GSAS Will Not Cut Program Funding

Despite the effects of the financial crisis on the University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean Allan M. Brandt said the school has no plans to cut funding for any of its programs.

Brandt said, however, that GSAS administrators have made modest modifications to the school’s administrative budget upon the request of Michael D. Smith, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Smith has asked all departments for 10 to 15 percent budget cuts in order to meet the more than $100 million shortfall across FAS in the next fiscal year.

“This is an exercise that Dean Smith is asking all administrative units in FAS to participate in,” Brandt said. “The character of this economic crisis is so global and universal that resources of every type have been affected.”

Measures that administrators have taken thus far include reducing their catering budgets and leaving certain administrative positions in their office unfilled.

“We’ll be able to reach Dean Smith’s goal for the administrative budget,” Brandt said.

In addition, instead of cutting back on program funding, the school plans to simply offer admission to fewer students—while keeping class size constant—in order to ensure that over-yields do not occur.

“We realized that we would need to be very cautious with the size of the graduate school in the coming year,” Brandt said, adding that the admissions committee has decreased its accepted applicant pool 9 percent.

After accepting 660 Ph.D. students last fall, GSAS will only admit around 600 this year, though the number of applicants to the school’s Ph.D. programs rose by approximately 12 percent this year.

Yet in spite of the fiscal crisis, Dean Smith, President Drew G. Faust, and GSAS administrative officials said that they are committed to maintaining their support for the University’s graduate students, whom the University admits on a need-blind basis.

“We thought it was crucial to assure students who were already here that their fellowships would be absolutely guaranteed,” Brandt said, adding that GSAS guarantees every doctoral student a 5-year financial support package.

In addition, although GSAS plans to effectively shrink its admission pool, Brandt said that current and prospective Ph.D. students in all programs would enjoy a slight stipend increase to ensure that they are able to maintain their fellowships.

—Staff writer Marianna N. Tishchenko can be reached at mtishch@fas.harvard.edu.