What the hell does Gross mean, "critical mass"? Since when does a humanist (even if he's a mathematician) speak that way?
 

The fact that Harvard's President has his --soon to be her-- offices amidst the temporary homes of students is of great symbolic value. It would indeed be a shame to kick the students out to make more room for the growing bureaucracy.

Why not instead create some office space in some of the other houses in the Yard? Even better, why not locate some of these offices in some of the classroom buildings?

Providing administrators the opportunity to walk among students and faculty, and to take short walks during the day as they visit one another, might help remind them of the core mission they should be serving.

You do well to focus on this topic Rich, it is an issue of great symbolic importance. And yes Drew should pronounce herself on this matter.
 

I agree but calling for a sit in is not appropriate. Why not instead call for an academic debate on the mission of the University? It might be healthy to Harvard to have a serious intellectual debate on the ways to best balance teaching, research, administration, construction and fundraising.
 

Symbols are very important at Harvard, and the Yard is full of them.

Turning Mass Hall into an office only building would be more sacrilegious than moving John Harvard statue or the Radcliffe Water Fountain.

Would anyone seriously suggest at Harvard to replace the chair the President sits in during commencement for something more comfortable? Or asking the Overseers to turn in their top hats for something more comfortable? Or replacing the Latin oration for something those in attendance actually understand?
 

Recall the eloquent quote by Harry Lewis when the Crimson first broke this story more than a year ago:

“I suppose different people may see different symbols in that—students losing their places to administrative bureaucrats, the College being swallowed up by the University, or maybe the FAS selling an heirloom to pay the bills.”

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=510928
 

In fact, 12:25, is that you, Harry?
 

The place is overmanaged, for sure, and likely to become more so.

A decade ago there were 1,352 faculty --excluding the Medical school who counts as faculty many doctors who don't teach-- to a total staff count f 9,310, 2,854 of which were Central Admin.

It's now 2117 faculty, to a total of 11,520 staff of which 2,905 are central administration. Notice that most administrative growth has not been in central administration, but in the schools.

This is a financial challenge for some of the tubs who have seen admin costs grow uncontrolled. It is also the reason for quality problems in the schools as there is no direct impact of administration on instructional quality.

This genie is out of the bottle. These administrators are in charge and they will help themselves first, destroying the university in the process. You can bet students will be kicked out of Mass Hall and eventually out of their classrooms to make room for the growing bureaucracy. You can also bet these administrators will impose higher and higher taxes and levies on tuition and research to pay themselves.

The gradual reduction in the power of faculty is therefore an imperative for those who now rule Harvard. They will be running faculty meetings soon.
 

Isn't it interesting that the avalanche of management consultants that have descended on Harvard over the last 5 years did not suggest the obvious: administrative reorganization and streamlining?

Many other bureaucracies that had grown out of control --Defense, many US Government Agencies, Private Corporations-- have done this. Why has this not been even suggested at Harvard?

Who hires the consultants at Harvard?
 

Actually, one could debate the question at a faculty meeting--maybe garner enough interest to improve attendance...
 

I hope it doesn't seem self-serving to post the end of an article I did a few years ago on John D. Long, McKinley's VP, and TR's boss as Sec. of the Navy when the Maine was blown up, also a translator of Virgil's Aeneid (hence my initial interest), and generally a very good, not quite great, man. Back then Mass. Hall was reserved for seniors (before the Houses of course).
The article is at
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~fdo/publications/essays/thomas.htm

Apologies for the sentimentality!

"Long died of congestive heart disease in the house that he loved, in Hingham, Mass., on 28 August 1915, some two months after the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library opened. As President of the Harvard Board of Overseers from 1902 to 1914, John Long, who himself lost a nephew on the Titanic, would have received reports of the Library Visiting Committee (whose members included J. P. Morgan), and would have been at the meeting of the Governing Boards in November 1912, which approved plans for the building of Widener on the site of the previous library, Gore Hall. Six years earlier, on 26 September 1906, the beginning of Harry Elkins Widener's senior year at Harvard, Long had come to Cambridge, to attend a meeting of the Overseers, but also to deliver his son who was beginning his freshman year (Journal 302):

'I took him into the college yard at the same entrance at which I went on a similar errand 53 years ago, in 1853. How well I remember that morning: Father walked with me up the avenue to the steps of the library, Gore Hall. On them we sat & there parted, I, going to my lessons, he, returning home. I was a little boy, only fourteen years old, a child, homesick. I remember that I cried, & though he did not cry I doubt not his heart broke more than mine.'

There is, in Harvard's Massachusetts Hall, not far from Room 22, John Long's room in his senior year, a commemorative plaque, dedicated on his birthday, 27 October, in 1947, by his children, Margaret and Peirce. Long's journal entry from 28 September, 1856 (the beginning of his senior year) may have decided the location: 'I begin to think that I love my room better than any other place in the vicinity.'"

That's the sort of thing we will lose by removing students from such places, which seems to me hard to justify. The plaque is in the north entryway stairwell and is now endangered, I suspect!
 

Well said Professor Thomas! you are still our hero.

But isn't it logical that a University that has come to see as acceptable to run dangerous psychological experiments on its students would also see them as expendable?
 

Well said Professor Thomas! you are still our hero.

But isn't it logical that a University that has come to see as acceptable to run dangerous psychological experiments on its students would also see them as expendable?
 

I'm a bit confused by the numbers offered by 1:38. A decade ago it was 6.88 admin per faculty member. Now it's 5.44 admin per faculty member. How is that more bureaucratic?
 

My question too.
 

The most basic problem with 1:38's numbers is the absurd claim that more than 750 faculty were added in the last decade! If the reality on that score is more like 100 (quite generous), and if the claim about expanded administrators is actually correct (who knows?), then his/her point might stand. So 1:38, how about some sources?
 

you beat me to it, 12:47
 

The numbers for administration quoted above match those in this report, but not the numbers for faculty

http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/budget/factbook/