Out with the Old?

Last year, the first round of budget cuts bid farewell to hot breakfast, the Widener Café, and free coffee in many of Harvard’s departments. Even after the administration offered eligible staffers early retirement packages in order to cut costs, Dean Michael Smith said there was still more hacking to go and to expect a restructuring of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. However, last week’s announcement that the administration is offering early retirement packages to faculty in FAS and four of Harvard’s professional schools comes as a bit of a surprise. While we understand the necessity of the package and we appreciate that early retirement may be a tempting offer for faculty, we do have concerns about its implications for academics at Harvard.

The theory behind the plan is that it will reduce costs by hiring younger faculty members at lower salaries, as well as shrink faculty size—which has increased drastically over the last decade—by hiring at a rate lower than the rate of attrition. In order to achieve these goals, faculty members over the age of 65 who have served at least 10 years at Harvard are eligible and can choose between three options for retirement: one year, two years, or four years in the future. All the plans include paid sabbatical. Additionally, faculty  members accepting the package will be paid $1,000 to assist them with financial planning.

The package is quite compelling for older, tenured faculty members who remain at Harvard. Yet their loss will be an unfortunate sacrifice for undergraduates, as such faculty members’ experience is unrivaled. Many of the faculty members who qualify for the package are pioneers and leaders in their fields, and their absence will be quite notable.

Yet this development is also an opportunity to bring in or promote younger faculty members who will hopefully prove their worth and establish themselves in the realm of academia while also bringing new perspectives to education. Sooner or later, younger faculty members need to climb the ranks, and perhaps offering older faculty a golden opportunity to retire will provide an impetus for new talent to shine.

Beyond the turnover in professors, we are also concerned with the number of professors that Harvard will be left with after the package takes effect. Dean Smith has clearly stated that he intends to shrink faculty; we are worried that such a change will adversely affect class offerings and, importantly, class sizes. Small class settings and the breadth of our course offerings are vital to the undergraduate experience, and we hope they are not sacrificed for financial reasons. Moreover, small departments, especially those that are composed of committees, might be more negatively affected than others which have more professors to spare. Administrators must work to ensure such departments do not inequitably suffer, and they also must minimize the difference between rates of attrition and hiring in order to ensure that smaller course offerings and larger classes do not become the norm.

Though they may gripe, undergraduates’ academic experience is not grossly impacted by the lack of hot breakfast. It will be, however, severely diminished by an increase in class size and a decrease in course offerings; Dean Smith and the rest of FAS must make sure Harvard remains a prestigious academic institution where students receive a first-class education, no matter the cost.