Study showing which college towns will see most economic impact from COVID
Link: https://smartasset.com/checking-account/college-towns-most-vulnerable-during-covid19-2020
The metrics used for their study are certainly up for debate, but they claim Ann Arbor as the 7th most "vulnerable" college town (minimum town size 50,000 residents).
Excerpt:
"7. Ann Arbor, MI (University of Michigan)
Though the University of Michigan is the largest four-year university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the city is also home to Concordia University, Ann Arbor – a satellite campus of Concordia University, Wisconsin. Between the two universities, undergraduate students make up almost 26% of the city population – the 16th-highest percentage in our study. Additionally, Ann Arbor has the sixth-highest rate of college staff as a percentage of workers; more than one in three full-time workers is employed by either of the local universities."
Definitely seems like AA is in for an interesting year, at least they have a world-class health system to potentially counteract COVID.
Side note: didn't want to make a thread about this, but did anyone see the lead story on espn.com this morning? Here's a screenshot:
I was sure both Harbaugh and Howard took cuts, and they did. Yet ESPN makes him look like Satan despite being one of the 2 out of the top 10 that actually did take a pay cut. Lol
And here this gem of wisdom from Michael Crichton is relevant yet again.
Sometimes its not just the writer:
"Symbolically, it's the same, but financially, it's a very different conversation when you start digging into those coaches' contracts," Redd said. "Let's face it. The dean of the science department is certainly an important person, but no matter how good he or she is, [the dean] is not going to bring in $100 million to the school." Ken Redd is the senior director of research and policy analysis for the National Association of College and University Business Officers.
Not sure if there are better numbers for this, but in the 2018 budget, Michigan as a whole brought in just over 1.2 billion in research dollars. I couldn’t find a breakdown by school, but if it roughly tracks spending, the school of medicine easily brought in over $100 million (I would imagine closer to $500 million and both engineering and LSA look like they would have eclipsed the $100 million mark.
https://research.umich.edu/sites/default/files/resource-download/fy18_research_annual_report_pdf.pdf
There is a graphic in the article that shows HArbaugh took a pay cut
Yes - and one has to scroll down almost halfway to the article to find it. Yet the Harbaugh picture features prominently next to the "no pay cut" headline.
Not surprising for ESPN.
Not surprising at all. I'd say predictable.
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Would you rather envy or be envied? I'm going with B.
Lots of people love to see Michigan fail, especially when Harbaugh is the coach.
Don't believe it? Ask yourself how clickbaity that picture would be with Kirk Ferentz or Chip Kelly.
I agree the health system capacity and ability to mitigate local COVID-19 impact are a benefit. On the other hand, through the lens of economic impact, I can also see that as a liability. If the system has to restrict medical services outside of C19 again we could be looking at more paycuts and possibly furloughs to stay financially solvent. The larger the proportion of local medical professional population impacted by such measures in the general population, the higher the vulnerability of the local economy.
Great point. Many of my friends in GR who work at the biggest hospitals are saying that they are already having issues with what you talked about. Many docs have tough decisions to make regarding performing elective surgeries (from my understanding the moneymakers of the medical industry).
Also wonder if the number of people going in and out of the city will be all that different. I'm sure to some extent it will, but if the hospital sees increased traffic maybe it could be drawing people who will be staying longer and thus checking out AA longer as opposed to fans/parents/friends of students coming in for a few hours and then leaving without contributing anything to the economy.
Do you really think that football fans don't contribute anything to the local economy? It seems you're missing the point. The major impact on the local economy from COVID comes from the loss of football crowds and the Art Fair. I lived in Ann Arbor from the mid-80s until a couple of years ago and knew a few downtown business owners in a variety of fields. Throughout that period, they all said that, for most of the year, including the school year, they broke even or lost a little money. But Art Fair and the seven or eight home football weekends were the difference between making and losing money for the year. I wonder what's going to happen to local business without Art Fair and football crowds, especially the new retail stores and restaurants that have entered the market when rents are sky high. I worry that many of them will struggle to survive, especially those that are independent enterprises who don't have the fall-back financial resources of some franchisees or national chains.
I can't imagine that hospital visitors will make up for that loss in any meaningful way. Not to mention the fact that, when a medical facility is swamped by a pandemic, it's likely to be locked down, with no visitors permitted.
With or without students on campus, and regardless of the UM Health System, I think the Ann Arbor economy is in for a rough patch.
Absolutely not trying to make that argument, just trying to point out that there are a lot of fans who just drive to the game and leave (I've done this on several occasions). You're right though with the points you make, I was never trying to say that this fall will economically resemble any of the last few, more just thinking that in the environment we find ourselves in there are some hidden advantages to having more visitors for hospital-related reasons (obviously not hoping for that too, stay healthy Michigan!).
They actually just changed the main page to a photo of only Dabo. Then they changed it again to Dabo, Calipari, Sumlin, and Harbaugh. Haha ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The CFB/CBB page still has the other graphic. Either way, Harbaugh generates clicks and I think that's still a good thing.
So would Nick Saban, guess he's immune from controversy.
Of course. They use Harbaugh as click-bait. $$$ talks. Truth gets buried in the footnotes.
this is the type of bullshit that destroys all media credibility. If I'm Warde Manuel, I'd be blasting ESPN right now on this crap. Criticize Jim on a lot of stuff, but this is plain wrong and done to hurt his image.
I can't find that article to compare. Were you logged into ESPN with your account when you saw this? I know with marketing tools they can have it display specific pictures based on your personal interests. I've seen this on ESPN before. A picture for me showed Harbaugh or a UM player, but when I log out, it showed a different person. It's all part of the effort to get you to click on the article.
We just bought a house in Bloomington last year so this is fantastic news! Can't say it's surprising though. Most people do seem to work for IU (including my wife) or are students of IU.
Huh...never realized Concordia was a satellite campus. And I just checked wikipedia and I guess this only just happened in 2013 so that's probably why I never knew about it
When its scale and impact are considered, it's hilarious that it's even mentioned. It would make a lot more sense to mention EMU.
I wonder about the lower limit of 50,000 in the town. I have a hard time believing that towns with big schools, but smaller populations, aren’t harder hit. Places like State College (PSU), West Lafayette (Purdue), Oxford MS, (Old Miss), Starkville (Miss State), or even Mt. Pleasant (CMU) have higher ratios of university staff/students to general population then the places on their list and have to be hammered by the prospect of their schools turning into ghost towns.
Yeah, my assumption is that true "college towns" (i.e. towns that basically exist because of a school) are going to crater if students don't come back en masse. I mean, they'll survive somewhat but it's going to be really hard.
Yeah, I'm not quite sure why a college town would need to have 50,000 residents. Ann Arbor has grown to the point where its economy has diversified a fair amount (although the university is obviously still hugely important) whereas in some of these other towns, the university is it.
Welp, real estate should become more affordable.
I haven`t read this study, thank you for sharing this link. I am preparing my own little research at college, so when I was looking for help for my economics assignment from materials and information I need I read these things about Michigan too. I also got the part of my paper from https://ca.edubirdie.com/economics-help where was told about COVID-19 influence on economic, so there was about many different cities. I would like to compare the metrics that were used.
September 5th, 2021 at 4:28 PM ^
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