<p>Back to the original thread topic - son reports no tangible impact personally from the cuts although concerned travel and research grants might be reduced this year.</p>
<p>OT:</p>
<p>You are right. I forgot that Derek Bok was interim president and that Summers stepped down in 2006. I don’t know if El Erian would have stayed. I believe people were doubtful from the very outset that he would stay long. I continue to think that Summers. El Erian and the Corporation made disastrous decisions.
Heck, Summers made some disastrous decisions when he was in the Clinton administration–believing in the same fair tales that led to the investment decisions of HMC: that profits would continue their dizzy upward trend.</p>
<p>Sewhappy:</p>
<p>I posted earlier that the cuts that have been made have a minor impact on students. But I’m not sure what impact the cuts yet to be made will have on every member of the Harvard community.</p>
<p>Sewhappy: I expect cuts to be made for research grants particularly for seniors. We’ll know very soon.</p>
<p>I should say that lots of grants to undergraduates are protected by the terms of the gift so will not be affected by cuts. I mean grants such as Rockefeller and other travel grants to various parts of the world. But the faculty and GSAS are expected to shrink. This will have an effect on teaching . Section sizes will probably go up a bit; some courses will no longer be offered if retiring faculty are not replaced. Harvard never had a minimum enrollment requirement for classes; that might change.
Postponement of maintenance of various facilities will probably be noticeable.</p>
<p>I remember when Yale dealt with its financial crisis (after Kingsman Brewster). I read articles about dirty windows and unmown grass. Yale survived. Harvard will, too.</p>
<p>
That’s something they’re considering at Yale–especially very low enrollment classes that have been offered every year.</p>
<p>" should say that lots of grants to undergraduates are protected by the terms of the gift so will not be affected by cuts. I mean grants such as Rockefeller and other travel grants to various parts of the world."</p>
<p>I’m not referring to grants associated with travel.</p>
<p>^I understand this. To its credit, Harvard is trying very hard to protect the undergraduate experience.</p>
<p>Hunt: this is only a rumor I heard; I have no idea what Harvard will consider low enrollment.
It’s not so long ago that the administration was pushing for small classes of fewer than 12.
A long time ago, a young prof at a state university was on tenterhooks to find out whether the course he was planning to teach would enroll 15 or more students. If not, he was out of one course and out of the corresponding salary. It was about the time when I heard that one Harvard department had more faculty than students!</p>
<p>I can’t remember now where I read this about Yale–it might have been in the Yale Daily News, but I’m not sure. Apparently at Yale there are a substantial number of classes with only 2 or 3 students, and the idea would be to offer them less frequently. I guess this saves money if you don’t replace departing faculty, or perhaps hire fewer adjuncts.</p>
<p>I’m sure Harvard has plenty of those, too.
I don’t know if Harvard or Yale have many adjuncts (well, there are adjuncts in HMS, but that’s a different story).
The problem of not replacing departing faculty is that the holes they leave behind may be critical to a department. For example, a department may end up with lots of people doing comparative politics but not enough in American politics (a particular problem if most students are interested in American politics and fewer are in comparative politics).</p>
<p>Yes, there are quite a number of 1, 2, and 3-student courses at Harvard. One of my fellow transfers majored in Sanskrit and typically had only one or two other students (generally grad students) in her classes.</p>
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<p>Simple arithmetic shows that such courses can absorb only a miniscule fraction of the enrollment at a school the size of Harvard, which severely limits the fraction of undergraduates who could ever take a (taught) class that small. All the more so when you consider grad students and the fact that the small, exotic courses are more common in small, exotic departments.</p>
<p>One note on small classes: the number of small classes can be exaggerated by including individual music lessons and the like.</p>
<p>The preservation of small classes is very important. As an economics concentrator, my son greatly appreciated the opportunity to take some core classes with very small numbers. It is a completely different academic experience and one that I’d be really sorry to see Harvard give up.</p>
<p>Aside from research and travel grants, my other big worry would be the funding of student organizations. It’s true that it is the dynamism of the students themselves that make so many of these organizations superb - but the funding allows them to do marvelous things. That would be a real shame if those budgets get cut too drastically.</p>
<p>Many of the big student organizations (Model UN, Debate, The Crimson, a capella groups, etc) provide their own funding through events they put on (i.e. HMUN) or endowments (i.e. The Lampoon).</p>
<p>Other groups rely more heavily on UC funding, which has been cut already to some degree (the college established a new UC fund last spring, then froze it this fall). I believe the rest of the UC’s budget comes from a term bill expense ($70/student/year?). I don’t forsee the college cutting this - although they could (it would cut down on financial aid costs).</p>
<p>Moral of the story: student groups probably aren’t threatened by college funding cuts (they’re probably more threatened by the overall economic climate, which might hurt advertising/conference/CD sale/etc revenues).</p>
<p>Bloomberg comments on the debate OdysseyTiger + Marite were having: [Harvard?s</a> Bet on Interest Rate Rise Cost $500 Million to Exit - Bloomberg.com](<a href=“Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg”>Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg)</p>