Category: Institutions

Yesterday I talked about how disappointing/not fit for purpose university and college economic impact statements tend to be.  Today I want to talk about how to make them better.   Let me start off by rejecting two obvious alternatives.  The first is what one might call the “Look!  Shiny Things!” school of impact statements, which consists mainly of feeding people exciting anecdotes.  For example: “hey look what our one great scientist did!”  “Look at our small sample of high-performing alumni did!” 

Every once in awhile, universities in Ontario all decide to get on a bandwagon and do the same thing at the same time.  This winter, the bandwagon seems to be economic impact statements.  I imagine somewhere, Presidents or Provosts through the province came to the conclusion that under a Conservative government, it might be necessary to “prove their worth” in economic terms, and so, lo and behold, a bunch of institutions (as of Friday) have issued identical calls for proposals asking consultants