From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard’s deep cuts to Ph.D. admissions are on track to leave undergraduate courses short of teaching fellows within two years, a looming squeeze already pushing departments to prepare contingency plans. For now, the impact is delayed: G1 and G2 students do not teach, giving Harvard a brief buffer before the much smaller incoming cohort reaches the teaching-heavy G3 year. But TFs run sections, tutorials, and much of the grading across the humanities and social sciences. With fewer of them on the horizon, departments are being forced into early planning.
Some faculty expect to shoulder the burden themselves. Philosophy professor Edward J. Hall — who leads undergraduate studies for the department — said a possibility is that “faculty will need to start teaching sections.” ...
...The department has little flexibility. It remains a “non-negotiable” that TFs be trained in philosophy, ruling out borrowing students from other units at Harvard. But, he said, the department is considering turning to graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The planning comes after the Faculty of Arts and Sciences announced it would slash Ph.D. admissions by 60 percent in the Arts and Humanities division and by 50 to 70 percent in the Social Sciences division as part of an effort to close an approximately $350 million budget deficit...
Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/12/4/harvard-braces-phd-cuts/.
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