct employees, and with an employment multiplier of 2.4 for total jobs in this region, that comes to a total of 5,390 jobs connected to the university.
“(All that is) just because South Dakota State University is here,” he said. “For the community of Brookings, that is pretty significant.”
According to Jeff Kjenstad at the South Dakota Department of Labor’s Brookings office, state labor statistics show that Brookings County employs a total of 16,681 covered workers. (Covered workers are individuals who pay into South Dakota’s unemployment insurance fund.)
President Chicoine said the numbers in the regent study include dollars generated by the residents of the state as well as all the investments that the students make through tuition and fee payments, as well as their living expenditures while they are going to school.
Due in August
The study, which according to Chicoine should be released sometime in August, also outlines out-of-pocket expenditures for students for day-to-day activities. He said the number isn’t broken down by university, but by an average across all six institutions.
The study revealed that students on campus spend about $1,400 per month to attend school at one of the public universities. Off-campus students spent a little less; they need about $1,320 to meet their expenses.
Chicoine commented that the numbers should continue to increase as he said more students are staying in Brookings during the summer, especially upperclass and grad students.
“If we continue to do what are doing at South Dakota State University, which is growing the student population on campus, retaining our juniors and seniors, and growing our graduate student population, that will continue to make a huge economic impact on the community of Brookings,” he said.
“We don’t do that because of the economic impact – we do that because it’s the right thing to do for the students, creating an opportunity for them that they just wouldn’t have if they weren’t going to school at South Dakota State.
Study ‘an eye-opener’
“It will be a great eye-opener when the study is through the review period and gets rolled out, and we will have an opportunity to talk in more detail about the entire impact of public higher ed here in the state of South Dakota,” the SDSU president said in his radio interview.
Officials from each of the state schools reviewed the draft of the report this month. Chicoine says the findings from each of the universities will be merged into one document, and a final draft will be presented in a few weeks.
– From staff and Brookings Radio new reports
