Mustang Money’s Might Measured, Good to be King—By King Harris

I know I’ll receive some vitriol from those who do not necessarily see eye-to-eye with the sometimes-disturbing presence of Cal Poly students, but without the university, this community wouldn’t be worth much.
Case in point is a new survey conducted by Bradford Anderson who is the interim vice president of research and economic development at Cal Poly.
“The survey examines the economic impact of Cal Poly and the metropolitan statistical area which is San Luis Obispo County and Northern Santa Barbara County in fiscal year 2012 and 2013,” Anderson says in a recent interview. “That time period was selected because there had not been a study of the impact for 10 years. The purpose of this study was to find ways that we can better integrate and cooperate and work with the community in leveraging our economic strength.”
He continues. “The study revealed that the economic impact was $1.4 billion and that’s very significant; it’s about 12 per cent of the gross domestic product of San Luis Obispo County and about 9.4 percent if we add Northern Santa Barbara County.”
“But what was most revealing and important was finding the areas of impact like the tourism spending, a number of retail sales that take place, the positive impact of retirees in the community, and the positive impact of student spending in the community.”
I asked Anderson how he plans to break down some of the barriers, like for example, new student housing.
“What’s very interesting in the study is when we took a look at the impact of both the on-campus and off-campus students, we only took into account even if a student was located on campus we did not include their on-campus spending, we only looked at off-campus spending, for both on and off-campus students.
“A good example in that regard,” he says, “would be the potential for creating new opportunities for affordable housing. Obviously one of the great concerns in our community is the high cost of housing and so if students may migrate from off-campus to on-campus facilities for a variety of reasons, it would free up some housing that would be available for the local work force and I think that’s very important.”
What about student behavior?
“I can talk about student spending behavior, which is what the report addresses, but I understand that the thrust of your question digs a little deeper than that. The university has continued to apply significant resources towards engaging with the students for a positive community relationship and remains dedicated in doing so, but as far as student behavior on spending, the annual student spending for that one fiscal year was $160.8 million.
“So I think bonding with the community and clearly addressing other student behaviors off campus is a high priority because we see this as a tremendous point of leverage where we can build the economic success of the community.”
I wondered why so many Cal Poly grads return to work here?
“There’s this great affinity with Cal Poly,” Anderson says. “In fact the reason that I’m here is that my wife is a Cal Poly graduate and wanted to return to the community and it wasn’t difficult to get me to tag along because we all know what a beautiful place this is to live.”
They want to look for opportunities in the community. “There is, and this is a point of leverage that we are looking at with the Economic Vitality Corporation and Mike Manchak, the potential we have for public/private partnerships in the community; and for having students who are starting businesses we can create a true, sustainable, economic base where students start up in the community and these are single-earner jobs where an individual can have one job and have a sustainable wage.”
To read the full report, see: research.calpoly.edu.