I think it is reasonable for Harvard to charge the tuition it does (with the present levels of financial aid). Lots of people pay it, and then leave Harvard -- at least in my time, in the mid-90s -- with very manageable debt. So Harvard seems to be worth the tuition it charges.

For Harvard to lower tuition or even to significantly increase financial aid for middle-income students would seem to take money away from research that benefits everybody in order to benefit the pocketbooks of a handful of middle-income families.

One could argue that high tuition forces students to go into high-paying careers like investment banking at the expense of more service-oriented work. If so, I'm an exception; I never considered such a career. But if that is a real problem, then the solution is to provide debt forgiveness for graduates who go into particular careers, rather than subsidize the future CEOs of America.
 

A very interesting post, thank you. But of course, subsidizing career choices has its own issues....

You raise an interesting question, though: Does Harvard's financial burden encourage people to go into high-paying, self-interest jobs on Wall Street and the like?

Maybe. But I wonder if there aren't larger, even more powerful cultural forces already pushing Harvard undergrads in that direction. General idolatry of wealth, for example.

Or more disturbing—if that isn't the reason why more and more students choose Harvard; because they see it as the road to money-culture riches.
 

Those latter, intangible issues are interesting ones. But I don't feel most of us are knowledgeable enough about financial-aid decision-making to be second-guessing the pros who believe they are making the school workable for every kind of family.

As to your point about tuition being a third of the affluent family's income: Parents do SAVE for their kids' college, too, y'know. They don't have to pay out of their current paycheck.

Standing Eagle
 

SE--Leave it to the pros? Is that what you said about the war in Iraq? I don't think so....
 

Flash:

Harvard not a democracy!


America acts on behalf of its people, who therefore are obliged to get informed (to a level I imagine few of us are informed about financial-aid algorithms).

SE
 

So willful ignorance is fine in an oligarchy, but unacceptable in a democracy?

Interesting. But somewhat lower than your usual standards, SE.

Of course, your argument might address the point of why Harvard's decisionmakers often act as if they don't have to explain themselves, but it hardly addresses the issue of whether the rest of us should ask important questions.
 

All I'm saying is that actuarial work is hard. It's not clear to me that you're raising a discrete question of financial-aid philosophy. If your question is about decisions at the margins I don't think we're going to get anywhere in a comments thread.

Obviously, I agree with you that disagreements about VALUES matter even in oligarchies and especially much in Universities.


As to the substance:

Yes, $45K is a lot of money. But not if you don't have to pay it. And if you do have to pay it I imagine that means some expert has decided (perhaps wrongly, or perHAPS [but I doubt it] under a flawed value-system) -- has decided, I say, that you're pretty fucking rich. I have no problem with regressive taxation like that, especially when it's voluntary.

Standing Eagle
 

Some Harvard faculty members earn a salary very close to the income of those "middle-income families." Yes, faculty members (or is it just tenured faculty members?) can receive an interest-free loan for their child's tuition at Harvard, which is most certainly nothing to sneeze at, but there are still many other expenses to be paid as well (room, board, books, and so forth). Unlike some other universities, Harvard does not give free tuition to faculty children.
 

Does anyone understand how fas always has a big defiict but every year its endowment seems to rise by billions of dollars?
 

The loan faculty can receive only equals a full year of income, interest free. Not very competitive to what the University of Chicago, for example offers, the costs of tuition at Chicago to be used at Chicago or elsewhere.

For a faculty member with three children close in age a Harvard salary is NOT sufficient to afford the cost of living in Cambridge AND save the necessary costs for college. It is a lot more sensible to move to another university where there is more assistance with the costs of college tuition.

The cost of a modest house in Cambridge, with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths ranges from 700,000 to 1,000,000. Even with a hefty downpayment equal to 20% of that sum, a 30 year loan at 5% leaves annual housing expenditures at around 50K-80K. Add the cost of food and other basic necessities and there is no room for college saving. If on top of that the family needs to pay for day care --at about 2k per child per month-- this family will be BORROWING money just to make ends meet.

The most likely scenarios for the Harvard faculty of the future are:

1. They will have one child or less
2. They will come from very affluent families or have parents commanding very high earnings, enough to at least have $1,000,000 in savings to purchase a house.
3. They will know they need to leave to another University with more generous financial assitance a few years before their offspring hit college age, to be vested in those plans at the appropriate time.
4. They will not be very smart and eventually face the fact that their offspring will be significantly less well educated than their parents.
 

Perhaps this is the simple truth about Brother West leaving to Princeton. He has college bound children, doesn't he?
 

The AVERAGE salary of a Harvard full professor is 177.4, of an Associate Professor 100.0, of an Assistant Professor 91.3 and of an Instructor 68.8. These salaries are a fraction of the AVERAGE salaries of Harvard administrators.

It is very challenging, virtually IMPOSSIBLE, for a SINGLE person living on that salary to SAVE enough to eventually have $100-200K for a downpayment of a house in Cambridge. For a couple at those salaries --particulary the instructors, assistants and associates-- it is also very difficult to afford the cost of living in Cambridge.

The problem is not unique to Harvard, it's worse at Stanford, for example because of the high cost of real estate in Palo Alto, which places many junior faculty in the position of indentured servants of Stanford purchasing below market university property (Harvard has a few of these, but not as many).

Any newly minted PhD with high school level math skills can figure out that a Harvard faculty position is not competitive. Given these incentives, are there reasons to assume that Harvard is attracting the best candidates in the job market? or just the best with poor math skills?
 

President Faust could correct these distortions within five years simply by setting faculty salary increases equal to half of the returns on the Harvard endowment. This would be well within the reach of every department and school and would send an unequivocal signal of commitment on the part of the University to attracting and retaining the very best faculty.
 

Unless 10:03 defines "administrators" as merely the President, Provost, and the top administrator in each faculty, full professors at Harvard earn much more on average than administrators do, and many associate professors earn more than the "average" administrator.
 

And 8:43 p.m.'s question about the continuing FAS deficit remains unanswered...
 

didn't the number of dean, deanlets and deanettes increase substantially under Summers? not just in the center but in the tubs? has anyone looked at the impact of this growth in the cost structure of each tub?

and they then can't afford the best faculty!
 

There are no deans in the center. If you're going to blame administrators (after all they don't do anything) for all Harvard's problems, at least get your terms right.
 

the point is not whether administrators do too much, too little or anything at all.

the point is that the share of faculty salaries relative to all salaries in the budgets of the tubs has dropped precipitously. This is relevant in the context of discussing whether Harvard is funding faculty at levels that are adequate to attract and retain the best doing research and teaching.
 

too many deanlets...
 

What a wonderful celebration of President Faust's inauguration it would be if she announced a 10% faculty salary increase. What a signal that would send about the value she places on the faculty.
 

what an odd place Harvard seems to be. close to 40b endowment, extraordinary returns, and yet runs a deficit in fas, doesn't pay faculty well, does not offer sufficient financial assistance to students. what do they use the money for then?
 

This has been an interesting thread. I had no idea Harvard professors feel Harvard doesn't pay them well in the aggregate. (I take it for granted that most people feel personally underpaid.) According to the AAUP, only Rockefeller U full professors earn more on average than Harvard full professors, and Harvard is 8% ahead of #3 Stanford. Sure, the cost of living is high in Boston, but the average NYU full professor earns 18% less than at Harvard.

2:52pm makes an interesting point about faculty salaries falling as a percentage of Harvard's budget. Let's assume that's true. (I can't confirm it myself, because the Fact Book doesn't provide a faculty payroll expense subtotal.) If so, part of it could be these extra deans and associate provosts (who do seem to be sprouting up everywhere). Archie Epps, the old Dean of Students in the College, seems to have been replaced by several people. Some of it is also surely that we're doing more work in the sciences relative to other fields, with a consequent need for expensive buildings and instrumentation. And some of it is complying with ever-more-complex regulations.

But there are also now a lot of staff people doing things faculty used to do: advising students, managing programs, etc. Why is that? Is it that faculty no longer want to do those things? Or is it that for some reason they're unable to do those things? Another way of putting it: is Harvard spending more on staff and plant in order to help faculty, or is Harvard merely diverting funds away from faculty, as 2:52pm seems to imply?
 

if it's true that staff people are advising students this is a serious breach of basic academic principles. Let's hope this is not the case.
 

The following post is very troubling:

"staff people doing things faculty used to do: advising students, managing programs, etc. Why is that? Is it that faculty no longer want to do those things? Or is it that for some reason they're unable to do those things? Another way of putting it: is Harvard spending more on staff and plant in order to help faculty, or is Harvard merely diverting funds away from faculty, as 2:52pm seems to imply?"

if it is true that staff people are managing programs, what programs exactly? managing them without faculty supervision? Harvard has clear rules to hire and review faculty that are aligned with the goals of the university of pursuing excellent research and, to some extent, excellent teaching. The assumption of the Corporation and Donors is that it is those hired by those rules who advise students and direct programmatic activities.

If that is not the case and Harvard now depends more on staff to doing those things, the rules by which they are hired and supervised need to be thoroughly examined in order to assess whether what these staff do is equally aligned with serving the mission of the university.

This thread suggests that much is adrift in what used to be the premier university in America. Let's hope President Faust can recognize and correct some of it.
 

It would be really simple for the
Corporation to commission a study that includes a survey and interviews to students and faculty to ascertain who is advising students, how well, who is directing programmatic activities, how well, and how do students and faculty feel about what is going on in each department and school.

The study would shed light on the important question of who is really in charge at Harvard.
 

"is Harvard merely diverting funds away from faculty, as 2:52pm seems to imply?"

You bet Harvard is diverting funds and power away from faculty. Have you heard the way some of the deans and administrators refer to faculty members? as children, as incompetent, as egotistic and self-serving.

This was brough on by Summers who created a climate of lack of respect for faculty members. Some deans and administrators must have picked this up and created their own sub-culture. Bok repaired some of the damage and Faust will probably continue to do the same. But it's true that some of those appointed by Summers and who worked closely with him are still around and they may or may not be able to change the habits they developed during his reign.