Readers may remember the following chart. Bear it in mind.
Here’s a summary from Chris Brunet of the cuts:
According to the Crimson report, which quotes five anonymous faculty sources, the reductions are as follows:
- Science PhD admissions slashed by more than 75%
- Arts & Humanities cut by about 60%
- Social Sciences reduced 50–70%
- History down 60%
- Biology down 75%
- The German department will lose all PhD seats
- Sociology will go from six students to zero
In addition to slashing PhD admissions, FAS has also instituted a hiring freeze for full-time staff, announced it would keep its budget flat for fiscal year 2026, and ceased work on all “non-essential capital projects and spending.”
These austerity measures follow a wave of layoffs across other Harvard schools, including the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the Kennedy School of Government, the School of Dental Medicine, and the Graduate School of Design.
I urge you to read Chris’s entire article, but I’ll summarize part of it:
- Harvard lost 113 million on operations last year BUT made 4 billion in its endowment, which stands at 56.9 billion.
- 2025 has so far been a record year for donations: 629 million, up from 528 million last year, and 2025 isn’t over yet.
- Trump promised to restore 2.4 billion in frozen grants IF Harvard runs some trade schools for automotive plant, motors and engines.
Anyway, obviously Harvard can afford to make up its operating deficit of 113 million and doesn’t need to cut Ph.D. admissions. Making up for grants out of its own pocket would be harder, but not impossible, since 4 billion (its endowment gain) is more than 2.4 billion. The reason for the endowment is so that Harvard can, when times are bad, for whatever reason, continue to operate normally. Since the next administration may reverse Trump’s policies, it makes sense to just keep going for now. If it turns out that Trump’s policies are a bi-partisan consensus, then Harvard should make adjustments.
Harvard is, as Chris notes, acting very much as if it is an endowment fund with a university, and not a university with an endowment fund. Instead of using the endowment to protect the university, it is protecting the endownment with cuts to the university.
Now this is just Harvard. The Crimson article has this lovely quote:
The reduction in admissions slots puts a figure to FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra’s announcement in late September that the school would be admitting Ph.D. students at “significantly reduced levels.” Hoekstra cited uncertainty around research funding and an increase to the endowment tax — which could cost Harvard $300 million per year — as sources of financial pressure.
Hoekstra also wrote in her message that the FAS decided to continue admitting Ph.D. students only “after careful deliberation.” She noted that many peer institutions paused Ph.D. admissions altogether, suggesting the FAS may have considered a complete halt in line with its peers. (my emphasis)
Wait. A complete halt at many other universities? No new Ph.D. students?
So, OK, the US is DONE. DONE. OVER. OK? They’re mass cutting universities admissions and research at the same time as China is pulling away, funding its universities even more? This is some of the sheerest stupidity I have ever seen. Right wing ‘tards hate universities, so they’re going to cut America’s throat.
We’re about 3 weeks into our annual fundraiser. Our goal is $12,500 (same as last year). So far we’ve raised $8,610 from 76 people out of a readership of about 10,000.
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I get also that we’re in a profoundly anti-intellectual, culture hating period where the idea that history, literature, languages and social sciences matter has given way to chants of “STEM, STEM, STEM!” but note, for example, that biology is getting slashed and that most of the research cuts and freezes are in the hard sciences. This as China has overtaken the US in biotech and is poised to overtake in pharma.
I cannot wrap my mind around how stupid and foolish this all is. It’s not that American universities don’t need fixing. If I were in charge I’d probably force them to keep faculty and student numbers up and reduce administrative bloat by at least half in 2 years. I’d also force every university to restore control to the faculty senate, and make it so that if you aren’t a faculty member (and teaching plus either writing or researching) you cannot have any actual authority. There’s also a question of research cost padding, but the solution to that isn’t wholesale cuts at the exact moment when one is in peer competition with a challenger.
But this sort of insanity, of reducing or outright cutting the pipeline of future scholars and scientists is outright deranged and self destructive to a remarkable degree.
As for Harvard, the people who run it are scum, who have lost sight of the fact that the endowment serves the university. I cry few tears for Harvard, the people it graduates are usually conformist careerists. But Harvard is the bell-weather for all US universities, if this is happening even at Harvard, what is happening down the chain?
America’s in trouble, and that trouble could be used to fix things. But all Trump is doing is tearing everything down, generally in the stupidest way possible.
somecomputerguy
Something I don’t get. Most places, grad students are indentured servants. Dirt-cheap teaching and laboratory labor.
Over-subscribing graduate programs (training more phds than there could ever possibly be jobs for) was being consciously substituted for hiring tenure-track academics.
The money saved was spent on pay increases for already existing faculty.
At one point actually getting your phd in the humanities was the end of your career, not the beginning.
The fervent hope of every tenured teaching academic, was to get into administration, because thats where the money is.
somecomputerguy
Without grad students, who will the elderly tenured cranks steal ideas from?
Surely the economics department is exempt from this.
Purple Library Guy
Londo Mollari on most US politics: “Ah, arrogance and stupidity all in one package, how efficient of you.”
Babylon 5 keeps on being relevant.
spud
we have seen this stupidity before. will they ever learn, NOPE! this mind set came to power under jimmy carter, a truly stupid person who said on t.v. one time, everyone ought to learn how to fish and hunt and dress the meat to be self reliant. it was on a day time talk show during his presidency.
just think, 8-10 million new york city citizens going out to hunt. the wild life would be decimated in a few days state wide, besides all of the hunting accidents.
this of course does not include the millions living in other new york state cities.
so austerity worked so well for Germany,
http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch16.htm
Hitler and Germany: 1928-35
“By 1930 in Germany, bankruptcies were increasing. Farmers were hurting. Some in the middle-class feared sliding into the lower class. And some in the middle-class blamed the economic decline on unemployed people being unwilling to work – while hunger was widespread. ”
“Instead of a left-of-center, socialist government, the president of the German republic, Hindenburg, selected Heinrich Brüning of the Catholic Center Party to form a government. This Party had received only 11.3 percent of the vote. Brüning did not have the majority parliamentary support needed to rule. Brüning ruled as chancellor under Hindenburg’s emergency powers. It was the beginning of the end of democracy in Germany, with Hindenburg willing to do anything other than give the government back to the Social Democrats.
Brüning attempted to restore the economy with the conservative policies: a balanced budget, high interest rates and remaining on the gold standard. There was no emergency deficit (Keynesian) spending as in Sweden, and the economy continued to slide. ”
———-
Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people.
Andrew Mellon
Prosperity of the middling and lower orders depends upon the fortunes and light taxes of the rich.
Andrew Mellon
Give tax breaks to large corporations, so that money can trickle down to the general public, in the form of extra jobs.
Andrew Mellon
———-
Mark Blyth,
https://eliasrutten.substack.com/p/austerity-is-still-a-dangerous-idea
“Elias Rutten: In 2023, the Dutch Liberal finance minister argued that low economic growth necessitates austerity. He said, “If there’s no money coming in, we can’t spend it,” and predicted €10–20 billion in budget cuts. In December, he defended €1.2 billion in education cuts, claiming that deficit spending creates bills for future generations. This seems reminiscent of what you criticize in your book.
Mark Blyth: I’ve heard this argument many times before. If we start with the basics: when you’re in recessionary or quasi-recessionary conditions, and the government spends around 40% of GDP, significant cuts lead to two predictable outcomes. First, your debt stock increases due to the denominator effect. As GDP shrinks, the same amount of debt becomes a larger share of the economy. Then you say, “Oh no, look at all that debt; we need more cuts,” and you spiral further into economic decline.
Fiscal rules don’t help either. This is what the British are learning. Cutting spending during a recession effectively creates the recession. That, in turn, worsens the deficit because less tax revenue comes in. Then policymakers point to the deficit and call for more cuts, locking themselves into a cycle of self-harm. This happens every time.
Regarding the argument about future liabilities for the next generation, leaving them a smaller economy, less growth, fewer opportunities, and the burden of an aging population is far worse. That’s self-defeating austerity—a textbook case.”
—
bill clinton locked america into austerity, and it cannot be broken under normal circumstances, and its to late now anyways.
different clue
I wonder what the PhD admissions picture is at the State ( and other Public-if-any) Universities. Maybe I will overcome deep inertia and see what PhD admissions are here at the University of Michigan . . . a kinda sorta public university. ( Michigan State University is THE State University here. And there are smaller State and Statish universities and colleges in Michigan).
If all the State Universities in the Blue Zone are following Harvard’s lead, then there is little hope for Separate Blue Survival.
different clue
What little hope remains may reside in ad hoc creativity by “common people” at the “common people level”.
Here is an inspiring little video titled: ” “Lawn ain’t going to mow itself”—but it is! Sorta”
from the oddlysatisfying subreddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/1od7tgn/lawn_aint_going_to_mow_itselfbut_it_is_sorta/
Joe
Does anyone else feel like we’re one Chernobyl level disaster from utter ruin?
It’s like the US is just pulling a USSR…
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It’s as though Trump intends to destroy America or at least accelerate putting the finishing touches on the decimation. At this rate, life expectancy in America will drop to 60 years of age or less within two decades if not less. I know I will never make it to my parents’ age of passing. My father passed at 90 and my mother at 92 and neither of them were health conscious in any way. At this rate, who would want to live that long if you don’t have means let alone live that long even if you do have the means? To witness the devastation? I guess the sadists wouldn’t mind and they’re a lot of them these days it seems.
GrimJim
“It’s like the US is just pulling a USSR…”
The USSR was pre-collapsed.
What will happen in the US will make the collapse of the USSR seem like a walk in the park by comparison.
For generations, the Soviets citizens had to ensure they had back-up plans, a private and local social safety net, to cover for when the Soviet economy failed them.
The 99% in the US does not have that. Even the farmers generally do not have gardens, and you cannot survive from a monocultural farm (which fails anyway without oil, gas, herbicides, and fertilizer).
Many Americans survived the Great Depression because they either had a family farm to fall back on, or had a local group to work with (such as soup kitchens), or had a work program cover their very basics.
We will have NONE of that this time around.
And there is, at any one time, only three to seven days of food in most cities.
The rural redcaps think that they will starve the Liberals in their cities.
They forget that they are grossly outnumbered both in manpower and in overall numbers of guns.
In the end, folks may not be able to find the rich to feast on their fat (they’ll have fled to their redoubts and bunkers), but they can certainly find plenty of MAGAts to feast on their lean…
different clue
I think Spud up above offers us a good reminder about Andrew Mellon. I don’t think Trump himself is a Mellonite. Trump himself is a toxic malignant narcissist who wants revenge on everyone and everything around him for his projected fear that everyone around him knows how vile and filthy he himself knows himself to be, and demands that everyone else believe the exact opposite about.
He knows he is fat, ugly, dishonest, stupid in all the higher senses, etc. And he hates us all for knowing that he knows that we know it. That’s what was basically behind his “chimp fling poo” AI video of dumping his own personal bodily dogtrump on the AI audience below.
A lot of the people around him and behind him are Mellonites. Bessent, all those other rich people, plan to tear America down to where they can Mellonise and Yeltsinize the monetizable parts and pieces. After they have taken the money and run, they don’t care whether the withered husk that remains goes fascist, stays fascist, becomes Gilead Christianazian, or whatever.
One can only hope that the people who voted for Trump to make America KlanMaga-Christianazian again suffer the absolute worst, as they deserve.
someofparts
Maybe I’m missing something here, but if the Ivies folded while the rest of the system like state universities and trade schools survived, I’m almost inclined to think we would be better off. Maybe schools that once made us global leaders in important scientific research will be gone, but we lost that race a long time ago anyway. As long as we still have a system that can produce capable people in critical fields we should be okay. The problem will just be to fix the way education is financed and schools are administered.
mago
Oh, yeah, the shit storm that gestated in the Reagan years has gathered momentum ever since and is dropping its pre-deluge shit bombs here there and everywhere. You can’t keep up with everything else that’s keeping you down.
As regards higher education, that beast has been dying by a thousand cuts for or so long and is now experiencing the final death throes.
Administrative bloat has been a problem for at least three decades. They even make up high paid positions, sort of the university equivalent of the Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man.
Meanwhile, adjunct faculty sleep in the cars they use to commute from one underpaid and overworked gig to the next.
I’m not even going to get into student culture . . .
The weather forecast calls for increasing shit squalls, thick fog, and thunder storms pissing on your head. Travel advisories counsel avoiding the low roads and carrying emergency supplies for adverse conditions. For more information please visit shitstormstrategies.org.
How many times have I said it? We are so fucked.
Stormcrow
mago wrote …
Make that 4 decades, at minimum.
One of the faculty I worked with during my 1 year postdoc (academic 1986-1987) admitted this to me while I was working there. Right out of the blue. One of the things I liked about that guy was that he would tell the truth rather than lie, consistently, in circumstances where that wouldn’t jeopardize his own career. And he was in an unusually good position to observe the money flows.
someofparts
diff clue – If you are in Michigan, I know of at least one splendid academic who is at, I think, the Ann Arbor campus –
https://www.juancole.com/
a really fine scholar of middle eastern studies – speaks Arabic I think and has a wide range of contacts in academia and government in the area
someofparts
You know, I’ve read Handmaids Tale and, god help me, Cormac McCarthy too, but I’m not convinced that this place will fall into christo-fascist ruin when the Mellonites finish their plunder and hightail it for their boltholes.
I’m basing this on what I have seen happen here in Atlanta in my lifetime. This place used to be – well, we all know what it used to be – Hitler’s racist Jim Crow inspiration. I spent my childhood in that world and it was just as bad as you have been told.
But that is not what this city is anymore, or has been for at least a couple of decades by now. Immigrant populations have changed this city in remarkable ways. The city core is majority black as is the administration in city hall. The people who continue to live here who are not black prefer our communities to the ones we would be in if we fled to the suburbs where white racists are still dominant.
That is just the start of it however. All of the counties adjacent to the core are themselves no longer majority white. The three largest ones are majority hispanic, Asian and black respectively.
These days if a person is still determined to be in a white majority locale, they must move way way out of the core to the counties beyond the ones adjacent to the city. They are obliged to be their own municipalities because they are too far out to be any meaningful part of city life.
Eventually when enough of the racists finally leave, the city core and adjacent counties will be connected by a good rail/bus system and, as it somehow always does, plenty of economic opportunity. Meanwhile, those foolish goobers in their far flung counties will still need to hop in their gas guzzlers and drive epic distances just to get food or healthcare if it is not available in their tiny isolated little towns. The idea that those clowns will be able to dominate our densely populated, multi-ethnic city is to laugh.
So, from where I sit, I don’t see the christo-fascists running this place, not by a long shot. I don’t know what kind of city will emerge once the vultures leave. It won’t be perfect. It will have it’s own problems. But geographically we are as well-situated as any community can be to weather climate change. We also have plenty of room to expand, which will, to my deep amusement, push racist white flight even farther out into the hinterlands. For bonus points, once the hegemon collapses, so will all of their facilities, like Lockheed Martin, that would make us targets in a hot war.
So yeah, I can’t imagine what this place will be like fifty or a hundred years after the Mellonite parasites decamp, but I can honestly see as much reason for optimism as one can for any locale in this sad and turbulent country.
someofparts
Also, on the topic of fiscal mismanagement in Weimar Germany here’s an interesting source –
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123559070-by-adam-fergusson?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=NyaqEh91WA&rank=2#CommunityReviews
When Money Dies – The nightmare of deficit spending, devaluation and hyperinflation in Weimar Germany – by Adam Ferguson
Apologies, as always, for being a typical geriatric too awkward with the technology to know how to provide a hyperlink.
Also, fwiw, it was American bankers who caused Germany’s economic problems in the first place, by pressuring the British and French to repay war debts, which burden they then dumped on the Germans. This is not to say they won’t do that here to the domestic population, but at least there won’t be an external power causing the damage. Those who survive the carnage those vermin do on their way out will be free to join the rest of the world and build a sustainable, relatively vermin-free future, as much as will be possible once we are well past those horrifying drops foreseen in Limits to Growth.
ibaien
everyone’s been whining about elite overproduction but now harvard decides to dial back the faucet on producing more elites, and they whine about that too! no pleasing some people…
different clue
@someofparts,
Yes, for some years I read Juan Cole’s blog Informed Comment. I even offered comments sometimes. I still look back and read it sometimes. I mainly stopped reading it because it changed its physical format and appearance and became deeply ugly to look at, in the artistic esthetic sense. I realize that in a world of print that should be irrelevant. I am just oversensitive to the physical appearance of things.
I read a blog called Vineyard of the Saker for a while. That changed its appearance and format too. It became so physically ugly that I couldn’t stand to see it anymore.
I almost never even started reading Daily Kos to begin with because it was so physically ugly to look at. I felt my face punching itself in the eyes whenever I opened it up. So I quickly stopped trying.
One thing I like about this Ian Welsh blog is the cool gray esthetic. It is mainly muted shades of black, white and gray, very cool and soothing. Color only shows up when necessary and useful. It seems almost “Japanese” in its calm quiet black, white and grayness with all lines spare and sharp. I still miss the raven, though. ( Odin’s raven of intelligence-gathering?)
There is another blog by Professor Landis of Oklahoma State University about Syria called Syria Comment ( I think). Surely searching on a word bunch like Professor Landis Syria Blog or some such combination could find it. I read it sometimes and learned something, but often he went into such granular detail that it seemed like he was taking each grain of sand on a huge beach and putting each of those grains of sand under the microscope one by one . . . by one . . . .. by one . … by one . . . .
I didn’t have the patience. I wonder if he is still in Oklahoma. Probably. You don’t walk away from tenure if you have it.
About excessive sensitivity to esthetic offenses . . . . a co-worker of mine described to me about how he was esthetically offended at a nails-on-chalkboard level by all the stupid people. I said . . . ” so it sounds like your brain has a hundred teeth growing directly out of it and a dentist is drilling on all of them at the same time without novocaine”. He said, ” Yes! Exactly. You understand me.”
samm
An educated populace is no longer wanted. This has been growing for a long time, ever since “skin in the game” was required (or, you’ll study what we want you to study), and tuition started going through the roof. Let’s say that was about 1981.
Now they want none of it. Perhaps Turchin got to them, “elite overproduction” with fewer elite positions available means more (and more effective) subversion. Who wants the competition? As Peter Thiel said, “competition is for losers.” They want only themselves to be the elite, and won’t accept anything else. If they need brains they can import them from India, and send them back if they complain. The rest of us can suck on low pay, low security, and high debt lives.
Swamp Yankee
A couple of thoughts:
I went to UMich for grad school, got my Ph.D. there (in History), and taught for Juan Cole as his GSI (Grad. Student Instructor). He was not only a great scholar and teacher, but he was a great boss, too. Incredibly easy to work for, relaxed, supportive. It was a great course he taught (on American Wars in the Middle East, more or less in the 20th-21st cs.) The students were also really excellent, generally speaking.
Say hello to Ann Arbor for me, different clue.
And 1,000 percent yes to Admin. bloat when I was there, 10-18 years ago. I imagine it has gotten worse. And yes, grad students exist in a state of basically indenture, though who you are indentured to is actually quite complicated and multi-faceted. We had to go on or threaten a strike every few years (our union was great) in order for the University Administrators to give us healthcare.
And yes, in the larger analysis, we are in the process of collapsing internally and falling permanently behind China. I think there is a pretty good — even or better — chance that the Union breaks up, certainly de facto, possibly de jure.
someofparts
diff clue –
“I felt my face punching itself in the eyes whenever I opened it up.” Love that line. Also fascinating that your response to aesthetics is so keen. Plus, there are plenty of reasons to avoid reading Daily Kos besides the ugly look of the thing, so your aesthetic revulsion did you a service on that one.