Stanford University has the lowest faculty-to-student ratio, at 2:1, among 11 peer institutions of comparable size and prestige, according to an analysis by The Daily using data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The dataset includes Stanford and 14 other universities.  

Faculty-to-student ratio is a comparison of full-time instructional staff and the undergraduate student population.

In 2024, Stanford employed 20,394 individuals: a staggering number compared to other Silicon Valley colleges but comparable to peer institutions like Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale. This analysis expounds on statistics previously reported on by The San Francisco Business Journal, which stated that Stanford “employs nearly five times as many staff” compared to other Silicon Valley colleges.

Using data from the NCES, The Daily tested if Stanford’s inflated staff population remained a trend when examined against other universities of similar student population, staff population and endowment size. Based on these characteristics, The Daily compared Stanford to the universities in the Ivy League and the University of Chicago.

The Daily’s analysis showed that Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania employ similar amounts of staff as Stanford, Harvard and Yale despite having significantly smaller endowment. The average salary of the instructional staff at these universities is comparable. It remains unclear how much federal funding, or other forms of funding, may impact these schools’ yearly budget.

Data from the (NCES) reveals the university’s administrative bloat – an issue in higher education involving inflated administrative populations when equated to teaching faculty and students – is comparable when analyzed against other elite private universities.

Administrative bloat is not a new concern for Stanford. In 2024, The Daily published data indicating the school’s staff-to-student ratio had doubled since 1996. This concern can also be seen at the national level, with a 2025 congressional hearing on the issue, which included a current Brown student using administrative bloat as a sub-argument to call attention to the issue of inflated tuition costs and fixed pricing among Ivy League institutions. 

Each school was compared using a fixed set of characteristics. Some characteristics measured university population, including the number of total staff, full-time staff, full-time instructional staff, full-time non-institutional staff, undergraduate students and graduate students. Other characteristics measured financial metrics like the average salary of instructional staff, size of endowment and whether or not the school guarantees housing for all four years. 

In this analysis, instructional staff is defined as an occupation where the primary role is teaching, research or public service.

Four universities — the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), San Jose State University (SJSU) and Santa Clara University (SCU) — were included in the original San Francisco Business Journal piece, selected based on proximity to Stanford. 

University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) was not included in the Business Journal’s analysis because it did not fall within the nine counties that the publication covers. However, The Daily included UC Berkeley because of its comparable reputation with Stanford.  

The other nine schools included in The Daily’s analysis were California Institute of Technology (CalTech), University of Chicago, Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University. Each of these schools were selected as peer institutions to Stanford, in terms of school rank and prestige. 

The data presented in this article demonstrates the possibility that all elite universities face the issue of administrative bloat, and that some are better equipped with financial resources to reduce the impact on tuition paying students. 

Disclosure: This article is not a comprehensive analysis of these universities’ employment characteristics, but an overview of areas of note.