The Federation of Independent Illinois Colleges and Universities (FIICU) provides this online tool to show estimated statewide and Illinois Economic Zone impact. These estimates are of overall economic impact, jobs created, and tax revenue generated to the state of Illinois and the federal government. This calculator also provides capital expenditure and alumni impact data. These figures are available by the total FIICU sector and by individual institution.
This calculator allows you to model the effects of updated input values (e.g. capital expenditure amount) on economic outcomes. In this way, the calculator allows for refinement to the numbers representing the different economic analysis levels (i.e. the state and the region).
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 FIICU membership or an individual institution. This panel also provides users the ability to update institutional or sector data. 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 FIICU’s, and individual institution’s, 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.
Returning to the upper left “Economic Impact Calculator” panel, there are four “action” buttons whose selection is required to enact calculator functions.
Selecting the Update button is required to calculate any change in the economic impact that results from modifying any EIC parameters, including the selection of a different institution.
Selecting the Reset button returns all the parameters to the preloaded defaults.
Selecting the Export button creates an excel spreadsheet that contains the summary output that is currently displayed.
Selecting the Optional button reveals additional parameter input screens to allow modification of estimated instate purchases, student living expenses, visits by type, five-year capital expenditures, total instate alumni and alumni income.
Entering and Modifying EIC Parameters
Sixteen individual parameters are used to estimate the impact of FIICU colleges for both their individual Economic Growth Region and for the full state of Illinois. To aid in interpretation, definitions of these parameters are provided below. There are five “core” parameters, the minimum required to create an impact estimate, and 11 optional parameters that allow for an additional level of sophistication of the EIC estimate. Unmodified parameters will default to the preloaded parameters for the individual institutions and FIICU as a whole.
Definitions for the individual input parameters are summarized below.
- Institution:
This drop-down allows the user to select the impact of the entire FIICU membership or individual institutions. Please note that individual institutional data will not load into the EIC until the user selects the Update button. - Total Institutional Expenditures:
The value for your college is preloaded from the institution’s FY 2020 IPEDS Finance Report. The cell can be updated with more recent figures if available. - Salary Expenditures
The value for your college is preloaded from the institution’s FY 2020 IPEDS Finance Report. The cell can be updated with more recent figures if available. - Total Faculty and Staff:
The value for your college is preloaded from the institution’s FY 2020 IPEDS Human Resources Report. The cell can be updated with more recent figures if available. Include both full and part-time staff in your total. - Total Students:
The value for your college is preloaded from the institution’s fall 2020 IPEDS Enrollment Report. The cell can be updated with more recent figures if available. Include both full and part-time students in your total. Do not include distance education students who live outside of the state of Illinois. - 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 Illinois. - Student Living Expenses:
Student expenditures are based on College Board Data on the mean private college cost of attendance excluding room and board or $4653. 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, you 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 living alumni with Illinois 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, 2020.