Harvard imposes salary freeze, postpones faculty searches

I say there Buffy, how is one to do with only $36.9 billion. The patches on my elbows are the real thing now.

Bolt the windows shut before professors start hurling themselves to the ground!!

HA!

"The battles are so fierce because the stakes are so small"... this will be an interesting winter in Harvard Yard. Perhaps FAS should sell tickets to the circus to raise money.

Don

T'would be interesting to know just how much tuition would be without the help from the endowment. Anyone hazard a guess?

I am apalled that Harvard didn't think to make smaller, more gradual cuts earlier than this and is now resorting to such drastic measures. The salary and hiring freeze is affecting more than just professors in tweed - that university runs on the hard work and dedication of a lot of administrative staff who are already being pushed pretty far as a consequence of Harvard's general bad management. I wouldn't be surprised if the same departments ordered to not promote or give raises to their staff are also still paying for those employees' Blackberries and lunches. Glad I got out when I could.

Hey brother, can you spare a billion?

The salaries at Harvard were comparatively low to begin with. But the benefits will always be enough to make people stay. Thats why they call it the Crimson Coffin

It sounds like a reasonable step to take, faced with a rather sudden change, if their too-large portfolio will be paying far less in current income, as seems probable. No doubt they are thinking that they cannot continue to act as though everything can grow forever at 5% per year, and some re-adjustments will be necessary going forward. However I don't understand why they did not first identify several progams that are critical to a world class university and simultaneously announce that these programs would still be vigorously pursued. Also, since Harvard recently announced that ordinary people would get almost full scholarships, I do hope they do not adjust their admissions policy to favor paying fat cats, and believe that should make some public reassurance that this will not happen..

Not that shocking actually. At $37billion, on even a 10% return, endowment gave the school nearly $4B every yr . So this is the short-fall they have to make up.

If the letter covers FAS, that's Harvard College, not Harvard University.

I find it shocking that the letter implies a dissatisfaction of the Faust administration having a contract with the employees' union - resulting in small pay increases for employees with the lowest wages. Yes, faculty may have to go without a $5000 pay increase, while a groundskeeper might make 30 cents more an hour to help feed his kids. Is this bad? I guess he thinks it is too bad that Harvard is obligated to uphold this contract.

Yeah, smart move faculty, ousting a president who was a specilaist in economics because he expressed a view you didn't like - and now ending up with a clueles president who has no idea how to run the business side of a university...you made your own bed here faculty!

I guess I'll have to attend Yale instead next year!

I guess turning the welfare of Harvard as an educational institution over to the Business School didn't work out so well, did it?

Harvard, "The hardest school in the country to get into..but the easiest to get out of "
In case you don't know what this old saying means, the classes are so easy.

I'm not sure where "fact checker" gets his facts from... but the idea that FAS is "Harvard College, not Harvard University" is wrong on several points.

First, Harvard College is one of the schools (the oldest, actually) that make up Harvard University, so they're not mutually exclusive.

Second, FAS provides instruction not only at Harvard College, but also at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard Extension School, and Harvard Summer School.

If anyone doubts the benefits of unions, the fact that HUCTW protected its workers from wage freezes should change their mind.