Harvard Cuts PhD Admissions
Harvard University is drastically cutting the number of PhD students it is admitting over the next two years.
The sciences will see a 75% reduction in new PhD slots, and departments in the arts and humanities will see a reduction of 60%, reports The Harvard Crimson.
A source has confirmed that the Department of Philosophy is affected by the cuts. It will have to reduce the number of incoming PhD students for 2026 and 2027 from its typical 5 to 6 per year to a total of 4 over the next two years. According to the Crimson, departments get to decide how to distribute the cuts over those two years. It has not yet been shared how Philosophy will be doing so.
The Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Hopi E. Hoekstra, is reported by The Crimson as having “noted that many peer institutions paused PhD admissions altogether.” Yet very few programs so far have been mentioned in response to last month’s “Which Philosophy Grad Programs Are Accepting Fewer or No Applications for Next Year?“. What does Hoekstra know that we don’t? Feel free to add relevant information that earlier post.
Some online commentary about this news has suggested that Harvard is a bellweather for cuts at other institutions. Whether that’s the case is unclear, given that the university was one of several specifically targeted by the Trump administration with cuts to its federal funding, which contributed to an operating loss of $113 million in fiscal year 2025.
These are dire times, indeed, but let us remember that administrators are always looking for reasons to have cutbacks, whether it is the 2008 financial crisis, or covid, or the assault on funding for higher ed. I do at least find it intelligible when small colleges act this way, but when the well-endowed also behave this way, it is hard to have hope for academia — especially since, as Justin says, “Harvard is a bellweather for cuts at other institutions…”
If a university is run like a business – and Harvard is not much more than a pedigreed and dressed up investment fund where increasing the return on the endowment is sacrosanct – cuts are inevitable, dire times or not. That’s just the logic of business: you increase share value – in this case return on investment value – and you might well cut even when the business is doing well. Not to mention when it isn’t. (Of course, this doesn’t mean that, say, European systems are immune to cuts. It only means that the underlying rationale for those cuts is different: perhaps the state budget is cut, or perhaps ideology says cuts are needed.)
Huh?
Harvard is run to maximize ‘return on investment value’?
I would say that is patently untrue, except that, to be honest, I don’t really know what it means.
This was too extreme, I admit. I only meant that they have to run a tight ship even if, in principle, they could afford running things as before. Their endowment is very large, they could invest and not cut. Perhaps this is the more prudential choice, but it is also more business thinking in my view than perhaps necessary.
What I was alleging is that they focus too much on investing their endowment (keeping in intact, and whatever is the right way to put it) and less perhaps on spending some of it when it is needed. This was the reference to investment value. I would maintain that in principle these universities are run more like business than I think universities should be. One doesn’t need to put this point as extremely as I did, but I think there is truth to it. I think Harvard could afford, without jeopardizing its future operation, to cut less if needed.
Here’s a brand-new, MacArthur-funded project aimed at documenting the defunding and shrinkage of academic philosophy in the US: https://www.futureofphilosophy.org/macarthur-announcement
I hope someone from Harvard’s philosophy dept. participates in the survey, along with other depts. that have seen cuts, etc.
Good luck to all of us.