Dissent: Time's up for Time Caps

Imagine: It’s your first day of work, but you already know exactly when you’ll be fired, regardless of how well you perform.

For many of Harvard’s academic workers — our lecturers, preceptors, and fellows — that’s the norm. University time caps mean termination dates are written into their employment contracts and enforced no matter how much students love them or how heavy the toll of uprooting their lives and families to find work elsewhere.

The durations are totally arbitrary: two, three, or eight years, depending on the position. They kindle burnout in an already disheartening and stressful academic market, demanding that prudent faculty immediately search for a new job while handling all the responsibilities of their current position.

And these expiration dates harm students whose relationship-building with mentors is cut short by administrative fiat.

The Editorial Board acknowledges almost all of these shortcomings — which is why it’s so ridiculous that they only endorse a slight softening of the status quo.

Their proposal? Keep time caps for most academic workers with exceptions for faculty who are, well, exceptional. The current kick-to-the curb policy keeps fresh talent coming in, they say. Newer is better.

That logic is exactly backwards. In what other professional context would we say that the people most experienced at a job are actually the ones least qualified for it? The proposal is especially strange given that these academic positions are already filled by only a tiny proportion of elite applicants.

Moreover, it’s hard to see how a rotating cast of overworked faculty barely familiar with the University would be the best group to offer high-quality teaching or advising.

Remarkably, these academic workers manage to pull it off. They shine as teachers, researchers, and mentors, despite the time caps that push them away from valuable, student-facing work, and instead towards job talks and CVs.

Still, let’s imagine that the Board is right — that the policy really does improve teaching. The argument for keeping it in place then goes something like this: Time caps make life better for Harvard undergraduates. Therefore, time caps are good.

That’s true — if students are the only people worth caring about.

Obviously, they’re not. At issue is the livelihoods and job security of underpaid, overworked non-tenure-track faculty. The best the Board offers them is the promise that a lucky few can avoid unemployment — as long as they can outcompete all their soon-to-be-former colleagues.

The true purpose of time caps is clear: cost-cutting. It’s easier to offer sparse pay and meager benefits to employees who won’t work at the University for more than a few years. And if they burn out by the time they leave, it’s — contractually speaking — no longer Harvard's problem.

So rather than instituting some new, slightly more palatable time cap system, as the Board proposes, the University should just eliminate them altogether in favor of presumptive renewal for faculty who meet performance standards.

This approach works well for non-tenure-track academics at Rutgers University and the University of Michigan. Some lecturers at Harvard Medical School and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health enjoy the possibility of indefinite employment too.

Every single person on the Editorial Board benefits from the labor of academic workers. It’s a shame the Board refuses to reciprocate.

Saul I.M. Arnow ’26, an Associate Editorial editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Adams House. E. Matteo Diaz ’27, a Crimson Editorial Comp Director, lives in Leverett House. Jasmine N. Wynn ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Winthrop House. Nuriel R. Vera-DeGraff ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a double concentrator in Social Studies and Mathematics in Mather House.

Dissenting Opinions: Occasionally, The Crimson Editorial Board is divided about the opinion we express in a staff editorial. In these cases, dissenting board members have the opportunity to express their opposition to staff opinion