Trustees Of Boston University

Trustees Of Boston University, operating through its Office of the Comptroller as a distinct contracting entity, provides tuition and educational services to the Department of the Navy as a prime contractor on 94% of its recent federal awards, delivered entirely on a full-and-open basis with no set-aside designations. The institution is a tax-exempt private research university headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, serving as the child entity under the parent Trustees Of Boston University, the parent organization holding the broader federal award footprint.

Boston University's federal customer base concentrates heavily on Navy training and personnel support. The top five funding agencies account for 70% of recent awards by count, led overwhelmingly by the Department of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (102 awards, $10.8 million combined potential value), the Bureau of Naval Personnel Chief of Naval Personnel (17 awards, $6.4 million), the Naval Education and Training Command (24 awards, $1.4 million), and the broader Department of the Navy portfolio (21 awards, $1.4 million). A single customer — Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery — anchors the portfolio at roughly 41% of named awards. The potential-value and award-count rankings track closely, indicating customer concentration aligns with dollar concentration. Recent contract work includes $571,331 for Spring 2026 NROTC midshipmen tuition and allowable fees from the Bureau of Naval Personnel (March 2026), $230,138 for Fall 2025 tuition and fees from the Department of the Navy (September 2025), and $89,979.75 for statistician services from Veterans Integrated Service Network 1 under a BPA call through August 2031 (September 2026).

Boston University's federal work sits on three principal Navy parent vehicles anchoring the tuition and fees delivery model: Indefinite Delivery Contract N0018907GZ025 (69 task orders, $9.3 million combined potential value), Indefinite Delivery Contract N0014098G2420 (51 task orders, $3 million), and Basic Ordering Agreement N0018919GZ070 (21 task orders, $8 million). A fourth IDC, N0024410G0007, supports Army training work (16 task orders, $342 thousand). These vehicles concentrate the institution's recent delivery-order pipeline and define its primary procurement channels with defense customers. The institution also holds a newly established single-award Blanket Purchase Agreement with Veterans Integrated Service Network 1 (ceiling $700,000 through August 2031) for data management and REDCap system support for the VA Biorepository Brain Bank, requiring three full-time personnel from Boston University's Biostatistics and Epidemiology Data Analytics Center under NAICS 541715 (Research and Development in Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences).

Award activity has remained relatively flat across the last five years — 11 awards in 2022, declining to 8 in 2026 (year-to-date) — with only one award (combined potential value $68 thousand) reaching ultimate completion in the next twenty-four months and therefore exposed to recompete. The recompete cliff is minimal relative to the broader portfolio.

On the grant side, Boston University acts as prime recipient on a single named federal grant award: "Imaging the Dynamics of Complex Connections" from Naval Sea Systems Command (project grant, award date June 1, 2022, completion January 1, 2026). The institution also subcontracts on research grants from leading prime recipients, including sub-recipient work on career and technical education teacher labor markets research under Georgia State University Research Foundation (Institute of Education Sciences, CFDA 84.305A, EXPLORATORY CTE, performance periods spanning July 2024 through June 2026), supported employment and autism research co-investigator work under University of California, Davis, and co-investigator participation in aerospace ionosphere research under The Aerospace Corporation. Sub-contractor roles span life sciences, engineering, and education research.

Service Contract Inventory data shows Boston University reported SCI-invoiced federal service-contract revenue of $841 thousand in FY2022, $725 thousand in FY2023, and $492 thousand in FY2024, declining year over year, with approximately 1.7 FTEs assigned to federal service contracts above the reporting threshold in FY2024 and zero reported in FY2025. On federal services contracts captured in SCI, government-paid hourly rates ran around $86.69 to $141.86 per hour, with median rates around $100.48 per hour. Across SCI-reportable prime contracts, subcontractors account for roughly 1% of total contractor hours, with one named subcontractor reported, indicating Boston University builds and delivers its own federal services teams with minimal sub-reliance. As a subcontractor itself, Boston University performs R&D and technical work under five named prime contractors: International Aids Vaccine Initiative Inc. (filovirus vaccine development), Physical Sciences Inc. (two SBIR engagements for optical metalens fabrication and broadband optical attenuators), Charles River Analytics Inc. (compartmentalization architecture research), and American Institutes For Research In The Behavioral Sciences (multi-tiered systems of support and technical assistance).

The institution's federal contracting footprint centers almost exclusively on tuition and educational service delivery under NAICS Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools (190 awards) and PSC code Education/Training—Tuition/Registration/Membership Fees (195 awards), with subsidiary research and development engagement under NAICS 541715 and PSC R&D categories. Boston University operates as prime contractor across its entire recent portfolio, with no institutional history of competing as a subcontractor to other prime vendors; its subcontract footprint is confined to research subawards under academic recipients.