On demonstrating the economic value of higher education

New England Journal of Higher Education, The, Summer 1998 by Gee, E Gordon

When I was president of Ohio State University, I went out and explained in very visible ways the things that Ohio State did for the people of the state. The most important thing I did was to carry around a jar of tomato sauce in my briefcase. Ohio is responsible for 56 percent of all the tomato ketchup produced in the world. It has the largest food processing plant, right behind Campbell Soup's processing plant, in a place called Napoleon, Ohio. In 1981, these two plants were going to move out of Ohio not because they didn't love Ohioans, but because they simply didn't have enough tomatoes.

A researcher at Ohio State's Agricultural Research Station, received a $1,500 grant from the university to develop a new type of tomato. In one generation, in about 18 months, he came up with the "Ohio State Tomato," which is still the finest of its kind in the world. It's now a $400 million business, and 15,000 people are employed because of that tomato. When I told people in Ohio that story, all of a sudden the lights came on! "I have a job because that university did the work."

Another thing people don't think about, whether it's Ohio or Vermont or Rhode Island, is all the teachers who are graduates of a state's colleges and universities. Think too of the physicians, the business and community leaders and all the other people who make the economy of a state run. We can talk about the economic vitality of the state, we can talk about what we do, we can talk about the budget of a university and all those other kinds of things. But we have never been able to put into words the economic value of an individual who graduates from an institution of higher learning in a state. In some way or another, we need to make that case.

Universities are often their own worst enemies. They have wonderful stories to tell. Yet, they are typically isolated. They don't tell their stories. Instead, they expect that money will come in from the state or the federal government or from their alumni, and then they don't want to be bothered. Anyone with this attitude is not going to survive as a leader.