The Harvard Crimson Writes...

The Harvard Crimson writes:

Would you be free either tomorrow or Friday for an interview? If so, what time would work best for you?

I reply:

Don't know what I can say that I haven't already said:

The population of people qualified and wanting to go to elite American colleges has multiplied between five and tenfold over the past half century. During that time the University of California has scaled itself up roughly from 4,000 to 40,000 undergraduates a year. Harvard has received roughly $15 billiion or so in gifts to carry out its mission as a charitable philanthropy and yet has only managed to scale up from roughly 1200 to 1600 undergraduates a year.

As an alumnus, I think that pretty much speaks for itself.

I had a very good time as a Harvard undergraduate because I found a niche in it--Social Studies--that functioned like a small liberal arts college and because I very quickly found my way as a sophomore into the graduate economics classes (which I had the math to handle). But many others I know did not, and my years as a junior faculty member and as head tutor of economics make me think that there is an enormous disproportion between resource inputs and educational outputs. This is a place where the ethos of the senior Arts and Sciences faculty--well, I remember one dinner at one New England college where a political science professor just back from a semester visiting Harvard said that his first week there Harvey Mansfield had stopped by, looked into his office, and said: "You should close your door. If you don't, undergraduates may wander in."

I would suggest that you talk to the ex-presidents: Bok, Rudenstine, and Summers. Ask them how things looked from Massachusetts Hall over the past forty years, and why they made the choices they did. It would be interesting to hear...

Yours,

Brad DeLong

Comments

[Kate G.]

Brad, I think you need to be a bit clearer about what your beef is with Harvard. Its all true but what do you think Harvard can do about it without doubling or tripling the size of its faculty in order to create and maintain more smaller classes for a (hypothetically) larger undergraduate population? Harvard was already too big for lots of kids when we were there--I almost left for somewhere, anywhere, maybe swarthmore sophmore year--and though soc stud was a haven in heartless world, and there were seminars aplenty if you knew how to look, the whole experience was one of nearly unfettered anomie. What's the cure? If you increase the student population you need to vastly increase the teaching staff and Harvard simply refuses (wrongly, of course) to do that and continues to rely on underpaid grad students to do the work of a professoriate that they insist is be both rare and above teaching and instructing duties.

Kate G.

[Kate G.]

Brad, I think you need to be a bit clearer about what your beef is with Harvard. Its all true but what do you think Harvard can do about it without doubling or tripling the size of its faculty in order to create and maintain more smaller classes for a (hypothetically) larger undergraduate population? Harvard was already too big for lots of kids when we were there--I almost left for somewhere, anywhere, maybe swarthmore sophmore year--and though soc stud was a haven in heartless world, and there were seminars aplenty if you knew how to look, the whole experience was one of nearly unfettered anomie. What's the cure? If you increase the student population you need to vastly increase the teaching staff and Harvard simply refuses (wrongly, of course) to do that and continues to rely on underpaid grad students to do the work of a professoriate that they insist is be both rare and above teaching and instructing duties.

Kate G.

[Kate G.]

Brad, I think you need to be a bit clearer about what your beef is with Harvard. Its all true but what do you think Harvard can do about it without doubling or tripling the size of its faculty in order to create and maintain more smaller classes for a (hypothetically) larger undergraduate population? Harvard was already too big for lots of kids when we were there--I almost left for somewhere, anywhere, maybe swarthmore sophmore year--and though soc stud was a haven in heartless world, and there were seminars aplenty if you knew how to look, the whole experience was one of nearly unfettered anomie. What's the cure? If you increase the student population you need to vastly increase the teaching staff and Harvard simply refuses (wrongly, of course) to do that and continues to rely on underpaid grad students to do the work of a professoriate that they insist is be both rare and above teaching and instructing duties.

Kate G.

[Kate G.]

oops, I swear this isn't my fault.

Kate g.

[Bill Gardner]

"I had a very good time as a Harvard undergraduate because I found a niche in it--Social Studies--that functioned like a small liberal arts college"

I went through that program a year or so before you. I am still in touch with friends from Soc Stud 10. But having now put a child through an actual small liberal arts college (Kenyon), I think you are too generous. Intellectually, Social Studies was bizarre -- a social science concentration from which you could graduate without the slightest knowledge of statistics?

[alkali]

This is what I would say to Harvard's President Drew Gilpin Faust if she had the bad luck to be trapped with me in an elevator:

The size of Harvard's endowment is, or soon will be, bad for Harvard.

To be clear, I say this not because I think Harvard is undeserving of the money -- if you awoke me from a dead sleep at 3 a.m. and asked what charity I'd give a billion dollars to, I might well say Harvard. (Some people might disagree, and that's fine, but that's not my concern here.)

Nor do I think that Harvard's fundraising or investing activities have in some way corrupted Harvard or its mission.

My concern is this: at some point, someone is going to take a run at that pile of cash. It's just too big.

It might be a Congressman.
It might be the IRS.
It might be the commonwealth of Massachusetts.
It might be a very clever plaintiff's lawyer.
But someone will take a run at that pile of money.

In the private sector, where a company generates a lot of free cash, and doesn't reinvest it in the enterprise or dividend it out to shareholders, that company becomes an acquisition target. Someone will take a run at buying that company. In the private sector, that's OK: somehow, the money will make its way to the shareholder owners, and that's how it's supposed to work.

But if someone takes a run at getting a piece of Harvard's endowment, there is no good result for Harvard. Harvard could be subjected to really adverse changes in tax law, intrusive new government oversight, litigation costs and burdens, etc.

Accordingly, Harvard must, in its own best interest, find some credible way of committing itself to spending down a chunk of its endowment in some way consistent with its mission. Solving that problem -- and doing it expeditiously -- should be what keeps the people who run Harvard awake at night.

[Kate G.]

Oh, come on alkali, what's to stop harvard from just buying costa rica and moving the whole shebang down there?

Kate G.
and, whoops, Bill gardner is right, I made it all the way through grad school without statistics and I am the poorer for it.

[Kate G.]

Oh, come on alkali, what's to stop harvard from just buying costa rica and moving the whole shebang down there?

Kate G.
and, whoops, Bill gardner is right, I made it all the way through grad school without statistics and I am the poorer for it.

[alkali]

Kate G.: I don't think that plan will work. Widener Library wouldn't handle the humidity well.

More seriously, I do think it makes more sense to look at the Harvard endowment problem not as "Should Harvard just keep piling up money forever?" but "Can it actually do so?" If it seems probable that at some point Harvard will run into serious trouble with regard to its endowment, and I think it seems very probable, then the ethical question can fairly be set aside, and Harvard can get down to the business of making plans for some of that money.

[anne]

From almost the time I walked on campus, I was told by Israel Scheffler never ever let anyone at Harvard tell you what you cannot do. Scheffler learned to regret telling me that, but that is another matter, and I tell all others the same, at times to my regret. There is roughness about and there is kindness about, and the other advice I quickly gave to and adopted for myself was look for niceness.

Scheffler once asked a seminar I had bullied myself in on, what we wished in a Professor. I insisted on kindness, to Scheffler's kindly grumbling and remarkably little agreement, and insist so still.

[anne]

I always but always tried to avoid graduate students as teachers, knowing how few had learned to be kind; but that too is another matter. My final paper once for Scheffler when I was annoyed, was on why butterflies never fly straight.

[anne]

We finally have a markedly fine President, by the way. Interestingly, a woman. Say, hey.

[Mr Punch]

I agree with Kate, but in any case I think you exaggerate. I graduated from Harvard 40 years ago, and went to grad school at Berkeley. At that time Berkeley and UCLA were at about the same scale and relative quality as today, and Davis, UCSF, UCSB, and even the new UCSC were very good though perhaps not as big as they are now. Irvine, I think, hadn't opened, and San Diego was not what it has become -- these are the major upgrades, I'd say.

The money behind the UC system, which is basically the (what?) $1.7 trillion of California GSP,has grown only about half as fast as Harvard's endowment over that period (but bear in mind that endowment income as a percentage of Harvard's budget was moving toward the low ebb of the '70s); meanwhile tuition (or the equivalent) has risen much faster (!!!) at Cal.

The UC system has a mission of serving the entire state, and a political interest in being seen to do so. That's why it keeps adding new campuses, instead of standing pat or expanding Berkeley and UCLA to 75,000 students each. That's one set of decisions.

The decisions Harvard has made are essentially those made by other independent universities, which rarely depart from the modal 4400-7200 undergraduate scale whatever resources are available.

[anne]

A student who is willing to be pushy can avoid almost any graduate teaching associate and at least pick sympathetic associates. Reputations are there to be learned, and senior faculty will set the tone for associates in any event. The need is to be willing to be independent in choosing classes, and to have confidence that there are tutors who are sheltering.

Heck, I even feed raccoons (secretly) at Radcliffe. Now there's fun.

[anne]

Where would my Radcliffe raccoons live if we went to 40,000? Heck I have been happy, and remember who is President.

[wetzel]

I turned down Harvard for Stanford in the eighties after Harvard sent me a Certificate for framing after getting accepted. My thoughts were that if I decided to go, I would get a degree, so who needs the certificate? It just seemed kind of pompous and I was looking for a reason to choose Stanford and so I did.

At Stanford I spent most of my time as an undergraduate in classes with four to eight students and a tenured professor. I'm still trying to digest my undergraduate education. I had the best professors in the world.

[Ken Muldrew]

Anne wrote:
"My final paper ... was on why butterflies never fly straight."

A fine problem in fluid dynamics. I'm guessing that the stats courses were a breeze for you. ;-)

[Bostoniangirl]

HUh. The people I knew who concentrated in Social Studies did have to take statistics. (mid 90's).

Classics has gotten much more student-friendly since I was there (there's a free pizza at Bertucci's Latin table now), but it was never terrible. Individual professors were always great. They just couldn't agree on the complete currciulum, and then suddenly you found yourself taking general exams and not knowing hwo to prepare. They've since modified the tutorial system a lot.

I think that German is supposed to be quite friendly too. But basically, the Economics department wants fewer concentrators.

[jerry]

"...Bill gardner is right, I made it all the way through grad school without statistics and I am the poorer for it."

Did Harvard teach you a reason you cannot attend, even at this late date in your career, a community college for a few courses in statistics? Odds are it would do you good. (In the summer, it's often the case that your local state school will let you take courses there without a formal admission.)

[Bloix]

Mr Punch is right when he says that "the decisions Harvard has made are essentially those made by other independent universities." What he misses is that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are not like other universities. Harvard's endowment is $37 billion; Yale, $22 billion; Princeton, $16 billion. For comparison: MIT, $10 billion; Columbia, $7 billion; Penn, $7 billion; Duke, $6 billion; Emory, $6 billion; Wash U, $6 billion; USC, $4 billion; Brown, $3 billion; Hopkins, $3 billion; Tufts, $1.5 billion; Georgetown, $1 billion. So it appears that you can easily run an elite research university with one fourth to one tenth of Harvard's endowment.

Harvard could build a Harvard II in a cornfield and not one student or faculty member would notice that the money was gone.

The weird thing about these universities is that other entities with a steady income stream like to take on debt. They borrow in order to put resources to productive use. Major universities have a good idea of what their income will be over a period of years- they set their tuition and they have a good sense of the rate of grants, contracts, and charitable giving. They could operate with modest endowments by borrowing against future income for capital projects. Instead they prefer to hoard billions that they can never use. They have no intention of putting their holdings to productive use for their students or their faculties or their communities. They're like the dragon Smaug, squatting and stinking on a mountain of gold and jewels.

[Kate G.]

Oh jerry, who asked you? Harvard didn't "teach me a reason I cannot attend" a community college it just *turned out not to be necessary* for me to use more statistics than I could pick up on my own. See, the one thing Harvard (and Yale) taught me is that if you want to learn something you don't need anyone's permission or anyone's courses--you just go to the library and study the stuff for its own sake. But thanks for the lecture.
Kate G.

[elliottg]

Often times the only reason to pay tuition is for the credit. You should be able to find something of interest here:

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php

MIT's open courseware does similar work.

BTW, Berkeley has no mechanism for someone to pay to audit a course. I once tried to find out how by calling the registrar and they told me the only requirement was approval of the professor. I don't know whether they go it right, but that's how I ended up taking health econommics.