By Anna B. Mitchell anna.mitchell@independentmail.com 864-260-1256

Tuesday, September 5, 2012

CLEMSON — A home football game at Clemson University accounts for 198 jobs and a $10.3 million infusion into the local economy.

And that's just one day.

Clemson President Jim Barker presented the findings of a major study Tuesday morning at the Madren Conference Center, which itself employs 345 people, before an audience of political and business leaders from Anderson, Oconee and Pickens counties.

"We wanted to answer the question 'What would happen if Clemson went away?'" Barker said.

These three counties alone, Barker said, benefited in 2010 from $859.5 million worth of business being conducted directly by the university, its employees and students. Business included school operations, contracted work, construction projects, and student and visitor spending.

Nearly 13 percent of jobs in the tri-county area in 2010 were attributable to Clemson, its students and its visitors. In Pickens County, the figure was closer to 31 percent.

"What's really interesting is what's not included," Barker told an audience of about 50 people. "The considerable economic impact of alumni, 16,000 of whom live in Anderson, Oconee and Pickens counties."

The 8 a.m. presentation at the Madren Center was the first of four stops Barker had planned for Tuesday. He pointed out the university's contributions in similar sessions at the International Center for Automotive Research in Greenville, where the university also has major facilities downtown and at the Patewood medical complex, as well as Columbia and Charleston.

Statewide, he said, Clemson University generated 25,000 jobs and $1.83 billion in economic output.

The nearly 8,000 people working at Clemson in 2010 alone brought in $313 million in wages and benefits. And according to a 2004 Harris Poll, spending by college students averages $13,000 per student per year nationally.

Spending by visitors not related to sports included meals and incidentals and totaled $26.2 million in 2010.

The state of South Carolina, which appropriated $90.6 million toward school operations in 2010, also received a net return on those dollars, Barker said. The state collected $156 million from Clemson's economic activities in 2010 alone, the study's author, Rob Carey reported.

The average annual net return for the state from 2001 to 2010 was $31.1 million — a point Barker emphasized after several years straight of state cuts.

The study of the university's effect on the state's bottom line, undertaken by its own Strom Thurmond Institute, was conservative by design, Barker said, and also did not include dollars generated by private partners at campuses, such as the Advanced Materials Center in Pendleton, or recreational opportunities created at facilities such as the South Carolina Botanical Garden or the Brooks Center for the Performing Arts.

The study also did not include roughly $100 million in research dollars attracted to the Upstate through Clemson.

AnMed Health CEO John Miller was among those in the audience Tuesday.

"AnMed Health is an economic driver in Anderson because of the jobs but also because of the entire medical community of physicians and providers," Miller said.

AnMed Health has worked with Clemson, he said, on general economic-development initiatives, both through Innovate Anderson and the Upstate Alliance. Fifty years ago, the downtown Anderson hospital was also the first home of Clemson's new nursing program.

He said such studies are a good reminder of what drives local economies.