SSTI Digest

October 30, 3:00 p.m. EDT | Free

In today's competitive landscape, technology-based economic development (TBED) organizations need to effectively communicate their achievements and impact to secure crucial funding and support. This webinar will delve into how TBED organizations can strategically use impact reports as a powerful tool to capture the attention of media, funders, and other key stakeholders.

Our expert panel will share real-world examples of TBED organizations that have successfully leveraged impact reports to achieve their goals. Discover best practices for illustrating your success stories and demonstrating the long-term value of your initiatives. Learn how to package your impact data in visually engaging formats and use various communication channels to reach a broader audience and amplify your message.

Join SSTI’s TBED Community of Practice for an insightful webinar on how to unlock the power of impact reports to elevate your TBED organization's visibility and secure crucial support.

Speakers:

Bryan Barnhouse, President & CEO, Arkansas Research Alliance

The U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) could see its first reauthorization since 2004, depending on how the post-election congressional work period progresses. Leaders of the Senate committee that oversees the annual defense bill have agreed to include a proposal to reauthorize EDA’s public works and economic adjustment programs in their negotiations with the House as part of the national defense authorization bill. Sections of the proposal that seem most relevant to tech-based economic development—Build to Scale and Tech Hubs are authorized separately—include codifying the University Centers program (which is authorized but not defined in detail by EDA’s current statutes), creating a new workforce training grant that would enable nonprofits and municipalities to offer new programs and states to provide scholarships, and establishing an office for disaster response so that EDA can be better-prepared to efficiently award future emergency funds.

SSTI recently hosted an informational session with EDA representatives about the 2024 Build to Scale program. The $50 million program is accepting applications until October 28. The recording and slides are now available here for those who missed it or want to review. To help organizations identify counties that meet EDA’s Equity Investment Priority criteria, SSTI has developed a new interactive map. This tool also shows the locations of NSF Engines and EDA Tech Hubs across the country. While not required for eligibility, proposed projects that can demonstrate affiliation with NSF Engines or EDA Tech Hubs can receive up to five points in the evaluation process. Working with rural or persistent poverty counties helps EDA meet its congressional requirements.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has announced the 2024 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition (GAFC) Stage Two winners. Each received between $50,000 and $150,000 in prize awards to advance their work supporting small businesses and startups in STEM and research and development (R&D) across priority areas like national and economic security, domestic manufacturing and production, and sustainability and biotechnology.

The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) recently announced $3,889,964 in funding for the Appalachian Investors Alliance (AIA),  a seed fund network that includes several SSTI members. The award was funded through ARC’s Appalachian Regional Initiative for Stronger Economies (ARISE) initiative.

Why are people registering for SSTI's 2024 conference at a record pace?

It might be the timing of SSTI's conference—one month after a tumultuous election season. It could be our focus of the four plenary sessions being what regional innovation and tech-based economic development needs to look like in the future when you consider other great unknowns like what impact artificial intelligence will have on local economies. 

Or maybe it's the low registration price and our record of delivering 2.5 days of proven, peer-driven and community building content, allowing organizations to see this SSTI event as a strategic planning retreat for their leadership teams to enter 2025 energized and invigorated.

Or it might simply be the mental images one conjures of desert beauty, a resort setting, Arizona winter warmth and you needing a setting for a personal and team refresh. 

A recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, Immigrant Entrepreneurship: New Estimates and a Research Agenda provides fresh insights into the growth and characteristics of immigrant-founded firms across the United States. The study also outlines directions for future research in this field.

Key findings from the authors’ statistical analysis include:

State support for higher education in the United States over the last four decades can best be characterized as having fluctuations and shifts in priorities. Using fiscal year (FY) 1980 as a starting point, while overall state support for higher education has grown, it has done so with volatility driven in part by decreased revenue as a result of recessions, and it has frequently taken years for state support to recover to pre-recession levels. In four states, state support on a constant 1983-dollar basis is still less than was spent in 1980. Looking back at the impacts of the Great Recession of 2008 is even more illustrative of the long recovery period after recessions; in FY2024, just 20 states and Washington, D.C., spent more in constant dollars than they did in FY2008. An additional nine states surpassed their FY2008 spending levels at some point after FY2011 but did not maintain that through FY2024. In fact, just one state, North Dakota, has provided support for higher education above FY 2008 values in every year since.

In this Digest issue, SSTI continues its examination on the state of higher education. Today, we start with rising student loan debt, which research shows has dire consequences on borrowers, including delayed home ownership, hindered retirement savings, and financial stress.

Then, we examine college costs and consider why they are rising so fast. We delve into the effects of tuition and fees outstripping household income. Also, our research details the many contributing factors passed on to students, including expanded administrative staffing, inflation, and facilities improvements.

In the last 20 years, college tuition has doubled, making tuition and required fees the major component of the rising costs of attending college. Figure 1 shows that the average tuition and fees at public four-year schools increased by 84% between the 1999-2000 and 2019-2020 academic years, far faster than the 15.7% increase in median household income during that period (note this period was chosen to avoid pandemic era swings in data).

Figure 1: Percentage change from reference year (1999) for bachelor’s tuition and required fees at 4-year universities and real median household income, fall 2000-2019.

Total student loan debt in the United States increased 558% from the first quarter of 2003 to the second quarter of 2024, increasing from $240 billion to $1.58 trillion, according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data. However, as seen in Figure 1, the rate of change has remained essentially flat since the first quarter of 2021, coinciding with a dip in undergraduate enrollment and federal loan forgiveness programs totaling nearly $160 billion, as the U.S. Department of Education reported.

Figure 1. Total student loan debt increased from $240 billion to $1.58 trillion between the 1st quarter of 2003 and the 2nd quarter of 2024.

The Fearless Fund and Fearless Foundation, which made awards restricted to Black female entrepreneurs, announced a settlement on September 10 with the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER) and will end its Fearless Strivers Grant Contest that was targeted in a racial discrimination lawsuit by AAER. The settlement means that states within the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit’s jurisdiction will be subject to the rationale behind the court’s preliminary injunction that found grants awarded through contracts cannot be restricted based on race. For grantmakers outside of these states, the implications are less clear.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution article notes that Arian Simone, Fearless Fund co-founder and CEO, decided to settle because the decision would apply nationwide if they lost in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.