Harvard Gets Hammered
Posted on September 28th, 2009 in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »
In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Kevin Carey, the director of an educational thinktank called Education Sector, goes postal on Harvard.
His main gripe? That with all its wealth, Harvard has not expanded the number of students to whom it offers an undergraduate degree.
Harvard spent [its] money on many things. But not a dollar went to increasing the number of undergraduates it chose to bless with a Harvard education. …That is remarkable stinginess. Harvard undergraduate degrees are immensely valuable, conferring a lifetime of social capital and prestige. The university receives many more highly qualified applicants than it chooses to admit. Because the existing class includes underqualified children of legacies, rich people, politicians, celebrities, and others who benefit from the questionable Ivy League admissions process, Harvard could presumably increase the size of its entering class by, say, 50 percent while improving the overall academic quality of the students it admits.
Carey dismisses the university’s recent expansion financial aid as merely “a fantastic public-relations coup,” on the grounds that…
…the true currency of elite higher education is admissions, not financial aid. And even more than graduate or professional programs, of which Harvard has many, undergraduate education is where colleges decide whether to narrow class divisions or make them wider.
What’s really happening here, Carey argues, is that undergraduates have become unimportant to the wealth- and prestige-obsessed institution except as window dressing.
Undergraduates are increasingly being used as decoration, passing strangers handy for photographs in brochures. That’s why admissions officers work so hard to get them in all manner of shapes, sizes, and colors. And that’s why nobody wants to admit more of them—you only need so many to fill out a brochure, and the more applicants you reject the more awesomely selective and unattainable—and thus attractive—you seem.
This is all a pretty broad brush. I’ll leave you to consider whether Carey’s strokes paint an accurate picture.
9 Responses
9/28/2009 7:09 pm
According to his biography, “Carey holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Binghamton University” (part of the SUNY system; 2008 enrollment 439,624) … “and a Master of Public Administration from Ohio State University.” (2008 enrollment 61,568) Both are part of enormous public education systems with missions to provide a solid education for a broad population. Harvard may be guilty of some of things he says it is, but fundamentally it is just a different animal than the schools Mr. Carey attended and, I assume, accepts as the norm.
9/28/2009 8:34 pm
There was significant effort to increase the student body beginning in the middle of the Summers years — one of the effects of increased study abroad was to have been more room on campus. But the argument quoted here proves too much (given enough resources, should Harvard gave a freshman class of 5000? 20,000?), while Summers’s subordinates proved too little (the Faculty never got to approve this goal or mull its ramifications). The way to go about these things us the way Princeton did it: a sustained community conversation about what distinguishes the college experience, and how to balance the vague desire to share the wealth with the interests of a human-scaled community. The result was a lovely 15% or so increase, and a lively building where my old colleague Cole is subdean.
SE, whose iPhone typing skills are improving apace
9/28/2009 9:04 pm
I’d comment directly at the article, but that requires getting an account at the CHE, so I guess I’ll comment here. That article is total crap, and the writer can’t manage a coherent argument.
Indeed, it’s not even clear to me on reading the article what the author’s point is. It reads like a tirade against anything he can think of going on at Harvard, but without an offer of what constructively he thinks the place should be doing. The main thread I can pull out of it is that he thinks Harvard should be educating more students — increasing the size of the undergraduate class — so we’ll go with that, although if you read it carefully, it wanders away from that point as he goes into tirade mode.
Don’t get me wrong — if someone wants to make a reasoned argument that it is in the best interest of Harvard’s mission to increase its undergraduate enrollment, I’d be happy to hear it myself. I’m certainly not averse to that idea. (Can I ask for more science and engineering students?) That article, however, isn’t anywhere near such an argument. Let me try to address some of his points.
Yes, the endowment has increased since 1990. So have expenses (inflation, you know — as well as new administrative requirements, a new sabbatical policy, increased expectations for student quality-of-life, etc.) It’s amazing how often that point gets ignored.
And the author seems to be himself confused, recognizing that Harvard’s increased endowment was a product of irrational exuberance and that it has been spent on items that increase its annual budget (beyond, apparently, what is sustainable, given the budget cuts), but insists at the same time it should have been spent on something that would have further significantly increased the required annual layout beyond what is sustainable.
He dismisses Harvard’s new financial aid program, when it’s been clear to anyone who has had the figures (I hope someone who has them handy can provide them) that Harvard’s undergraduate class was grossly unrepresentative, with a very high percentage of its students coming from the top economic classes. One can have an interesting argument on whether that was an appropriate use for the endowment; I think it was. (I think Harvard’s mission should be training tomorrow’s leaders, and I think it’s fully appropriate to seek leaders who do not arise from the upper classes — indeed, if Harvard wants to create a broad spectrum of leadership, it would seem imperative to recruit from all socioeconomic classes, which means increased financial aid.) He calls it a PR coup, but offers no data to explain why he think Harvard’s new policies are unsuitable or unnecessary.
As part of the tirade he attacks the faculty, but it’s not clear to me why. If he was trying to present a coherent argument, he might point out the recent change in sabbatical policy — that’s where a large chunk of the increase in faculty size went, to cover the increase in sabbatical time. Of course, that increase was to make us competitive with our peer institutions, as I recall. Similarly, he suggest the endowment money is somehow coming to the faculty. I should point out we had a pay freeze this year (and may have another, I don’t think we’ve heard yet), so I don’t think he has a strong point here. (If he wanted to make an actual point to argue, he could have brought up that Harvard faculty is, on average, the most highly paid faculty in the US, if I am recalling the salary data correctly; of course, then we could get into additional arguments, including whether that’s in part because Harvard’s faculty is on average older than other institutions, or the argument that even with that pay, Harvard faculty could do better in private industry if pay was the issue.)
In short, the whole thing was just a lot of bluster. There’s plenty to argue about in how Harvard does things — indeed, we do a fair bit of it here at Harvard. Usually our discussions have a bit more reasoning behind them. I’m surprised this got published, but it will give the usual people who love to see nasty things written about Harvard a chance to say, “Yeah!”
9/28/2009 9:37 pm
Well said, Michael. The article is utterly confused. In the early 2000s there was indeed talk about increasing the number of students, and also talk about increasing the number of faculty, given the student-faculty ration is not Harvard’s greatest strength.
Some faculty numbers grew, some did not, and it now seems a given that decrease in faculty numbers, through retirement, other attrition, and non-authorization of desiderated positions will, and is intended to, lead to a smaller faculty. If so, there is no way it is in the interests of the institutiion to increase the undergraduate body.
The Chronicle should not have published this ill-informed rant.
9/29/2009 3:19 am
It seems to me that the author has his argument exactly backwards. He criticizes Harvard for expanding its financial aid plan instead of admitting more students. How does admitting more students achieve the goal of “creat[ing] more spots for deserving low-income students” if those students can’t afford to attend? By making Harvard affordable for everyone who qualifies for admission, the University has actually done a lot more to “create more spots for deserving low-income students” than increasing the class size would have. Just compare financial aid to tuition over that time. From 1999 to 2009, tuition and fees went from about $31K to about $47K, an increase of about 50%. At the same time, College financial aid in the form of institutional grants (i.e., money given to students by Harvard) went from about $40M to about $100M, an increase of about 150%. Had Harvard increased the size of the student body without increasing financial aid, the school would have earned a lot more in tuition revenue, and it would have produced a much smaller increase in net expenses than increasing financial aid did.
9/29/2009 8:47 am
Michael Mitzenmacher’s analysis of Kevin Carey’s article is exactly on target. I thought of commenting on it on the CHE site, but have been very disillusioned recently about the caliber of discussions on their blogs. Argumentation, and sometimes even just plain knowledge, is often very weak. Sometimes I wonder who is actually reading the CHE.
9/29/2009 9:00 am
The history of Summers’ never-implemented decision to expand the College is actually somewhat comic. It started when he announced that he wanted a much larger number of international students. Without objecting to that per se, I pointed out to him and to the Overseers that his clarion call was logically equivalent to a call for a much smaller number of American students. At that point we started hearing about a larger college and Houses in Allston. I pointed out that we already were sub-par on student-faculty ratio, as RT points out above, and that fixing that was an incomplete project from Jeremy Knowles’s deanship. The planning for the Houses in Allston went ahead, but it was never clear to me if there was a plan to hire more faculty to teach them, or, if so, where they would be put.
9/29/2009 10:19 am
It’s odd that, in the course of explaining why my argument is incoherent, Michael Mitzenmacher spends so much space offering evidence that supports it. I simply pointed out that Harvard has spent a lot more money on faculty without increasing the number of students faculty teach. I didn’t go into the details of how that happened, because you only get so many words in a column, But Mitzenmacher helpfully explains where the money went: more sabbaticals and the highest salaries in the nation. That’s good to know; it also reinforces my point. Why is increasing sabbatical time more important than giving more students a great education? To make Harvard “competitive with [its] peer institutions?” Really? Was that a big problem before? Were professorships sitting empty because Harvard couldn’t find anyone good to apply? I would have thought that being part of the most esteemed and well-paid faculty in the nation would have been enough.
It’s true, there was inflation. From 1990 to 2009, inflation as measured by the Consumer Priced Index grew 66 percent. The endowment (after the $10 billion loss) grew by about 575 percent.
Mitzenmacher questions whether “it is in the best interest of Harvard’s mission to increase its undergraduate enrollment.” But the institution’s mission isn’t written in stone somewhere. Indeed, the whole point of the column was to say that Harvard’s mission should be more undergraduate-focused than it is.
On financial aid: Harvard’s generous aid policies are better than the previous, less-generous policies. But making the university affordable for the low-income students you admit doesn’t mean a whole lot if you don’t admit very many low-income students. And you don’t: barely one student in ten qualifies for a federal Pell grant. It’s well-known that the university’s admissions policies are biased in favor of the children of wealthy alumni. A university as absurdly wealthy as Harvard isn’t forced to choose between admitting more lower-income students and giving them more financial aid; it could do both, if it wanted to. It just hasn’t wanted to. I think that’s a shame.
9/29/2009 11:13 am
Kevin,
Again, you don’t seem to get the point. I made no judgment as to whether you had a valid criticism — that Harvard should increase the size of its undergraduate enrollment. That’s an interesting question. I provided evidence to support your argument precisely because you seemed painfully incapable of doing so in your article. It was to point out how remarkably incoherent your argument was, that you offered nothing but a rant with no factual information to back it, and that if you had put some thought into it, perhaps you could have raised some actual points worth arguing.
Now regarding specific points you make, point by point:
1) Yes, to make Harvard “competitive with its peer institutions” was a problem. Harvard faces competition for its best faculty, as one would expect. A better sabbatical package at other universities makes Harvard a less attractive place for its faculty. To be clear, that’s my opinion, but as a Harvard faculty member, I can suggest that it’s probably a common one.
2) There was inflation — inflation at universities, with a great deal of its budget in salaries, and including health costs, etc. is probably higher than the 66% you suggest. I notice uou also ignore other increased costs — more administration, those new buildings, the sabbatical package, increased financial aid, etc. that I specifically mentioned.
3) We can certainly argue if Harvard should be more undergraduate-focused. I think it’s very undergraduate-focused, actually. Again, I’d love to hear a coherent argument from you on that point, rather than the one you gave, and in particular why increasing undergraduate enrollment is desirable in terms of making Harvard more undergraduate-focused.
4) Regarding financial aid: I’d love to see you argue this factually. Again, the point of the increased financial aid was both to make Harvard more affordable, and INCREASE THE APPLICATION POOL of low-income students who apply. (They apparently can get scared away by the high price tag; by making it clear they can afford Harvard, the hope is to get many more to apply, so more quality students from that demographic can be admitted.) In both regards, my understanding is that it has been successful. For example, just look at basic news like
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=522754. Applications are way up at Harvard, part of that apparently due to the new financial aid programs. Quoting from the article:
“As of now, over 25 percent of the Class of 2012 is eligible for Harvard’s old financial aid program, which eliminates tuition costs for families earning under $60,000.
The average financial aid package this year is about $40,000, close to 78 percent of the total cost of attendance.”
It would be more interesting to discuss this with you if you had a command of some basic facts such as these.
I think it’s clear that Harvard has chosen to aim to admit more lower-income students, and the financial aid is being used, not by the children of wealthy alumni. It’s not clear that admitting more students would improve the situation; indeed, if it cut the average financial aid (as it would), it could make things worse in terms of attracting low-income students.