The cost of running Harvard

This is from the 28 August 2017 Bloomberg Businessweek:

Salaries and wages: $1.8 billion

Services purchased (catering, security, etc.): $583 million

Benefits: $530 million, roughly equal to the revenue from graduate programs

Depreciation: $338 million

Real estate (leases, utilities, etc.): $345 million

Other (subcontractors, publishing): $323 million

Supplies and equipment run $257m, scholarships $142m, and interest on the debt $235m, with travel expenses, advertising, and postage at smaller amounts.

Total operating costs are $4.7 billion, with undergraduate tuition covering 6.4 percent of that, graduate tuition covering 11.2 percent.

That is from Kyle Stock, I cannot find it on-line.  (I am a biased source, but do note that the new, gated version of Bloomberg Businessweek is consistently excellent.)  One of the difficulties with scaling up, of course, is that Harvard cannot always so easily scale the quality and resources of its donors.  “Harvard as we know it” may be as large as the current set of donors can support.  And “Harvard as we know it” likes…”Harvard as we know it,” not some other Harvard.

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