Financial Affairs: In Gauging Their Economic Impact, Colleges Should Be Careful What They Measure

By Goldie Blumenstyk

Colleges have never been very good at demonstrating how their education programs prepare their graduates for jobs, or how their research might create new jobs.

That's partly because the connection is not so easy to quantify—and partly because many of the people who run colleges and who teach there are still a tad uncomfortable thinking of themselves as cogs in America's work-force-training and economic-development machine.

But with high unemployment levels still