Harvard's Economic Impact in Boston

Harvard University has been a Boston institution for more than a century.

A number of the University's teaching and research schools and landmark facilities are located in the City. They include the School of Medicine, the largest of Harvard's graduate faculties located in Boston since 1810; the School of Public Health (1922), which evolved out of the nation's first graduate training program in public health; and the School of Business Administration (1908), one of the earliest explorations in the new field of professional management training. In addition, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' Athletics facilities, which host the oldest intercollegiate athletic program in the country, are located in Boston, as well as the Arnold Arboretum (1872), home of more than seven thousand living collections in the landscape and five million specimens in the herbaria.

Harvard's Boston roots are deep, and it is our belief that our commitment to our host community of Boston will continue to grow and our relationship prosper over future centuries as the University develops its new academic campus in Allston.

Engines of Economic Growth

Contributions of Boston's eight research universities to the area economy (2004)

The Metropolitan Boston area has long been recognized as a leader in the field of education, innovation and knowledge. Research at the region's eight research universities -- Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, Tufts, and University of Massachusetts-Boston -- has had a fundamental impact on the growth of industry and society. The result of this research has helped to define industries such as computing, information technology, medical devices, biotechnology and genetics. University research has also played a significant role in the shaping of current economic and social policies, ranging from Nobel Prize-winning theories of economic growth to long-term analyses of the Social Security system.

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Innovation & Opportunity

Harvard's contribution to the Boston metropolitan area economy

After eight years of sustained economic growth, the Boston metropolitan area (along with the rest of the United States) slid into recession in 2001. Having seen its private employment base grow by nearly 21 percent between 1992 and 2000, the Boston area lost more than 100,000 jobs between 2000 and 2003 – a decline of 5.6 percent. The unemployment rate for the area rose from 2.2 percent in 2000 to 5.0 percent in 2003. While the Boston area finally began to show some signs of recovery in the spring of 2004, the region continued to lag behind the rest of the nation on the path back to prosperity.

Higher education has long been one of the strongest sectors of the Boston area economy. The experience of the past three years highlights two important aspects of higher education’s role in the regional economy. First, while many of the industries that led the region’s growth in the 1990s have sustained substantial job losses during the recession, employment at Boston area colleges and universities has generally remained stable – and even grown slightly.

Even more important, the region’s educational institutions – in particular, its major research universities – are a major source of the innovation, entrepreneurial energy, and talent that are so necessary to the Boston area’s continued recovery, and to its long-term prosperity.

Harvard University exemplifies higher education’s role as both a major source of jobs for Boston area residents, and as a major force in building the region’s future. Harvard is one of the area’s largest employers, with more than 16,000 fulland part-time workers in 2002. Its construction projects and its purchases of goods and services create thousands of additional jobs. And while it is by no means immune to the pressures of the business cycle, Harvard has remained much more stable during the past few years than many other leading employers in the region.

Harvard is also one of the Boston area’s leading research centers – a prime source of the new knowledge and new ideas that will fuel the growth of the economy in the years ahead. It is the region’s leading provider of graduate and professional education – a magnet for and a developer of the talent that will shape the region’s future – and one of the Boston area’s largest providers of continuing education for adults. Harvard research provides ideas – and Harvard faculty members and graduates provide the entrepreneurial talent – that help move the economy forward. In 2002, Harvard’s own operations, as well as the economic activity it generated throughout the region, produced $162 million in revenues for the Commonwealth and for Boston area municipalities.

This report documents Harvard’s impact on the economy of the Boston metropolitan area – as a source of talent, new knowledge and new businesses, as a major enterprise in its own right, and as a partner with Boston area communities.

The report was prepared in 2004 by the consulting firm Appleseed.

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Sustaining the Boston Renaissance

Smart Growth: Education, Skilled Workers and the Future of Cold-Weather Cities

Harvard Economics Professor Edward Glaeser, director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, summarizes key findings of his research on why certain regions, such as Boston, have thrived in recent decades. This presentation was delivered April 27, 2005 at a conference sponsored by the Rappaport Institute at the Kennedy School of Government and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s New England Public Policy Center.

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