Harvard Mag on the Budget Cuts
Posted on May 11th, 2009 in Uncategorized | 18 Comments »
Harvard Magazine has a nice write-up on the Harvard budget cuts and the new website detailing them.
Things sound almost Dickensian:
—no hot breakfasts during the week
—cold rooms in winter and hot rooms in summer
—more than 500 fewer staffers around the university, and probable layoffs to come
How bad is it? And will it get worse?
18 Responses
5/11/2024 9:32 pm
the talk in the hill are those growing naps Larry Summers is taking mid-afternoon. Is there an underlying medical condition?
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/04/larry_summers_catnap_at_credit.html
5/11/2024 9:37 pm
Isn’t it silly that Dean Smith and his staff are discussing budget cuts on the basis of budgets prepared by the very staff who are trying to save their jobs. If anyone compares the revised budgets and last years budgets they will see a sudden decrease in the share of administrative expenditures. All of a sudden everything has become student support or faculty support, including the salary of the staff who fear for their future.
If Smith and Hyman want to seriously make sure that this good crisis is not lost they will need to have their own people look closely at the budgets, not at the fabricated revisions produced over the last month or so.
Pretty obvious, isn’t it?
5/11/2024 9:42 pm
phone commitment to transparency this is. Why don’t they publish on the web the salaries of deans, faculty and administrators -just salaries, they would not need to publish names. That is the context in which the imminent layoffs should be discussed. It’s easy to fire the small people, but how many of those should be fired to make up for the excesses in compensation of just one of the fat cats?
5/11/2024 10:44 pm
OMG! 68 degrees winter, 75 summer? Horrors! Oh wait. That’s where everyone, including me, sets their thermostats. Actually, 75 summer sounds sort of cool. Geez, RB, this counts as hot? You’re not such a hothouse flower really, are you? Give me a break.
5/11/2024 11:26 pm
Quite so, omg. Almost Dickensian, RB?:
“The [new] menu will consist of:
Proteins and cheeses, including hard-boiled eggs, ham, cheese, and cottage cheese
Hand and sliced fruits
Hot cereal (oatmeal) and condiments, and a variety of cold cereals
Muffins, bagels, breads, and toaster waffles, and condiments such as butter, cream cheese, peanut butter, and jelly
Yogurt
Coffee, hot tea, hot chocolate, juices, sodas, milk, and water”
5/12/2023 12:18 am
This seems like a good post from the Crimson:
Sad to see Harvard tear itself apart over a 1% difference in the endowment payout rate. The Corporation obviously thinks it is very important to have the endowment return to $38 billion as soon as possible. Only then will Harvard be able to return to that Allston hole in the ground, a race against time to be sure since the concrete is unstable.
Well, since we are left to guess what reshaping means, here’s mine: departments will be merged for no real reason whatsoever other than to eliminate about 80 FAS faculty. These faculty will be sue of course, and Harvard will settle of course, and the former Merrill Lynch executive now advising President Faust will call that a ‘restructuring charge’, a term well understood by the Corporation. The change in how faculty teach and conduct research referred to by Dean Smith is that fewer faculty will teach fewer courses with more students in them. And that, to paraphrase the Dean, is how Harvard will emerge stronger and more vibrant than ever. Oh dear, now how did I become so cynical…
5/12/2023 7:30 am
First of all, I am amused when an anonymous commenter calls me a hothouse flower. Small ironies, etc.
As to room temps, I think one can safely say that if the temp is supposed to be in the winter, it will be 60, and if it’s supposed to be 75 in the summer—which is pretty warm to start with—it will be 80.
And all right, I suppose Dickensian was hyperbolic. Perhaps a better comparison of breakfasts would be to a Courtyard Marriott?
But more important, are there deeper cuts coming, rather than a snip here and there? So far, these cuts seems to affect staff, graduate students, and undergrads. The powerless are the ones taking the hit….
5/12/2023 7:31 am
Whoops, make that “the temp is supposed to be 68″…..
5/12/2023 9:45 am
Financial aid, growth in faculty and debt servicing for the north yard sciences are the root causes of the explosive defecit. If the endowment does not return to peak levels, then the first two causes will be addressed. What other options exist? The payout from the endowment is already projected to be at unsustainable levels for 09/10. The real dilemma is between financial aid and faculty. I do not envy Smith or Faust. How did the Corporation allow such optimistic and irresponsible spending to get embedded in the University?
5/12/2023 9:58 am
I’m with RB on this, actually: making students uncomfortable in such petty ways is pathetic. While it’s surely better to do this than to have layoffs — I’m with the activists at http://www.greedisthenewcrimson.org to that extent — the fact that it’s reached the point that Harvard can’t afford hot breakfasts for its students is pathetic. Can anyone point to any other school with an endowment of any size that’s reaching for such lame ketchup-is-a-vegetable style corner-cutting?
5/12/2023 3:20 pm
>> Can anyone point to any other school with an endowment of any size that’s reaching for such lame ketchup-is-a-vegetable style corner-cutting?
To me, this is the crux of the matter. Well said.
There are two possibilities:
1) Harvard grossly mismanaged its financial resources over the past ten years, and the day of reckoning has now arrived. If so, heads should roll.
2) The current financial strain isn’t nearly as bad as the administration makes it out to be. Rather, the Corporation is trying to reduce the payout (and thereby cut budgets across the university more than is immediately necessary) to position the endowment for a rapid rebound. If so, heads should still roll.
In both cases, the heads that should roll are those that are attached to the torsos of Corporation members. I’ve always poo-pooed those who have called for more transparent governance of the University, but this whole mess has made me completely change my mind. Again-what other university (except maybe Brandeis or something) is facing such severe budget cuts? Nobody. The Corporation is ultimately responsible for the University’s financial management, BUT ITS MEMBERS ARE ACCOUNTABLE TO ABSOLUTELY NOBODY. A corporation’s board members are elected by shareholders; a legislature is elected by the people. The Fellows of Harvard College choose themselves. It is an anachronistic, perilous system.
How to fix it? Hard to say. Perhaps the Board of Trustees should actually start making noise. That, or perhaps alumni should organize themselves and refuse to donate until, say, the Corporation adds two seats that are elected by the alumni community rather than chosen by other Corporation members.
Either way, this bull**** needs to change.
5/12/2023 3:58 pm
To 3:20pm: There’s no question that it’s #1. The problem is real, and the problem is that FAS (if not the whole University) spent more than it could afford every year during the boom times, and then borrowed more on top of that. Read then-Dean Knowles letter two years ago worrying about the amount of spending relative to income — and that was at about the peak of the market.
Harvard’s endowment is indeed huge, but there are only so many $1 billion laboratories (for example) that you can build before it gets to be real money.
5/12/2023 4:59 pm
The problem with the composition of the Corporation is that President’s have been inclined to support the choice of lap dogs or show pups. Match the columns in Summers’ picks. An election would be nothing more than a popularity contest and unlikely to yield the right skill sets. Is Faust smart enough to clean house and replace the dead wood with voices that would challenge the current financial scheme and governance structure that has failed the University? This is her moment.
5/12/2023 5:06 pm
To 9:58am & 3:20pm: having just attended a conference call of my counterparts from across the country, I can say that, out of 30 universities on the call, only 2 were exempt from hiring freezes, salary freezes, layoffs, furloughs and major cost cutting in other areas. A number of those were not exempt were universities with significant endowments.
While I can’t refute that FAS’ overspending (which has been discussed and worried about for several years and is now coming home to roost) indicates a problem and that there may be a case for more transparency regarding the governance of Harvard, to imply that the pain being felt here is somehow unique to Harvard is, quite simply, incorrect.
I don’t know about you but I’m hoping to hang on to my job because almost no one else out there in University-land is hiring. We’re (almost) all in this boat together. Sadly.
5/12/2023 5:19 pm
Isn’t a student’s tuition meant to include meals? Having recently paid the final check for my son’s tuition at an institution at which he was well fed (and, as an athlete, needed to be well fed), I’d be concerned if I suddenly heard that his (my) tuition payment was being diverted towards paying off a debt. I realize that tution also includes indirect costs (dorm expenses, etc.), but substituting instant oatmeal packets for a hot breakfast? Give me a break!
5/12/2023 6:23 pm
I wrote 3 years ago (p. 262):
During most of the Summers years, the Corporation was a leadership vacuum. Its members were rarely heard from in public and rarely spoke to those who make the university run, except the president and his staff. If Harvard were a publicly held corporation in today’s climate of intensely scrutinized corporate governance, the shareholders would have been up in arms about the failure of the directors to care responsibly for the institution.
5/12/2023 6:57 pm
Some budget officers are under tremendous pressure to prepare budgets that minimize the share of admin expenditures…
Those who are certified CPAs should remember that they are providing professional services to a client that is regulated by a state agency and they must therefore fully understand applicable state statutes and regulations to ascertain whether state law includes requirements pertaining to the services to be rendered to that client. Interpretation 501-3 of the Society’s Code of Professional Conduct states, in part, “Engagements for audits of government grants, government units, or other recipients of government monies typically require that such audits be in compliance with government audit standards, guides, procedures, statutes, rules and regulations, in addition to generally accepted auditing standards,” and members are obligated to follow such requirements. 501-3 goes on to say that failure to follow such requirements “is an act discreditable to the profession … unless the member discloses in his or her report the fact that such requirements were not followed and the reasons therefor.” Generally speaking, the law rarely contains similar exceptions.
It is important to understand the context of rules governing the profession. Per 501-3, disclosing to the client that state law is not being complied with may well neutralize the ethics issue posed by failure to follow state law. But the profession’s rule 501-3 does not mitigate other consequences of noncompliance with the law. Violations of law can lead to far more serious consequences to CPAs than loss of membership in their professional society. The possible consequences of breaking the law can include loss of license, fines, jail time, and the possibility that a CPA’s client may lose funding from the state program, because the client would be in violation of state law as well.
Some assume a law does not exist unless they know about it. They are setting themselves up for a very rude awakening. Others mistakenly believe that, where they conflict, professional standards must be weighed against state laws. This, too, is untrue. Where possible, professional standards must be read consistently with state laws; where impossible, the law—statutes, appellate court decisions, and usually even regulations—takes precedence. If you doubt this, you can confirm it with your lawyer, your professional liability insurance carrier, or the State Board for Public Accountancy. While it is true that occasionally statutes are declared unconstitutional, court cases overruled, or regulations overturned—and the law is thereby changed—these are the exceptions, not the rule.
So budget officers, CFOs and others now under pressure beware. What makes your boss happy today may not be what will serve you well tomorrow.
5/12/2023 8:44 pm
That breakfast menu may look tasty in print, but it is much less appealing in real life. Students pay for board, and scrambled eggs/hotcakes/waffles are one of the few things HUDS cannot mess up. This is all political correctness taken to the extreme. Cutting out late-night shuttle services is irresponsible. But worse yet are the periodic corporate e-mails, always with an up-beat “yes we can maintain excellence” and the endless meetings that seem designed to make people feel that they are part of a bottom-up process when in fact it is all top-down.