16 Responses to “Harvard in shock”

1. Karl Says:
   July 1st, 2009 at 11:49 am

   This is an historic opportunities for state universities to trump the Ivy-league schools and attract more of the best-and-brightest. Many private universities relied heavily on their endowments for general operating budgets. In the wake of the financial crisis, some of them saw their operating budgets slashed – or completely decimated. Harvard’s layoffs are but one example.

   If you or a loved one is looking at a schools, give your public universities a second look. State-sponsored schools are in a better position to maintain funding levels (and services) than several of the privates!

2. colleen schiefer Says:
   July 1st, 2009 at 11:49 am

   the leaders of the college should reduce their salaries to keep other employees

3. Bob Says:
   July 1st, 2009 at 12:08 pm

   Karl forgets that public universities depend on tax support. Business fails, people lose jobs = then much less of a tax base. Higher education is one of the first items cut by state legislatures in hard times. Schools raise tuition to off set state cuts so it begins to equal private schools.

   But not to worry, the current administration will equalize wealth across all people so everyone will get what they deserve.

4. richard Says:
   July 1st, 2009 at 12:37 pm

   Why is this a surprise? Pubic and private higher education centers are reelinng from the impact of this economic down turn. THe public university system in our state is in the process of staff reduction at the academic and service support levels, reducing salariies, cutting positions , closing some programs and colleges, and encouraging early retirement /buy out for the senior faculty. Next year will be more draconiann in many respects because this year’s cuts have been seen as cutting the fat. Next year will be cutting programs and perhaps colleges. The university administration are not the bad guys. Right now it is survival mode. What did the Harvard faculty think would happen? No sectors of the economy in education or outside of it are immune.

5. MARY JANE Says:
   July 1st, 2009 at 1:24 pm

   Harvard is not the only school or buisness cutting back this year.

   I know of at least one buisness where everyone has taken a cut in pay for them to keep going. The employees are all thankful to keep their jobs.

6. drew Says:
   July 1st, 2009 at 1:41 pm

   The current troubles in higher ed could be the occasion to reconsider what value we actually provide to the culture that has so generously supported us. It could lead us to reflect on the fact that we
   + consistently put faculty’s scholarly interests ahead of undergraduate education;
   + vastly overproduce PhD’s (again in the interest of faculty who already have their jobs
   secured by tenure).
   + ignore the original purpose of the tenure system
   + assiduously avoid taking morality and serious moral arguments as important in education (with
   notable exception for certain ‘self evident’ moral goods like diversity)
   + have accepted, uncritically, university governance on the model of corporations with boards of
   trustees that are indistinguishable from boards of directors of public companies.

   The last of these points is particularly disturbing, and leads me to think we will not do anything useful with the crisis. Trustees are precisely the sorts of people who believe they are brilliant business leaders (they keep telling each other they are by giving each other raises). They cannot imagine, e.g., that Harvard’s president is not really worth 3/4 million per year. But in fact, a president only keeps the job if he avoids irritating the faculty too much (Larry Summers) or raising questions about the university’s ethical mission that might bleed into questions about trustees’ own business interests.

7. Flora Says:
   July 1st, 2009 at 3:55 pm

   As an employee of a university, I definitely believe pay cuts should be the first action taken for the high paid employees. Universities are top heavy with huge salaries for faculty and staff members actually run the universities for very little pay. The top heaviness means those at the top are paid far too much and they do so little work if is utterly ridiculous. They do not know what a days work is all about, honestly. Any amount of pay is never enough for them.

8. Pam Says:
   July 1st, 2009 at 4:22 pm

   I agree with Flora. I too work at a private university where there are many overpaid top employees who received exorbitant raises over the last three years. Layoffs have occurred here recently as well with many valued employees being let go while others who waste time and have minimal skills were kept on. ????? Were furlow days ever explored? Who knows. Were 10 month positions ever explored???? Who knows? All we know is that there may be another round in the Fall with the summer melt and we sit in fear, trying to pay our bills. I don’t think the big wigs are shaking in their boots worried about paycheck to paycheck. It’s a sad thing when the economy is in a slump that people are put out of work. Every effort should be made to keep people in their jobs or the economy is just going to keep going down hill. We can talk all we want, post all of these things but will it change anything? I don’t think so but somehow I still have a small amount of hope. It’s all we’ve got left.

9. tom Says:
   July 1st, 2009 at 5:04 pm

   I am a tenured full professor at a public university, and you know what, I am not a communist. So what if management at universities is like corporate management and has to cut back when times are difficult. Thats why I got an education and saved evey penny I earned in my lifetime; yes its also down 30% like Harvard. I am not starving. I do worry about the uneducated poor but I don’t worry about the educated poor. For those who work in higher education, we should be the most forward thinking and personally responsible for our situatuion vis a vis unemployment etc. Stop worrying about what other people make and do something other than gripe about yourselves.

10. Eric Says:
    July 1st, 2009 at 8:40 pm

    I work at a state university and we have been lucky that we have not had to do major cutbacks, as we did about 7 years ago. We have started creating endowed positions, but I am not sure how those are payed out in relation to the value of the endowments. The smart thing for any university to have done is to have a cushion of the endowment paying out only a percentage of its earnings, so that they would be less affected by market swings. As Flora has mentioned, and the same goes for my situation, the staff personnel are grossly underpaid compared to the same positions in non-scholarly businesses and generally compared to private institutions. If you had enough highly paid administrative personnel (ours have frozen their payscale semi-voluntarily for the next 2 years), then you might save a few hundred jobs. Faculty can become a sticky situation if they are not willing to face facts of a generally bad economy, because if you cut their pay, they will be looking earnestly for a better situation, either in money or in the level of prestige, facilities, and other perks that might attract them away from their current positions. Unfortunately, not all institutions are in dire straights financially and many excellent faculty may jump to better places leaving, in some cases, the lesser able faculty members. This is a situation that is very hard to recover from.

11. Peggy Says:
    July 2nd, 2009 at 8:39 am

    I think when you consider what is going on at Harvard; the president should consider reducing his/her salary. It is only fair that each one of us tighten our belts so others can survive this crisis. I clearly understand that sometimes when people salary is high they live up to the salary but I think that now is the time to re-evaluate that concept and stop being selfish.

12. Andrea Says:
    July 2nd, 2009 at 10:34 am

    Leaders are supposed to be leaders because they take hits and sometimes have to do the painful things to themselves to protect those they lead. Presumably that’s why they are leaders. Whatever happened to this model of leadership? Leaders today seem to think they should be buffered from everything painful by the “privilege” of their position. If people are losing jobs, administrators should also have pay cuts/salary freezes also. It’s the only honorable thing to do.

13. Greg Okoro Says:
    July 2nd, 2009 at 11:52 am

    It would be a sign of presidential leadership in times of economic meltdown. So I believe that the Harvard University president could give serious consideration to accepting a salary cut (even if temporarily) in order to reduce layoff of valuable employees. Once this leadership role is initiated, other employees would gladly accept some reduction in pay to save jobs. It is called “sharing responsibility”.

14. Irene Says:
    July 11th, 2009 at 6:30 pm

    I agree with Drew, “The current troubles in higher ed could be the occasion to reconsider what value we actually provide to the culture that has so generously supported us.” What I see is the potential for many students to reconsider local colleges to afford a higher education, and even colleges are not beyond scrutiny. They also have their Boards of Trustees who run higher ed like corporate America. What I don’t understand is why not choose business models that support equity and inclusion, such as those companies that run on employee-ownership? And where are the innovations of corporate America in higher ed? If an institution cares about retaining it’s best employees (FT or PT faculty or staff), then we need to rethink how we define “best” — not just the best “top execs”. Ex. the best secretaries are worth their weight in gold. In any event, I’m telling my kids not to bother pursuing PhD’s — they’re not worth much these days — especially if you can only get PT work.

15. Hanna Spiegel Says:
    February 1st, 2010 at 9:38 am

    Harvard has always been known to be a nasty place.
    I bet Yale would not stoop that low!

16. Chuck Wolfe Says:
    February 8th, 2010 at 2:16 pm

    It is indeed unfortunate that Harvard has not heeded the wisdom put forth in Harvard Business Review regarding innovative ways to deal with cutbacks. In the article called “How Open Innovation Can Help You Cope in Lean Times” published in December 2009. on p. 75 there is an insert that describes several interesting ideas for handling involuntary separations. A great example is Cisco which in 2001 offered many employees 30% of their salary with benefits, for 6 – 12 months. “Some accepted this program in order to take jobs with nonprofit and social ventures where, in several cases, Cisco provided coaching and mentoring, in part to maintain ties with its former employees. Workers…suffered much less trauma…(and) Cisco also earned considerable goodwill and enhanced its reputation as a great place to work.” When conditions improved some workers came back because they still felt connected.” This is just one example of a company that paid attention to the feelings of its workforce in a way that showed intelligence and compassion. With all the brilliant minds at Harvard it is unfortunate that a more creative, emotionally intelligent approach was not designed and implemented.

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