Yale’s New Colleges
Posted on May 14th, 2009 in Uncategorized | 14 Comments »
They look kind of nice, actually. Assuming that you like that Gothic look—there’s no Eero Saarinen here.
Meanwhile—and I’m not teasing—will Harvard ever be able to afford to renovate its declining houses?
It has been 25 years since Harvard embarked on a renovation of the Houses, and they show their age. Perennial overcrowding concerns and complaints about malfunctioning facilities were brought to the fore this year when Winthrop House ended the de facto practice of promising singles to seniors and, later, when basements in that house flooded with human waste and sewage. Add these to a laundry list of complaints about the River Houses–everything from inoperable faucets and dysfunctional heaters to overflowing toilets, leaks, and massive cockroach infestations.
After all, they can’t even serve hot food in the current houses….
(Blogger’s prediction: Harvard will get so much bad press over the ketchup-is-a-vegetable cut—who will be the first undergraduate, face smudged with dirt and tears, to ask a soon-to-be-laid-off worker, “Please, sir, I want some more?“—that it will restore hot breakfasts.)
14 Responses
5/14/2009 8:00 am
There is a lot more to worry about at Harvard than ketchup and rundown dorms. The very quality of the educational experience for students and the support for faculty to do their work is at serious jeopardy in this crisis. It is not apparent that the academic leaders of the institution are paying attention to these real and present dangers to Harvard’s reputation or viability.
These are the kind of gimmicks that the current crisis has stimulated: I am associated with a unit in FAS that performs an enrichment function, it supports students and faculty. It is not a teaching unit, there are no faculty appointments, though faculty serve in an advisory role and the director of the unit, a professor, receives salary support.
The annual budget of this unit last year was about 2 million. A little over half of this figure went to pay for salaries of administrative staff working there. An executive director, a budget officer, a secretary, and a few additional support staff. About half was spent in direct programmatic support –support for students, seminars, conferences and some support for faculty projects. This year the total budget needs to be brought to about 80% of last year. But the approximately one million for staff support has not changed. So it now accounts for about 65% of the total, instead of 50%. But because budgets are under scrutiny the budget has been ‘massaged’ so that most of the admin support is now counted as programmatic support. For example, the salary of the person who organizes seminars is now counted as direct student support, instead of counting it as admin. The latest financial reports in that unit show admin support at 25%, down from about 50%. Anyone who understands budgets knows this kind of magic happens only in the movies. Apparently it can also happen at Harvard. Unless someone is watching the budget crunch will translate into severe and disproportionate reductions in support for students and faculty. At what point is a Harvard education no longer an education of value?
5/14/2009 8:07 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqnuJndA0hw
5/14/2009 8:09 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr4WxEQHiCE
5/14/2009 8:12 am
Consider yourself lucky if the unit you describe can still spend over 600,000 in direct programmatic activities. I work in another unit, our budget is about half of what you describe. For the same reasons next year we will only be able to spend 40,000 in direct programmatic support. Down from about 200,000 this year.
5/14/2009 8:15 am
Why can’t Harvard restructure some of those units that do not play a teaching role? Consolidate, pay only one director and one group of admin staff, and use the savings to increase student and faculty support.
Harvard’s leadership should protect the core teaching and research functions of the University in this crisis. Not admin expenditures, ketchup or dorms…
5/14/2009 9:36 am
The most worrisome aspect of the budgetary restrictions is their effect, down the line, on the student-teacher ratio. At present, only a very modest increase in section size seems to be mandated; but as the number of faculty members in FAS decreases due to the hiring freeze and retiring professors who may quite possibly not be replaced-to say nothing of the “reshaping” of the Faculty that Dean Smith is proposing-Harvard may end up losing the gains in student-teacher ratio it worked so hard to achieve in recent years. If that happens, it will once again slip behind peer institutions like Princeton and Yale. I don’t pay much attention to the US News and Word Report rankings of universities and colleges, but I believe that “class size” is one of the criteria they use.
5/14/2009 10:05 am
You are absolutely right Professor Ryan. And perhaps you should pay attention to the rankings. Another criterion, of course, is the productivity and scholarship of faculty and the size of their research grants. All hard to maintain when support for faculty is down and class sizes are up.
A serious question Harvard should consider is not just whether it can remain an attractive university for the most talented students, but whether the most promising faculty will conclude that they stand a better change to doing their best work elsewhere.
5/14/2009 10:23 am
Not sure you are right Professor Ryan on UNWR, but what you propose can be tested by Harvard’s academic officers -really by anyone who understands a little about academic life.
Look at Harvard’s Departments with the lowest rankings in UNWR, and then look at their budgets, how they have changed over time. Examine also how class size has changed over time and look at the work of the faculty and faculty turnover. Examine also what students and graduates have to say about the quality of the education they receive.
This is the kind of analysis the visiting committees and the members of the corporation should be engaged in, and it should be what the president and the dean’s discuss at their meetings. Let’s hope that they are all doing their job.
5/14/2009 10:48 am
Professor Ryan is absolutely correct to draw attention to the issue of student-faculty ratio. This is where Harvard already lags behind its peer institutions, and things are rapidly getting worse. This is not just a concern for how the situation might play out in the future. Take the Government Department, which already (along with Econ) has the worst student-faculty ratio in FAS. Between faculty departures with no replacement searches, and cancellation of all planned searches for this year and next, the department is down a net *17* faculty in just two years. The already terribly high student-faculty ratio is skyrocketing. This is having an immediate impact on the quality of the educational experience for students, both undergraduate and graduate.
5/14/2009 11:37 am
Professor Ryan and others are right about preserving the student experience. But the consolidations suggested will mean people losing their administrative and support jobs, and a poster yesterday suggested that no one at Harvard could possibly be redundant. On the other hand, the evaluation of which jobs stay, and which will go seems suspect and subject to the manipulation described above.
5/14/2009 12:27 pm
While it is the case that student satisfaction is significantly lower in some FAS departments –such as economics- than in the rest of the university, it is also the case that most of those departments are right on the regression line of student satisfaction on student-faculty ratio. The implication is that to move satisfaction up on the regression line all that needs to be done is to move those departments down on student to faculty ratio –e.g. rebalance the number of students per faculty. In a world of finite resources there are a few obvious options to do this. One is to eliminate departments or programs for which there is no student demand. Do not hire more faculty and help the faculty in those programs retire. Alternatively, close down some of the many centers and programs that seem to exist primarily to employ administrators. Or sell off some of the collection in the university art museum In a time of shrinking budgets the priority should clearly be to support the teaching and research missions of the university. Everything else is dispensable. Consolidate some of those programs and centers and use the resources to allocate more faculty to those programs for which there is clear demand. It is not realistic at this time that some benefactor will bail the university out by giving us a wad of cash to hire faculty and support students. Therefore administrators need to make the hard choices that are within their purview.
5/14/2009 12:35 pm
There is one way to help rebalance student faculty ratios and increase student satisfaction and quality.
Make public information on trends in student faculty ratios by program over the last ten years, and collect student and graduates testimonials about the quality of their educational experience. This will get the attention of those who can correct this situation:
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~harvardsfuture/w/index.php?title=Main_Page
5/14/2009 12:39 pm
The Scott and Donya Bommer Professor savors a capuccino as she looks at all she has been able to produce in a much more supportive academic environment.
5/14/2009 12:46 pm
Harvard’s management should be transformed through the power of the scientific method. Chairs and deans should have their salaries brought to the median of administrative salaries. On top of this, they should be offered cash incentives contingent on student and faculty satisfaction and productivity. Students should also be given cash incentives to earn As in their term papers and exams. Faculty should be given cash incentives for every paper published in a top tier journal.