Academic

Undergraduate Education Cut Backs at Harvard

By Alfred Brophy

Coming on the heels of news that Harvard Law School's budget is being trimmed 10%, comes news that Harvard College will be increasing the size of sections taught by graduate students.  The college is looking to save $2 million by reducing the number of section leaders by 8 to 10%.  That's part of a plan to save $220 million from the Arts and Sciences budget.

The Crimson discusses the way this pain is trickling down to graduate students:

With the average section increasing in size, there will be fewer sections overall, which will translate into fewer teaching positions. 

Many graduate students? primary source of income is their salary from leading sections, [Assistant Dean of the College Logan] McCarty said. Graduate students earn roughly $5,000 per course they teach. Many graduate students teach two courses a semester, earning them about $20,000 per year. 

To make matters worse, a lot of graduate students won't know until the fall whether they'll be able to get sections:

In the past, administrators did not enforce the section enrollment target. As a result, departments hired more section leaders, rather than redistributing them to classes where enrollment was higher. 

But McCarty said he hopes with additional oversight from University Hall, departments will reallocate section leaders more efficiently. 

?I don?t think that many students will notice the change in section size,? McCarty said, who said he foresaw only a small increase in the average enrollment. ?It is really about bringing our section sizes in line with our policy goals.? 

Read the entire, sobering article here.

Alas, this is not the end of the bad news.  "House" (what the rest of us call dormitories) budgets are being reduced 25%.  And the news from the Yale Daily News isn't much better.  The school is laying off as many as 100 staff and reducing department budgets by 7.5% (at least I think that's what the article means when it speaks of departments cutting costs by 7.5%).

The image needs a little explanation.  It's Thomas Cole's Voyage of Manhood, from the National Gallery of Art.  I'd gone looking for an image from the New Deal of smokestacks,--that used to be the universal sign of full employment and economic prosperity.  I hoped for an image that would convey the hope for a return to full employment.  But then when Cole's haunting image appeared on the NGA's home page, I thought--you know what, that's might appropriate, too.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on May 15, 2009 (boomark / email).