When the economy is bad, more people go back to the classroom. OSU Cascades Vice President Becky Johnson says the economy and higher education are counter cyclic; yet higher education can be an economic enhancement. "And so we have demand for education at the same time that the private economy is usually in a downturn, and so having a large education institution in your community actually is a stabilizing force so all of the faculty that we hire all of the students that come here to live, they're all spending money in the community and helping to kind of smooth out some of those cycles." Earlier this month, 252 students graduated from OSU Cascades.   In ten years of existence, OSU Cascades has gone from 250 students to 750. They've graduated 1600 students over that time.