Categories of Expenditure Data Accounting for College of Medicine impact requires measures and estimations of a number of economic activities. The operations in this review include: • • •
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Education & General. This category is composed of operating expenses including salaries, benefits, utilities and other expenses not documented separately in other categories. Contracts & Grants. Dollars are also expended on research and other projects funded by public and private sponsors external to the university. Capital Outlays. These include expenditures on physical structures and infrastructures associated with the college’s operation. Represented within this category are the Thrasher and Research facilities on the main campus in Tallahassee, as well as regional construction/renovation projects undertaken to establish operations in respective areas. Foundation. This category includes private gifts expended each year through the FSU Foundation in support of the college’s operations. Student Spending. This category accounts for the impact of students assigned to each campus who engage in economic activity, including room and board, the purchase of supplies, transportation, and other personal and recreational activities. Spending amounts for this component were estimated according to university assessments of cost of attendance across these categories. Visitor Spending. This category accounts for the dollars expended by official guests to the various campuses as well as personal visitors of the college’s students and staff. The impact of visitors was estimated conservatively on a per- student basis (assuming changes in student volume correlate with staffing levels) using reasonable expenditure levels and associated multipliers to account for lodging, food and retail activities.
Most of the information for these analyses was extracted from reports supplied by the college’s Finance and Administration unit; therefore, dollar values represent actual totals in most accounts. Some smaller expenditure categories were not explicitly available, so, instead, estimates were derived via conservative references to scales of other related operations.
Source of Multiplier Factors Multipliers used in this analysis were obtained from the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ Regional Input-Output Modeling System (RIMS II). The multipliers published through RIMS II include final-demand multipliers for output, earnings, employment and value added; and direct-effect multipliers for earnings and employment. The final demandoutput multiplier was utilized in this analysis as it provides the most comprehensive perspective among the available units.
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