NewHavenBIZ

8 n e w h a v e n B I Z | N o v e m b e r / D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 9 | n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m T R E N D I N G BEYOND THE HEADLINES Entrepreneurship for all? Which CT colleges offer the best value? H ow much educational bang do higher-education consumers get for their bucks at Connecti- cut colleges and universities? e answer to that question is far from black and white. For a deeper understanding and compar- ison of higher-education value, the consumer must factor in a matrix that includes: higher-education out- comes, sticker price (tuition, room and board, etc.) and the actual costs paid by students. e 2019 Wall Street Journal/ Times and U.S. News & World Report college rankings were released last month. In rankings such as these Yale University rou- tinely shares top-five honors with Harvard, MIT, Princeton and others of its ilk. In both the U.S. News and WSJ rankings, the Blue Mother was ranked No. 3 for 2019. e rankings measure deliver- ables such as student outcomes, class sizes, per-pupil spending and on-time graduation rates. Other metrics attempt to assess value. e U.S. News rankings include median starting salaries for freshly minted grads. e WSJ/Times rankings include both average salary 10 years aer entering college, and average student debt at graduation. Moreover, as with so many com- modities, the sticker price in higher education seldom reflects what consumers actually pay. Among private schools, richer schools such as, well, Yale (with an endowment pushing $30 billion) can afford to be generous with aid. e sticker price for tuition plus room and board for Yale College is $66,900. But the average matriculating 18-year-old pays just $18,053, according to the WSJ/Times calculus — a whopping $48,847 differential. Wesleyan has an even higher sticker price (tuition plus room and board = $66,970), but with its billion-dollar-plus endowment can afford to be, if not quite as generous as Yale, still pretty generous. e net annual price tag to attend college in Middletown is $24,251, accord- ing to WSJ/Times — a spread of $42,719. Other less well-endowed private colleges (which includes most of them) can't afford such extravagant subsidies, so the spread between the sticker price and actual cost is far smaller. Both Quinnipiac ($60,970) and Fairfield U. ($61,445) have $60,000-plus sticker prices, but the actual average annual cost to attend is closer to $40,000 ($38,665 and $37,799 annually, respectively). e calculus for four-year public universities is far different. Con- necticut high-school grads pay roughly half the tuition of their out-of-state counterparts to attend UConn, Southern Connecticut State University and the others. A decade ago UConn decided to offer "Presidential" scholarships to every valedictorian and at every high school in Connecticut. And it worked: Over a decade, the number of valedictorians and salutatorian has doubled — from 87 to 176 this academic year. n Southern CT State U. $15,234 ($22,970 in-state) Yale $18,053 $66,900) UConn $18,699 ($27,394) U. Bridgeport $22,981 ($45,840) Wesleyan $24,251 $66,970) U. of New Haven $33,665 ($53,780) Fairfield $37,799 ($61,445) Quinnipiac $38,665 ($60,970) Sacred Heart $40,177 ($54,590) Average actual vs. (sticker) costs, select CT colleges Source: Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education 2019 A s the broader society debates the fundamental question of economic opportunity vs. economic equality, the region's largest philanthropic orga- nization convened a provocative "conversation" last month that chal- lenged participants to transform New Haven into a place where op- portunity and economic well-being are treated as essential community assets to be shared by all. "Cities like New Haven can be laboratories of place-based inclusive entrepreneurship." So asserted Christopher Gergen, co-founder and CEO of North Carolina-based Forward Cities, a national network of communities seeking to stimulate and nurture greater entrepreneurial activity, par- ticularly within minority communi- ties. New Haven joined the Forward Cities roster in May. Gergen was a panelist in a con- version titled "Creating Opportunity rough an Inclusive Entrepreneur- ial Ecosystem." e breakout session was part of a conference, Creating a Future of Opportunity, convened by the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven. On the national level, Gergen said, there are 2.6 million enterprises owned by African-Americans — but 90 percent are sole proprietorships. And in Connecticut, he added, white business owners are 19 times more likely to employ workers than their minority counterparts. at disparity is of course reflec- tive of the larger income gap in Con- necticut and beyond. In New Haven County, Gergen said, the poverty rate among its 860,000 residents is 11 percent, but in the urban centers of New Haven and Waterbury, that figure approaches 60 percent. And the rate of business starts by minority entrepreneurs in New Haven pales in comparison to their peers in cities like Buffalo, N.Y. and Pittsburgh. Margaret Lee and Caroline Smith founded Collab, an entre- preneurship incubator/accelerator that focuses on building new com- panies, were joined on the panel by Peter Hurst, president and CEO of the Greater New England Minority Supplier Development Council. Hurst's group seeks to link minority-owned companies throughout New England not only to one another, but especially to larger companies to which they may supply goods and services. Minority-owned companies "need financial capital, they need intellec- tual capital — but most of all they need contracts," Hurst said. n

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