IN THIS AGE of belt-tightening, Harvard University is facing the same stringent budget constraints as most honest American citizens.

Sure, hyperactive Jeremy Knowles can yell about austerity all he wants. Vaguely articulate Neil Rudenstine can mumble murky metaphors about tubs and bottoms to his heart's content. The University can scheme about clever ways to bilk $2 billion out of unsuspecting alumni until the Charles freezes over.

But talk is cheap. Desperate times call for desperate solutions. Harvard needs to drastically rethink its fiscal policies, to reconceptualize solvency in a heartless age of global capitalism. With that in mind, we offer eight ideas for Harvard to raise money.

The University should take note of our methodology. First, none of our ideas will inconvenience students. There will be no $5 OCS Guides to Grants, no $40 charges for late study cards, no $25 charges for new IDs, no cutting back of shuttlebus services. Second, none of our ideas will directly harm education at Harvard. And third, these cash cows aren't one-time bonanzas: Harvard can milk them for decades to come.

1. HARVARD DATING SERVICES: This idea will not only raise Harvard tons of money, it will also help alleviate the terrible problems Harvard students have with our sex lives. Face it, there are millions of people in this country who would kill to marry a Harvard graduate. We may not be good-looking or nice, but our earnings potentials are off the charts.

The Harvard Alumni Office will keep a master list of student and alumni information: age, height, weight, gender, sexual orientation, estimated (or in the case of current students, potential) income. People from all over the country, all over the world will call the office. For a modest fee, they will receive the number of a promising candidate. Harvard affiliates who are married or morally opposed to matchmaking services could, also for a small fee, remove their names from the list.

ESTIMATED ANNUAL INCOME--Forty thousand references at $10 a pop: $400,000.

POTENTIAL DANGER: May magnify our delusions that we actually are sexually desirable apart from our Harvard connections.

2. HARVARD ACADEMY: The Harvard name is worshipped internationally. Oil sheiks, African royalty, Japanese entrepreneurs, Kennedys--everybody wants to send their kid to Harvard. But not everyone's kid can squeeze past the admissions office, even the legacies.

Harvard University has to be somewhat selective. Fine. So create a pre-Harvard Harvard, from nursery school through high school. Put it in the Ed School or the Div School, major money-losers that don't teach much of anything, anyway. Make it outrageously expensive ($50,000 a year is no skin off a billionaire's back.)

And make it a feeder. If you advertise it, they will come.

ESTIMATED ANNUAL INCOME--Fifteen classes, 50 kids in a class, $50,000 a brat: $37.5 million.

STUFF TO THINK ABOUT: Harvard Academy sweatshirts! Harvard Academy mugs! Harvard Academy laundry bags!

3. TOURIST PHOTO-OPS: Every day, tourists stroll through the Yard, cameras clicking, wallets bulging. We see them as an annoyance. We should start seeing them as a potential gold mine.

These clueless out-of-towners, eager for a memento of the Harvard mystique, inevitably take their Kodaks straight to the John Harvard Statue of the Three Lies. But they'd rather snap a more honest, more contemporary symbol of Harvard. They'd pay for it, too.