Analysis of the Return on Investment and Economic Impact of Education

C h a p t e r 1 : Profile of Monroe Community College and the Economy

Monroe Community College (MCC) is a large community college serving Monroe County, New York. In addition to its main Brighton Campus, MCC also has a downtown Damon City Campus, as well as an Applied Technologies Center, a Public Safety Training Facility, and an Economic & Workforce Development Center, all located in the city of Rochester and its outlying suburbs. It also has four extension sites in the area. Together, MCC’s various facilities (along with the college’s online/virtual classes) served 28,850 credit and another 4,261 non-credit students in FY 2014-15.

MCC was established in 1962, with an initial goal of preparing students to work in the area’s hospitals. With the college’s joining of the SUNY system, its slate of classes quickly expanded in scope. Within a few years, growing enrollment meant that MCC outgreww its ad hoc initial home in a local high school, and in 1968 it opened its 300-acre Brighton Campus, still its primary location today. In 1991, the Damon City Campus in downtown Rochester opened to serve students in various areas including law, human services, and K-12 teaching. Today, MCC is in the process of constructing a new downtown campus that is expected to be ready for the fall semester of 2017. The new campus will offer 255,000 square feet of space on seven floors. As an added bonus, the downtown construction’s campus is providing an opportunity for students in construction-related programs to gain hands-on experience by working with the project’s contractors. MCC has become a recognized leader in the American community college environment. Over its history, it has received 115 SUNY Chancellor’s Awards recognizing its excellence in areas such as teaching, librarianship, professional service, and more. It ranks in the top 3% of US community colleges by number of associate degrees and certificates awarded. Many of its nearly 500,000 alumni are still in the Monroe County economy,

in positions of leadership and responsibility, which translates into a workforce that knows the value MCC contributes to its region. MCC also operates a successful Economic Development and Innovative Workforce Services (EDIWS) division that encourages the partnership between the college and the local business community. The EDIWS uses local labor market data and feedback from local businesses to identify the economy and workforce’s strengths and needs, then develops partnerships and educational programs intended to fill those needs and make sure the college is producing students who can take a productive and successful place in the local workforce.

MCC EMPLOYEE AND FINANCE DATA

The study uses two general types of information: 1) data collected from the college and 2) county economic data obtained from various public sources and Emsi’s proprietary data modeling tools. 1 This section presents the basic underlying information from MCC used in this analysis and provides an overview of the Monroe County economy.

1 See Appendix 4 for a detailed description of the data sources used in the Emsi modeling tools.

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