A recent report by CEOs for Cities quantified the economic benefit to cities of a college-educated populace–what it calls a Talent Dividend–by crunching numbers to show that per capita income and college attainment rates are closely correlated.
Using data from 2006, CEOs for Cities figured that each percentage point improvement in adult four-year college attainment is associated with a $763 increase in annual per capita income.
On a national scale, it looks something like this: the 51 largest metro areas have 33 million adults with four-year degrees or high levels of education. Increasing the four-year college attainment rate in each of these metro areas by one percentage point, from the current median of 29.4 percent to 30.4 percent, would result an increase in aggregate personal income of $124 billion per year for the nation.
This gave Harrisburg University President Dr. Mel Schiavelli an idea: he crunched the numbers for Central Pennsylvania–Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster, York, Adams, Lebanon, Franklin, and Perry counties. The total population of those eight counties in 2008 was 1,831,609, the average per capita income was $20,930 and the average educational attainment (college degree) was 20.1 percent–or 368,479.
Based on this data, Schiavelli concluded that a one percent increase in educational attainment would add an additional 18,316 college educated people to the region and lead to a $1.4 billion value increase to the economy of Central Pennsylvania.
“There’s 485,000 people in Cumberland and Dauphin counties. So that’s an effect of $370 million increase in the payroll,” Schiavelli says. “That would be like locating a company that had a payroll of $370 million in Cumberland and Dauphin counties.”
According to Schiavelli, Harrisburg University is in a unique position to help Central Pennsylvania capitalize on its Talent Dividend by increasing the percentage of the population that holds a college degree. Says Schiavelli: “It’s the reason we were created.”
Source: CEOs for Cities, Dr. Mel Schiavelli
Writer: John Davidson
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