(WFSB) – Channel 3 is your back-to-school authority and Eyewitness News is turning the focus on higher education and the money Connecticut’s private colleges and universities pump into the state.

The economic impact reaches $16.5 billion.

Trinity College in Hartford is one of the state’s non-profit private schools where the economic impact is measured and displayed in the upkeep of its 200-year-old buildings and chapel.

“To fix the roof of the chapel cost us about $10 million,” Rojas said. “We renovated our historic Long Walk about 10 years ago and that was a $35 million project.”

The Long Walk are the first group of buildings constructed at Trinity College’s current location on Summit Street and sit in the heart of the campus.

“There are a lot of exciting things happening here,” said Trinity College rising senior, Mohammed Ali. “The windows and the structure of the chapel have been redone and now it’s beautiful, better than ever and there’s no scaffolding in the back.”

Rojas says the college is constantly drawing up plans for the future. Those plans often involve construction, which not only builds Trinity College, but also benefits the surrounding community.

“We try to work with local construction companies and builders as much as we can. They bring in local workers and obviously they’re making money, they go out and pay their bills, they go out and shop, and eat at restaurants so there’s definitely a multiplier effect every time we do a construction project because when we do one it’s always a fairly large one,” Rojas said.

Trinity College just broke ground on a $31.1 million expansion of its Ferris Athletic Center which is set to open next June. It’s providing another jolt to the state’s economic engine.

“Whenever you go build a project you’ve got to go out and pull permits from the city, so certainly the city realizes a certain amount of revenue for the athletic facility alone over $600,000 in permit fees are going to be paid to the city,” Rojas said.

Quinnipiac University economics professor Mark Gius studied the impact and explains how this economic wheel turns.

“Those projects lead to construction jobs, once the building is up you need people to maintain the building and clean the building and teach in the building,” Gius said. “I’m assuming in my study that most of those workers are from Connecticut, so now they’re making money, suppliers are now buying materials from hopefully suppliers in Connecticut and so on. They have more business, they’re making more money, and they get to hire more workers, so it’s a ripple effect across the entire state.”

Here are the highlights from the Connecticut Independent College and University Institute for Research and Public Service, Inc., Economic Impact Study.

It includes 14 private schools represented by the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges.

• Albertus Magnus College – New Haven
• Connecticut College – New London
• Fairfield University – Fairfield
• Goodwin University – East Hartford
• Mitchell College – New London
• Quinnipiac University – Hamden
• Sacred Heart University – Fairfield
• Trinity College – Hartford
• University of Bridgeport – Bridgeport
• University of Hartford – West Hartford
• University of New Haven – New Haven
• University of St. Joseph – West Hartford
• Wesleyan University – Middletown
• Yale – New Haven

These colleges and universities power $16.5 billion dollars into the local economy. Yale University flexes the biggest financial muscle with an impact just under $7 billion at $6,981,564,983.00.

Smaller colleges including Quinnipiac, University of Hartford, and Sacred Heart, each generate more than a $1 billion into their communities every year.

“Most people, when they think of the colleges in CT they think of UConn or something like that, the small private schools actually have a big impact,” Gius said. “A lot of these private colleges get no funding from the state and usually it’s in the form of research grants or something like that, so we’re not costing the state anything or very little in terms of budget but we’re providing a huge economic impact to the state.”

Another measure is the workforce. These schools create 127,000 Connecticut jobs combined. And when you work, you spend.

“Workers have to go eat somewhere, they buy their gas somewhere, they buy homes and so on and so forth so that’s the type of impact we’re looking at.”

While private colleges also benefit from their non-profit status their donors have become part of the building block that funds scholarships and lowers tuition.

“Like any non-profit we are exempt. There are some taxes that we do pay on our property but we’re largely tax exempt. And of course, anyone who makes a donation to the college can realize the tax benefit as well. But we rely on tuition you know our families who are investing in their children’s education, are investing in trinity and then we have a significant advancement operation where we go out and fundraise and really engage our alumni and our families to help support the college,” Rojas said.

The economic impact study also counts the bucks that students, staff, alumni and visitors pay out. Rising Trinity College senior Mohammed Ali says he’s all for the upgrades.

“We have these beautiful Hogwarts-like, old, archaic, gothic dorms,” said Ali. “There are a lot of construction projects in and around the dorms. The windows and the structure of the chapel have been redone and now it’s beautiful, better than ever and there’s no scaffolding in the back,” he said.

After graduation, he plans to come back and give back, revving up that economic engine in the future.

“Hartford is beautiful but even the surrounding towns are small, quaint, really nice, so once I’m able to afford it, yes! 100% I would come back.”

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