The point is that a public university doesn't gain anything from a good logo, so really anything over $0 is too much. And that $80K doesn't take into account the probably much larger expense of updating that logo throughout the university.

Universities, cities, regions and countries do have PR departments.

Arguably the public image of a university is its most important asset. Because that attracts the best students, researchers and third party funding (public and private).

You assume that the salary is what it costs for the company to have an employee. You need to at least double that.

There is overhead for the person itself (employer subsidized healthcare, office space, equipment) and there is overhead within the organization. Like a secretary and accounting departments who cannot be billed to a client. And management layers of course…

Most likely the 80k are enough to cover one person-year for a consulting agency in Eastern Europe.

That said, the new logo is atrocious.

Oh without a doubt I was underestimating how much a single employee costs a company (and therefore their clients too).

But I believe my point stands regardless—80K is very little money indeed from a group perspective.