Southeastern Louisiana University’s economic impact across the region is more than $1 billion annually, according to a new study conducted by Lightcast, a company that provides colleges and universities with labor market data that help create better outcomes for students, businesses, and communities.
Lightcast measured the economic impacts created by Southeastern on the business community and the benefits the university generates in return for the investments made by its key stakeholder groups – students, taxpayers, and society. The results reflect employee, student, and financial data from Southeastern for fiscal year 2021-22, industry and employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau, outputs of Lightcast’s Multi-Regional Social Accounting Matrix model, and a variety of studies and surveys relating education to social behavior.
The study showed that the university’s impact supports more than 15,500 jobs, and spending by the university’s more than 13,000 students accounted for an approximate $19.6 million impact.
In addition, the study analyzed non-economic factors such as cultural, education and business-related outreach projects. For Southeastern, spending includes a $144.2 million impact of university operating expenditures, $2.3 million from construction projects, $2.2 million in research spending, $29.6 million in spin-off company impact from the Southeastern Business Center and its collaboration with entrepreneurs and small business, $2.5 million in visitor spending, $1 million volunteerism impact, and an alumni impact of $815.3 million.
In terms of investment analysis from the student perspective, Southeastern served 16,478 students who paid for tuition, fees, books and supplies. They also took out loans and will incur interest on those loans, as well as forfeited earnings they could have made instead of attending school. The total investment made by Southeastern’s students was $144.6 million, equal to $74.9 million in out-of-pocket expenses and $69.7 million in forgone time and money.
The study found, from the taxpayer perspective, that Southeastern generates more in tax revenue than it takes. The benefits to taxpayers consist primarily of taxes that the state and local government collect from the added revenue created in the state. Total taxpayer benefits amount to $88.6 million, the present value sum of the added taxes and public sector savings. Louisiana taxpayers provided $29.5 million, equal to the amount of state and local government funding Southeastern received. The benefits and costs yield a benefit-cost ratio of 3.0.
Altogether, the social benefits of Southeastern equal a present value of $2.8 billion. The benefits include $1.9 billion in added student income, $600.5 million in added business income, $164.2 million in added income from university activities, as well as $169.8 million in social savings related to health, crime, and income assistance in Louisiana. People in Louisiana invested a present value total of $260.4 million in Southeastern, which includes all university and student costs.
A complete copy of the report will be available online at southeastern.edu/impact.
