Recently the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), an office within the U.S. Department of Education, published a study documenting the economic impact of the nation's historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) (PDF).

The NCES study defined economic impact as the change in overall economic activity in the institution's community associated with four categories of college/university-related expenditures, salaries, other institutional expenditures, and the expenditures of undergraduate and separately, graduate and professional students attending the institution.

This unique study on the economic importance of America's HBCU's found that the combined initial spending associated with the nation's HBCUs totaled $6.6 billion. Public HBCUs accounted for 62 percent of the total amount; total economic impact of the nation's HBCUs was determined to be $10.2 billion with 35 percent due to the multiplier effect. This amount would rank the collective economic impact of the nation's HBCUs 232nd on the Forbes Fortune 500 list of the United States' largest companies (Fortune Magazine, 2006).