Cal State Fullerton Plays Key Economic Role, Study Says : Education: University officials say salaries, benefits and spending provide annual $489-million boost to the county. School may also soon be city’s largest employer.

Cal State Fullerton contributes more than college graduates to Orange County, according to a new report the university released Tuesday: it also pumps about $489 million into the county’s economy every year.

Cal State Fullerton’s Institute for Economic and Environmental Studies reported that salaries, benefits and other spending by the university have a $320.9-million economic impact on the county. And when students buy pens and pencils, get a few hamburgers at local fast-food spots and go to the movies, it adds up to an additional $168.3 million annually, researchers concluded.

The study, conducted during the 1992-93 fiscal year, is the most comprehensive ever done on the economic impact of the Fullerton campus, said Robert A. Kleinhenz, the report’s co-author.

“The university definitely makes an economic contribution, because it’s bringing dollars into the community that might not be here otherwise,” said Kleinhenz, a Cal State Fullerton economics lecturer.

“The university is not just an institution for instruction,” Kleinhenz said. It is “a purchaser of goods and services from businesses in Orange County and outside. Students buy books, food and other amenities. There are also a variety of functions that bring members of the community to the campus for theater and athletic events--and they not only buy tickets, but spend money on restaurants and parking.”

With about 2,800 full-time and part-time workers, the university is Fullerton’s second-largest employer. It could become the city’s largest employer within two years, however.

The largest employer, Hughes Aircraft Co., has about 6,800 people on its payroll in Fullerton, but the company announced last week that its Fullerton plant will be closed over the next two years. Most of the Fullerton employees will be transferred to plants in Los Angeles County.

University President Milton A. Gordon commissioned the report, which also indicated that spending traced to the university generated a total of 9,082 full-time and part-time jobs in the county in 1992-93.

Gordon said he is “amazingly pleased at the results” of the report.

“You know the importance of the university intuitively, but now this quantifies it,” Gordon said.

Kleinhenz and Anil K. Puri, an economics professor and the report’s other author, said Cal State Fullerton has an impact outside Orange County as well. They found that the university had an impact totaling $591 million in the rest of Southern California, where it created 11,203 full-time and part-time jobs in 1992-93.

A UC Irvine study on its economic impact in 1992-93 indicated that UCI generated an economic impact of $1.01 billion in Orange County. More people work for UCI than Cal State Fullerton: UCI had about 9,700 employees, about 1,000 of whom were faculty, that year. Fewer students attend UCI, however. In 1992-93, about 17,000 went to UCI, while about 23,600 attended Cal State Fullerton.

Chapman University’s most recent economic impact report, in 1991, showed it contributed nearly $46 million to the county’s economy in the 1990-91 year.

In addition to reporting on its effect on the local economy, the Cal State Fullerton study found that Fullerton graduates return the state’s educational investment back to California.

Most of the school’s graduates settle not far from the campus. As of fall, 1993, the university had awarded 100,764 degrees, and 85% of those graduates currently live in Southern California.

Kleinhenz and Puri said state taxpayers spend about $26,900 to educate each student that graduates from the California State University system. The economists estimated that each Cal State Fullerton graduate will pay about $94,770 more in state taxes over a lifetime than a student with just a high school diploma, reaping a $67,870 return to the state for the education.

“The return is 250%,” Puri said. “This is a good investment, no matter how you look at it.”