STANFORD ALUMNI
FOR FREE SPEECH AND
CRITICAL THINKING

 

July 20, 2026​​

 

Inside Harvard’s Campaign to Slash Its Own Bureaucracy

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“Harvard is kicking off one of the university’s largest reorganizations in years -- an endeavor expected to result in hundreds of staff cuts and job changes.

 

“The moves, announced [last week], are the culmination of Harvard’s yearslong effort to simplify its structure -- but even the process to reduce bureaucracy has proven incredibly bureaucratic. The changes take aim at a projected $365 million structural deficit, a longstanding issue exacerbated by the Trump administration’s funding disruptions and endowment-tax hike. 

 

“The school is calling the streamlining a ‘once-in-a-generation opportunity’ to reduce complexity within its largest unit that includes the undergraduate college and Ph.D. programs. It currently takes 67 steps to hire a new staff member; some department administrators use over 60 different systems; and there are over 1,500 unique job titles for about 2,300 staff within the restructuring scope.

 

“Behind the scenes, the restructuring process was nearly as complicated. It included a three-phase plan, months of interviews and data collection, years of financial reviews, scores of faculty and staff, and a re-analysis of how the university measures depreciation in its accounting.

 

“Through task forces and committees, Harvard re-evaluated its finances and redesigned its workforce, turning to the world’s top economists -- who are also Harvard faculty -- and dozens of others for suggestions.

 

“‘It’s like a gigantic battleship with a lot of barnacles that have kind of attached themselves to the ship over the years,’ Jeremy Stein, a Harvard economist and former Fed governor, said of the bureaucracy....

 

“Faculty aren’t expected to be included in the Harvard layoffs and role changes, which are set to take place over the next month. Harvard hasn’t said exactly how many jobs will be eliminated.

 

“A union representing Harvard’s clerical and technical staff -- including faculty assistants, IT support and finance workers -- has repeatedly said Harvard doesn’t face a financial crisis, and that layoffs are unjustified and won’t reduce workload. Union organizer Carrie Barbash said Harvard should instead continue the hiring freeze imposed last spring, which has led to attrition.” ...

 

Full article at WSJ. 

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See also:

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• Interview with Stanford President Jon Levin, “Simplify, Then Simplify Again -- Cutting Red Tape to Make Stanford Work Better” at Stanford Report (summer 2026), 

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• “Stanford FY 27 Budget Invests in Faculty, Students, and Staff Amid Continued Uncertainty” at Stanford Report (June 16, 2026), and

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• “Update on the 2025-26 Budget” (June 26, 2025) at Stanford Report and that announced, among other things, a $140 million reduction in general funds.

 

Editor’s note: The question remains, are Stanford's trustees, senior administrators and faculty doing enough to finally address, as Harvard is doing, the dysfunctional policies and procedures and the oversized bureaucracy that have similarly developed at Stanford? As we have noted in many past Newsletters, in recent years Stanford has had the highest administrative cost per student of any U.S. college or university. By way of example, in 2024, the latest year publicly available, Stanford’s administrative cost per student per year was $52,099 (up from $47,691 in 2023). And this is solely for central administration, business and finance, legal, PR and fundraising and NOT for academic support, student services, housing, food services, buildings and grounds and similar items which are accounted for separately. 

 

Compare Stanford's $52,099 administrative cost per student in 2024 with $50,442 at Harvard, $41,406 at Johns Hopkins, $34,724 at Princeton (down from $37,260 in 2023), $34,093 at Caltech, $29,275 at MIT, $26,281 at Yale, $25,622 at University of Chicago, $22,887 at Duke, $22,108 at Northwestern, $20,113 at USC, $19,706 at Cornell, $19,349 at Vanderbilt, $17,003 at Columbia, $10,654 at UC Berkeley, $8,960 at UCLA and $7,811 at Michigan. See updated and more detailed numbers at our Stanford Concerns webpage, "Warning Signs in the Numbers."

 

We have further noted in the past that these are the costs of thousands of Stanford administrators including those who spent weeks and months writing and rewriting the byzantine rules for students to hold a party, the similarly byzantine rules for student assignments to housing and the widely ridiculed (subsequently withdrawn) list of over 100 words and phrases (like freshman, mankind, man hours, he, she, thug, prisoner, American, black mark, black box, grandfathered, webmaster, white paper, prisoner, prostitute, pull the trigger, rule of thumb, war room, etc.) that Stanford’s IT staff felt should not be used by Stanford’s faculty, staff and students (PDF copies of these policies and the discredited word list are likewise posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage).

 

See also the proposals long set forth at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage including, at Section 3, specific targets for reductions in Stanford's overhead and where we have further suggested that all of the savings from these reductions should be redirected solely to undergraduate scholarships, undergraduate research grants and independent projects and graduate student fellowships so that the entire campus community can see that the reductions not only simplify and improve campus life but that the savings are invested, dollar for dollar, in functions that will directly benefit students themselves.

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The Harvard Alumni Who Refuse to Abandon Their Alma Mater

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“Harvard has, in recent years, seemingly abandoned its foundational commitments to free expression and academic freedom, the conditions that make the pursuit of Veritas possible at all. It has repeatedly ranked at or near the bottom of FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings, earning an ‘abysmal’ rating for its campus climate. In 2024, it received the lowest score the index had ever recorded.

 

“Alumni have predictably responded by withdrawing their financial support. By the end of the 2024 fiscal year, cash gifts to Harvard had fallen 15%, the steepest single-year drop in nearly a decade. Others went even further, openly cheering as the federal government moved in to dismantle their alma mater from the outside.

 

“The temptation is understandable. Few institutions look less amenable to reform than a centuries-old, self-governing ivory tower sat atop an endowment larger than most nations’ GDPs. The conclusion that one’s emails and gifts and votes cannot possibly matter is, for many alumni, the conclusion of long experience.

 

“Yet there is a group of alumni who choose to see things differently. They call themselves Harvard Alumni for Free Speech 

(HAFFS). Founded in 2022, the group has taken the view that Harvard’s present condition is precisely why alumni should not abandon the university, but step in to help restore it.

 

“‘Alumni are important stakeholders and must play their part to maintain excellence at Harvard,’ said John Evangelakos, HAFFS’s president and founding member. ‘Alumni should regard themselves as stewards who have been entrusted with passing on to future generations a Harvard that is as vibrant and impactful as it was when they were there.’ ...

 

[Followed by discussion of specific activities undertaken by HAFFS.]

 

“Walking away has its satisfactions, and so does cheerleading punitive measures from the sidelines. But both have enormous limitations. They empty the arena of the people most likely to demand reform and leave the institution to the risk-averse administrators and malevolent political actors.

 

“Engagement works differently. It produces voting guides that change the composition of a board, events that change which arguments faculty will make in public, relationships with administrators who, when a hard moment comes, know there is a constituency on the other side of the table.

 

“Whether Harvard becomes a place where free speech genuinely thrives will depend, in the end, on whether those who still believe in it are willing to stay and do the work.

 

“HAFFS has chosen to stay.”

 

Full article at FIRE.

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Editor’s note: Both HAFFS and Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking are members of the national Alumni Free Speech Alliance.

 

Harvard Medical School Tries Healing Itself

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“Harvard Medical School (HMS) has just released the Report of the HMS Open Inquiry Working Group, which contains detailed recommendations for restoring liberty to the school. These recommendations, if put into practice, would institute significant reform at HMS. But that is very important -- and even if successful, they would leave vital work undone.

 

“The Working Group was a serious effort. Dean George Daley called on HMS’ emeritus dean Jeffrey S. Flier to chair it -- and Flier has an impressive track record of pronouncements in favor of intellectual pluralism. His selection as chair indicated a real commitment to reform.

 

“The Report includes eleven proposals for reform and states outright that higher education should be devoted to the pursuit of truth. It includes a vital corollary: ‘HMS should articulate general principles and reasonable boundaries for activism by students and faculty’. The Report makes clear that these reforms will require comprehensive administrative action.

 

“In remarkably blunt language, the Report explains what has gone wrong with HMS, describing how HMS has been reshaping itself into an Orwellian dystopia. 

 

[Followed by discussion of specific concerns, proposed actions and the author’s views about shortfalls in the report.]

 

“Maybe the authors of the Report have a hard-headed plan to overcome activist resistance, implement these ‘open inquiry’ changes, and then move on to effective, comprehensive reforms. But their plan is apt to be sabotaged by activists who will use its recommendations as a fig-leaf to camouflage continuing illiberal discrimination. 

 

“If the internal reform approach fails, as seems likely, HMS reformers must turn to the strategy of systematic external reform. At the very least, this could include involuntary receivership to make possible the removal of activist personnel from Harvard administration and the elimination of policies that subordinate medical education to discrimination and illiberalism. A figure such as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health, could nominate a committee of external reformers to restore HMS to its proper calling. If HMS proves that it cannot reform itself, then others must do so on its behalf.”

 

Full op-ed by National Association of Scholars Director of Communication David Randall at James Martin Center.

 

Half My Students Are Cheating

 

Excerpts (link in the original):

 

“I am a professor of economics at Brown University, where I have taught for the past 34 years. During much of that time, I have taught Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory, an advanced undergraduate course in mathematical economics.

 

“But this spring semester, I suspect that more than half of my students cheated their way through the course. And even after I reported it, it took Brown far too long to get involved.

 

[Followed by discussion of what raised suspicions.] 

 

“On April 20 -- after the March 5 midterm but before the May 12 final -- the campus newspaper, The Brown Daily Herald, published an article about the suspicious scores as well as the frequency of cheating in other economics courses at Brown. Many of my department colleagues told the paper that their students regularly received perfect scores on homework and take-home exams, then performed poorly on in-person exams.

 

“The article quoted one student saying, ‘I think a lot of people cheat because they have a lot that’s going on in their life.’ Another cited high pressure to get an A as a factor that ‘creates a mindset where students are more likely to cheat.’ Incredibly, Love Wallace, the associate dean of the College for the Academic Code, who reviews all academic code allegations, seemed to agree with them. ‘Students who violate the academic code,’ she said, ‘are almost never doing it from a malicious place. Generally speaking it’s a split-second decision that comes from a place of trying to handle immense external or internal pressure.’...

 

“Academia is supposed to be one of our great beacons of truth. We cannot afford to tolerate or reinforce such appallingly low moral values among many of our best young minds. What happened in my class should be a lesson to all: In our new AI era, if you do not expose and punish cheating, you will encourage it. We must all have the strength to choose otherwise.”

 

Full op-ed by Brown Prof. Roberto Serrano at Free Press.

 

See also “I’m a College Professor Inflating Grades; I Need Help” by Duke Prof. Frank Bruni at NY Times.

 

Americans’ Confidence in Colleges Continues Long-Term Slide

 

Excerpts:

 

“The proportion of Americans who have ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in higher education has slipped to 38% -- down four percentage points from 42% last year, a survey released [last week] shows.

 

“The decline represents an erosion of trust in America’s colleges and universities that has been occurring since 2015, when 57% indicated confidence, according to the survey, conducted by Lumina Foundation and global pollster Gallup.

 

“The survey found that the recent decline was driven largely among Democrats, with 50% indicating confidence in higher education -- a ‘new low’ for Democrats and down from 61% last year. But the report says Democrats have higher levels of confidence than independents and Republicans, whose levels stood at 39% and 23%, respectively.

 

“The long-term decline is found mostly among Republicans. The 23% confidence level among Republicans is down 33 percentage points from where it stood in 2015 at 56%, according to the survey.

 

“Those who graduated from college had higher levels of confidence than those who did not -- 43% vs. 35%, the survey found.

 

“Three themes emerged as the reasons behind the loss of confidence: apparent political agendas on campus, the high cost of college, and colleges failing to prepare students well for the workforce.

 

“‘Gallup’s numbers are a warning, but they are also a roadmap,’ said Julian Thompson, senior director for strategy development at the UNCF Institute for Capacity Building.

 

“‘The same research shows nine in ten students believe their degree is building the skills they need, so the confidence gap is with a public that no longer sees the proof,’ Thompson said.” ...

 

Full article at EDU Ledger. PDF copy of the full Lumina/Gallup report available here. 

 

Other Articles of Interest

 

UC Regents to Consider Reinstating SAT/ACT Testing

Full article at The 74: “‘As stewards of this institution, we need to ask a broader and more consequential set of questions,’ [said Stanford alum and UC Board of Regents chair Maria Anguiano] of the admissions process. ‘What knowledge, skills and experiences best prepare students for success at UC and beyond? We have a responsibility to continually examine whether our understanding of college readiness keeps pace with the changing world around us.’”

 

A Call to Prepare for AI’s Economic Transformation

Full article at Stanford Digital Economy: “Sixteen Nobel Laureates join leading economists and AI researchers in call to prepare for AI’s economic transformation.”

 

Scholars Argue for Mandatory College Civics

Full article at College Fix: “A higher education reform group is calling for a nationwide requirement that every college student complete a semester-long course on the American story.... The American Council of Trustees and Alumni recently published its report, ‘A Broadside for the Nation: Preparing College Students for Informed Citizenship,’ which argues the requirement would help the nation’s future schoolteachers, business leaders, professionals, and government leaders.”

  

How Universities Became Engines of American Success

Full article at USA Today: “For 250 years, America’s colleges and universities have been engines of leadership, innovation and upward mobility. From training civic leaders to driving scientific breakthroughs, higher education has expanded the country’s capacity to solve problems, imagine new possibilities and create new opportunities.”

 

Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities

at Stanford

 

Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.

 

Michelle Landrey Cline Named President of the Stanford Alumni Association

“A longtime alumni volunteer leader and business executive, Landrey Cline has had a long relationship with the university and will succeed Howard Wolf, who retired after 25 years of service.”

 

Biological Age of Our Organs and Cell Types Within Them Predict Our Disease Risk, Longevity

 

Necessity Can Drive Innovation

 

From Biology to Astrophysics, AI Expands the Boundaries of Discovery

 

How to Improve Your Memory and Cognitive Function at Any Age (video, 150 minutes)​

 

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