ALUMNI IMPACT

From its first days, Colorado State University’s biggest impact on the state of Colorado has been its graduating students – alumni who have gone into the state, nation, and world not only with advanced job skills but also with an expanded mindset that has inspired and expanded the collective sense of what is possible.

In 1884, the college that became Colorado State University conferred degrees on its first three graduates. At the time, Colorado had fewer than 200,000 residents and an economy largely driven by agriculture and mining.

Today, in a state with 6 million people and a diversified, high-tech economy, the CSU System has three universities that together educate more than 50,000 students each year; altogether, they have almost 350,000 living alumni. The majority of these alumni reside in Colorado, where they contribute immeasurably to their families, professions, and communities.

Economic analysis highlights important dimensions of collective alumni impact. In a 2021 fiscal study, CSU economists found that nearly one in 25 Colorado workers holds a CSU System degree. In 2019, more than 112,000 alumni then working in Colorado had combined earnings of about $7.57 billion, which the researchers calculated to be $2.9 billion more than they would have earned with no education beyond high school.

These earnings supported more than $209 million in income tax revenue and $128 million in sales, use, and excise tax revenue, about 3 percent of state collections in each category.

More important, many CSU System alumni maintain or develop roots in Colorado. Researchers found that 86 percent of degree holders who started off as Colorado residents stayed after graduation; half who had lived elsewhere made Colorado their home after earning degrees.

CSU’s class of 1884 foretold alumni influence: Libbie Coy, the first woman to graduate from any college or university in Colorado, became an educator and civic leader; George Glover became an influential veterinarian who started CSU’s top-ranked program; and Leonides Loomis became a successful farmer in a family of Northern Colorado leaders.

That was just the beginning.