UA Campus Worth $725M to Economy

University of Arkansas Chancellor David Gearhart said the university’s Fayetteville campus had an operational economic impact of more than $725.4 million last year. The numbers are for the university’s fiscal year 2009, which ran from July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2009.

The chancellor’s office commissioned the Walton College of Business’ Center for Economic and Business Research to conduct the study. It examined spending by the university, faculty, staff, students and visitors, and includes estimated tax collections.

Kathy Deck, director of the CBER, discussed some points of the study at a press conference Feb. 16. Some high points include:

• the university’s Fayetteville campus employed about 4,000 faculty and staff with a total payroll of $246.5 million in fiscal 2009;
• those employees paid $8.4 million in state income tax and $5.7 million in state sales taxes;
• Arkansas appropriated $199.7 million to UA in 2009. The return, in terms of total impact, was about 364 percent;
• students spent about $173.7 million in Northwest Arkansas and visitors spent about $127 million;
• UA students, faculty and staff make up more than 21 percent of Fayetteville’s population.

Deck said about 2.1 percent of the state’s population are UA-Fayetteville alumni, but earned 4.9 percent of the state’s income, or about $2.2 billion. That group paid $62.9 million in sales and use taxes and $122.2 million in state income taxes, she said.

About one in 12 workers are in high-tech jobs, Deck said, or about 18.3 percent of the workforce. Twenty-nine companies are clients of the business incubator at the Arkansas Research and Technology Park in south Fayetteville, employing 183 and generating $13 million in 2009 revenue.

It took the CBER nine months to conduct the study and cost about $30,000.