Harvard Public Affairs and Communications has grown from approximately 31 full-time-equivalent staff in 2008 to nearly 60 today, an increase of more than 90% in 17 years. Communications has become one of the fastest-growing administrative functions in U.S. higher education — and it has never been benchmarked across the sector.
EPR Research and 5W today released The University & Higher Ed PR Spend Transparency Study 2026, the first systematic accounting of communications spending across the top 100 U.S. universities.
The Headline: Communications Is Now Top-Heavy at Every Major University
Harvard Public Affairs and Communications (HPAC). HPAC grew from 31 FTEs in December 2008 to 51 by 2013 — a 60+ percent increase in five years. Current rosters indicate HPAC operates at approximately 60 staff. Harvard's 12 schools each operate their own communications offices, layered on top of HPAC.
Yale, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Columbia, University of Chicago, NYU, Penn, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth. Each operates a comparable central communications office paired with school-level communications staff.
The Sector-Wide Pattern
Layer 1: Central University Communications. A 30–60 FTE central office under a VP-level officer covering media relations, executive communications, brand management, digital, alumni-facing communications, government relations, and strategic planning.
Layer 2: School-Level Communications. Each professional school operates a 3–10 FTE communications office reporting to the dean.
Layer 3: Institute and Center Communications. Major centers (Harvard-Smithsonian, Radcliffe Institute, MIT Lincoln Lab, Stanford SLAC) operate their own dedicated public affairs functions.
Combined, a top-tier university like Harvard operates an estimated 150–250 communications professionals — comparable in scale to a mid-size Fortune 500 corporate communications operation.
Estimated Spend Per Institution
University TierEstimated Annual Communications SpendTop 10 R1 / Ivy League$20M–$40M per institutionTop 25 R1$10M–$25M per institutionTop 50 R1 / large state flagship$5M–$15M per institutionTop 100 R1 + R2$2M–$8M per institution
Estimated combined annual communications spend across the top 100 U.S. universities: $400M–$800M.
Why University Communications Has Grown So Fast
1. Crisis Volume Has Increased. Title IX investigations, campus protests, faculty misconduct cases, divestment debates, antisemitism-and-Islamophobia complaints, presidential resignations, and federal investigations have moved from occasional events to constant operating conditions.
2. Federal Relations Has Expanded. Most R1 universities now staff a Washington office full-time.
3. Donor Communications Has Professionalized. Major university capital campaigns (Harvard's $9B+, Stanford's $7B+, Yale's $7B+, Penn's $4B+) require sustained communications infrastructure.
4. Branded Content and Owned Media Have Replaced Earned Media in Importance.
5. Government Investigation and Litigation Risk. Title IX, ADA, FERPA, antitrust, federal research grant compliance, and post-October 2023 antisemitism investigations have made communications inseparable from legal and risk functions.
Why It Matters
The U.S. higher education sector employs an estimated 5,000+ communications professionals at the top 100 institutions alone, operates combined budgets approaching $1 billion annually, and is the third-fastest-growing administrative function on most major campuses. Yet the sector has never been benchmarked.
