Education by the Numbers

Overview & Synopsis

As a receding economy contributes to public anxiety about jobs and an uncertain financial future, education becomes a target of state and local cuts. Reducing education funding does not help solve economic woes, however. According to the most recent economic impact report of the New England Association of Schools & Colleges (NEASC), cuts in expenditures for K-12 education have a reverse effect: they slow the growth of education as an economic engine and harm the higher education community as students progress through the pipeline. NEASC's economic impact assessment, the only known study to explore the economic impact of New England K-12 schools and higher education institutions in combination, finds that investment in New England schools and higher education institutions reaps tremendous "short-term" returns to the regional market. Yet these short-term benefits are ordinarily overlooked by the public and even by elected officials. People gain when they invest in their educational institutions; they all lose when they do not invest enough. As New England's economy becomes ever more reliant on the knowledge capital of a college-educated workforce, the need to have robust educational institutions through the K-through-postsecondary pipeline is more imperative than ever before.