Navigating the EIC

The EIC display is divided into three sections.  The upper-left panel contains a dropdown menu for users to select the entire WAICU membership or an individual institution.  The bottom left display, “Methodology,” provides the method background and summarizes how the statistics were sourced and calculated.  The right panel contains a summary of WAICU’s, and individual institutions’, associated economic impact statistics.

Within the “Economic Impact Summary,” the data are displayed in three main sections: Total Economic Impact to the State, Total Five-Year Impact of Capital Expenditures, and Total Impact of In-state Alumni.  Next to the summary tab are four additional tabs that graphically display data from the Total Economic Impact to the State section.  These graphs depict details on direct expenditures, total impact, jobs created, and taxes generated.

EIC Parameters

Sixteen individual parameters are used to estimate the impact of WAICU colleges on both their individual Economic Growth Region and the full state of Wisconsin.  To aid in interpretation, definitions of these parameters are provided below.

• Institution:
  This drop-down allows the user to select the impact of the entire WAICU membership or individual institutions.
• Total Institutional Expenditures:
  This value is preloaded from the institution’s FY 2024 IPEDS Finance Report.
• Salary Expenditures:
  This value is preloaded from the institution’s FY 2024 IPEDS Finance Report.
• Total Faculty and Staff:
  This value is preloaded from the institution’s FY 2024 IPEDS Human Resources Report.  It includes both full and part-time staff.
• Total Students:
  This value is preloaded from the institution’s fall 2024 IPEDS Enrollment Report.  It includes both full and part-time students in the total.  It does not include distance education students who live outside of the state of Wisconsin.
• Estimated Percent of Instate Expenditures:
  This parameter represents the percentage share of institutional purchases (e.g., utilities, office supplies, computers, health care and insurance) that occur with vendors who reside within the state of Wisconsin.  The study estimates this at 40% based on patterns in previous studies and patterns derived from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
• Student Living Expenses:
  Student expenditures are based on College Board Data on the mean private college cost of attendance excluding room and board or $4390.  Institutions that do not feel this amount is representative of costs to their students may estimate cost by using the institutional student expenditure budget less tuition and room and board (i.e., books + transportation + miscellaneous expenditures).
• Total Visitors:
  For institutions that did not complete these items in the supplemental survey, the impact calculator estimates the number of visitors based on the institution’s enrollment.  However, visitor totals can vary greatly from institution to institution.  A “person-day” is the number of visitors multiplied by the number of days a person visits the institution.  For example, if a family of four stays overnight two days, the person-day count is 8.  The calculator considers four different types of visitations that have separate algorithms for the calculation of visitor expenditures and impact.
  • Admissions, Commencement, and Related Visits
  • Alumni Events
  • Conferences, Publicly Accessible Facilities, and Related Events
  • Sporting Events
• Five-Year Capital Expenditures:
  Because college capital expenditures vary widely from year-to-year, the impact calculator uses a five-year window.  To calculate the impact of capital expenditures over a shorter period of time, staff with access to the private-facing calculator can still enter the shorter-duration direct expenditures amount in the “5-Year Capital Expenditures Field” (account for the years in your interpretation).  Annual impacts of capital expenditures can be determined by dividing the total economic impact and total jobs generated by the number of years across which the direct expenditures were totaled.
• Total Undergraduate and Graduate Alumni:
  Estimated number of alumni with Wisconsin residency
• Mean Undergraduate and Graduate Alumni Income:
  The preloaded income figure is based on the median income of bachelor degree recipients (for undergraduates) and master’s degree recipients (for graduates) aged 25-64 from the US Department of Commerce, Money Income of Households, 2024.

If you a have any additional questions regarding the use of the EIC please contact LinhAnh.Le@waicu.org