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In trimming costs, Harvard is reaching for the wrong branch.

Last month, Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences laid off 30 staff, following a sharp rise in the endowment tax and looming threats to federal funding. The day before the concentration declaration deadline, workers who directly advise students found themselves without a job.

In a time of crushing financial pressure, cuts will always draw blood. But it’s hard to see how Harvard can claim to safeguard its teaching and research mission while letting go of staff who formed its backbone — especially when other corners of the University seem more ripe for clipping.

Consider some of the community members lost in the SEAS layoffs. Chris J. Lombardo spent 13 years at SEAS, where he advised the Harvard chapter of Engineers Without Borders and created a humanitarian design course that has run for nearly a decade. Bryan Yoon — a former assistant director of undergraduate studies — came into work after being laid off to help students avoid fees for declaring their concentrations late. Megan E. Reardon, a lab coordinator who managed about 30 students and 5,000 square feet of lab space, was described by her supervisor as “probably one of the best administrators I’ve had.”

Harvard’s attempts to fill the gaping holes left by these layoffs don’t inspire confidence. To make up for the diminished ranks of lab coordinators, those remaining now shoulder responsibility for five labs instead of their original three, per SEAS’ plan. We worry that when the people who grease the wheels of research are stretched thin, the wheels won’t just slow — they’ll grind.

And the University’s efforts to mitigate the expanding workload are equally feckless. Eighteen days after laying off an advisor, SEAS rolled out an “unofficial” chatbot that could aid some students’ course registration (though, thankfully, the announcement clarified that the bot’s advice should not replace that of a human advisor).

Taken together, these cuts seem symptomatic of misplaced priorities. Harvard appears more willing to trim the people closest to its academic mission — teachers and direct support staff — than to pare back its sprawling administration.

For the world’s premier academic institution, budget reductions should preserve teaching and research wherever possible. When the choice is between cutting student-facing staff and trimming back-office positions, the latter should be the obvious place to start.

And Harvard’s own administrative footprint makes that choice appear even clearer. While universities nationwide have seen non-faculty hiring outpace faculty growth, administrative bloat appears especially stark here at Harvard.

Between 2004 and 2023 Harvard’s faculty grew by 11 percent while the count of administrators skyrocketed 43 percent in that same period. And according to a 2023 report by the Progressive Policy Institute, the average top-50 university employs roughly 25 non-faculty staff per 100 students.

Harvard employs 61.

That’s more than double the elite-school average — a difference that strains any narrative of unavoidable cuts to student-serving roles.

Of course, many of our non-faculty staff are indispensable — and it remains unclear whether the SEAS layoffs were strictly necessary to protect the University’s finances. One thing is sure though: Harvard should begin its belt-tightening where it hurts actual education the least — not where students feel it most.

So the next time Harvard has to reach for the pruning shears, it might start further from the branches that students and faculty depend on.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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