Stable Budget, Uneven Hiring

Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles' recent letter on the financial status of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) contains some sound advice for keeping the budget in control. But in other areas, such as faculty hiring, it reports disappointing results.

We must commend Knowles for his efforts over the last five years in reducing the FAS budget deficit from 7.5 percent in 1990 to a mere 0.3 percent this year. As his letter cautions, however, the deficit will not remain low without vigilance.

A key aspect of that vigilance includes a 10-percent projected reduction in fulltime employees (FTEs). Although there was an outcry over this reduction at last week's Faculty meeting, we believe the downsizing is necessary. It is not an isolated cut; it comes in the context of a reduction of more than 56 FTEs over the past five years. In addition, it will be implemented when 16 departments merge into the new Humanities Complex, thus helping to reduce administrative overlap and redundancy.

Knowles also notes that rises in tuition rates cannot continue to outstrip inflation indefinitely. We are grateful that the tuition increase last year was the lowest in decades, but even a five percent increase can be a burden for struggling families. We beg the Faculty to do anything in its power to reduce skyrocketing tuition rates while keeping the budget in balance.

Of course, keeping tuition rates low means cutting back somewhere else, just as reducing section size (as Knowles would like to do) would mean something else would get short shrift. Although we know times are hard, we wish donors would give restricted funds to Harvard not only for students' scholarships, which are critical, but for smaller sections. The benefits in good teaching, especially in Core classes, would be immeasurable.

We are pleased to see good use of the teaching innovation fund--money designed for new projects, such as the rehabilitation of the History department tutorial program and a new course on identity politics within the Government Department, essentially an ethnic studies course. We are also glad to see merit-based grants in some departments helping to speed the rate at which graduate students in the arts and sciences finish their courses of study.

Although the number of junior professors and women given tenure has increased over the past 10 years, we are still appalled by the low numbers. Harvard is well-known for its poor rate of internal hires: a study of junior faculty hired between the years 1984-85 and 1988-89 showed that about 21 percent of these assistant professors were ultimately offered tenure at Harvard.

We know Harvard gives tenure to "the best in the world," but we have seen too many brilliant scholars and teachers leave after not being offered tenure to believe that this system is foolproof. We also scorn the first statistic Knowles offers about junior faculty members. In the same study, he writes, "Ninety percent of eligible assistant professors (123 of 136) were promoted to associate professor or directly to tenure." Being promoted to an associate professor and being given tenure are far from the same thing; Knowles, a chemist, should know better than to deceive so blatantly by conflating statistics. Even if Knowles is being honest, the percentage of assistant professors who are women is far lower than at other institutions, so the future of women in the faculty would still be far from bright.

Although the numbers of female faculty members have increased over the past few years, the process still seems slow to us. We would like to see more and more women appointed until the ratio is nearly equal.

We are glad to see a budget letter as comprehensive and with as good financial news as this one. There is always work to be done, however, and we must stay alert to make sure Harvard does not lapse into a larger deficit or drag its heels in hiring.