Campus shares economic impact findings with local community, business leaders

Horace Mitchell

06 February 2002 | The campus’s new economic impact report went on the road in January, with Vice Chancellor Horace Mitchell presenting its highlights in a keynote address to a meeting in San Leandro of the Economic Development Alliance for Business.

The audience of more than 150 included East Bay business leaders and several elected officials. More than a dozen managers from Business and Administrative Services were present to answer questions in their areas, including business development and employment.

The report concludes, said Mitchell, that the campus provides the Bay Area with economic stability and continually generates momentum for the future. It is also, he said, an academic and research powerhouse that draws world-class talent to the Bay Area and helps sustain its culture of innovation. Mitchell also highlighted how the campus reaches out to the community in non-financial ways, but ways that have an impact on the productivity and competitiveness of the area over time.

The most sustained applause of the morning came when Mitchell reported that Oakland High School, a focus of many campus outreach efforts, became the largest feeder school to Berkeley this past fall.

He also noted that the new California Institutes of Science and Innovation supported by Gov. Davis — among them the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the biotechnology institute known as QB3, at Berkeley and UC partner campuses — will provide economic growth for the state well into the future.

Key points in Mitchell’s presentation included the following:

• By employing a broad-based workforce of 13,500 jobs, the campus is the third largest East Bay employer, the fifth largest in the Bay Area.

• For every $1 million the campus spends, it creates 20 Bay Area non-university jobs.

• Berkeley brings in more than $1.2 billion a year in revenue and provides more than $500 million in new money to the Bay Area economy annually.

• Berkeley’s 400,000 living alumni, 39 percent of whom reside in the Bay Area, provide the talent that helps makes the region among the most productive in nation.

Mitchell told business leaders that a series of employment and recruitment fairs, as well as workshops on how to do business with the campus, are in the works.

The impact report, “Building the Bay Area’s Future: A Study of the Economic Impact of the University of California, Berkeley,” was prepared for the campus by Sedway Group, a San Francisco-based consulting firm. It provides updated data for the first time in 13 years on the campus’s purchasing, employment and research impacts.

Capital Projects oversaw the preparation and completion of the report. Public Affairs managed its communications, and Business and Administrative Services is taking the lead in presenting it to various audiences, from the business community to the campus community.

A web site with the full report and Mitchell’s slide presentation is available at www.berkeley.edu/econimpact.