The Maverick Minute: Professor Chris Decker and UNO's Economic Impact

The Maverick Minute is a video series featuring Chancellor Jeff Gold interviewing members of the UNO community. In this edition, Chancellor Gold interviews Dr. Chris Decker, professor and chair of the College of Business Administrations' Economics Department on UNO's Economic Impact.

Full Transcript:

Chancellor Gold:

Hello, I'm Jeff Gold, and welcome to another Maverick Minute. I have incredible honor today by being joined by Professor Decker of our College of Business Administration. And as I understand I, you're the chair of the Department of Economics, is that right?

Dr. Chris Decker:

That's correct, yeah.

Chancellor Gold:

Well, Chris, thank you so much for being with us today. The subject of our conversation is economic impact. And I can tell you, as I travel across the state, but also as I travel across the country, I'm constantly being asked, what's the economic impact of a college or a program or an institute? Because there's an expectation that great universities educate, great universities do research and discovery, scholarship. But great universities also do a lot of community engagement and that combination of community engagement, discovery and research, and education usually produces an economic impact. And so most great universities do study their impact and I know that you're the person that does all that work here at UNO. Is that right?

Dr. Chris Decker:

I've done some of it recently, yes.

Chancellor Gold:

And so maybe you could tell me and tell our audience a little bit about your most recent study, over what period of time you studied it, and roughly where we are and what the trajectory looks like for the future.

Dr. Chris Decker:

Sure. So a couple of years ago, actually, it was just last year I was asked if I would consider doing an economic impact of UNO on City of Omaha's economy. And as a typical approach to measuring economic impact, and like you've said, a lot of universities ask for these sorts of impact analyses. The typical pattern..

Chancellor Gold:

That's because we get asked for them, so it's..

Dr. Chris Decker:

That's absolutely right. To meet a number. What we'll measure directly would be things like faculty and staff salaries, how much spending is done locally as a result of those earned incomes, how much..

Chancellor Gold:

So lightbulbs and floor wax and things like that.

Dr. Chris Decker:

Exactly, operations and capital expenditures stimulate growth in the local economy. As UNO builds a new addition or hires new faculty, that will stimulate economic activity within the city. So those are the things we try to pick up and measure. But one of the things that was very unique, from my perspective, about looking at a metropolitan university is that, you know, perhaps different from other land grant institutions, we're in a metro environment, well, of about 50, 60,000 alumni, UNO-degreed alumni living in the city. And with their degrees, they earn additional income and that means they spend more. So, you can see an additional impact that can be at least indirectly linked to UNO through its educational opportunities.

Chancellor Gold:

So, give us an idea of the order of magnitude of what an economic impact of a university like UNO produces for the community.

Dr. Chris Decker:

If you were to look, yeah, if you were to look at a university of similar size in a non-metropolitan area, you might see an impact on the order of $600 million for a given year. If you were to just look at the standard way of measuring..

Chancellor Gold:

Is that roughly where UNO is?

Dr. Chris Decker:

Without including the alumni impact, that's absolutely right. If you include the alumni impact, that stock of 60,000 alums living in the area, that's an additional $700 million impact in a given year.

Chancellor Gold:

So that would almost, more than double.

Dr. Chris Decker:

More than double, so you end up with a $1.2 ~ 1.3-billion impact. And a lot of other metropolitan universities have not explored this as much as I think they should. So, when you track impact, I think it's important to try to link, as best we can, what our real contributions are to the community. We're just focusing, here, on spending and production patterns within an economy.

Chancellor Gold:

And so, if you were to go back and, when was the most recent study you did before the one that you just finished?

Dr. Chris Decker:

I did a study, oh, maybe two or three years before that.

Chancellor Gold:

And how would you compare where we are now compared to either the direct, or with or without the alumni base, shall we say.

Dr. Chris Decker:

In terms of overall impact, there's modest growth. But the growth is coming largely from increased enrollments, increased expansion from the university. One of the series that we look at in our impact study is capital investments. They tend to be what I describe as lumpy over time. You don't always build a new building every year.

Chancellor Gold:

Sure.

Dr. Chris Decker:

So, there'll be some years where you see a spike--

Chancellor Gold:

Although I hope we do, but, you know, that's my hope.

Dr. Chris Decker:

You know I certainly do as well. Because that does have an economic impact, it employs a lot of additional people. But if you were to look at the trend, you can identify the underlying trend based on faculty expansion, based on program expansion, based on attracting additional students to the area. Additional students, additional graduates, additional spenders, additional faculty would imply additional research projects that could also lead to some additional economic stimulus.

Chancellor Gold:

Sure, grants and contracts.

Dr. Chris Decker:

Exactly. One thing my study does not look at that I would love to incorporate, and I think this is something that we ought to do for the future, and it's something I'm actively trying to pursue, is the degree to which universities like UNO serve as business incubators. And that is, you generate entrepreneurs. And they develop new businesses and they employ new people. And that traditional measure has been not included in the studies.

Chancellor Gold:

So, I would guess that would be a really interesting study because of all the entrepreneurship work that we do here, both in the College of Business and outside of the College of Business. The incubators, for instance, the Unitec Institute and other such things, all spin off intellectual property or use intellectual property from the community and build businesses that support the community. So, if I could just ask one more question, in case our audience has questions or I have more questions, are you the person to go to directly?

Dr. Chris Decker:

Please do. Contact me via email or phone. You'll provide my contact information. I'll be happy to chat with people about impact studies. I love doing them and I enjoy, I enjoy kind of that boots-on-the-ground approach to research. That's kind of my love.

Chancellor Gold:

Well, thank you for all the hard work. Thank you for being with us today.

Dr. Chris Decker:

Absolutely.

Chancellor Gold:

And thank you for being with us today on this Maverick Minute.