Harvard Unaffected by State Budget Cuts

While Massachusetts public and community colleges may be hard hit by the $50 million cut in state funding for higher education contained in the recently-approved Mass. state budget, Harvard will continue to receive state money despite an enormous University endowment and sufficient funds to provide financial aid to its undergraduates.

“We are all in that same pool of active financial aid officers trying to make sure that we secure state funding,” said Jannette Parks, coordinator of federal and state aid programs in the Faculty of Art and Sciences’ financial aid office.

Last year, Harvard College received a total of $878,000 from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, according to Clantha McCurdy, associate vice chancellor of financial assistance at the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education’s Office of Student Financial Aid.

Of that funding, $720,000 of it came in the form of Gilbert Grants, a program intended to aid needy students attending private colleges.

Parks said that during the next fiscal year, Massachusetts may actually increase statewide funding of Gilbert Grants by $3 million.

Even with an increase, the Gilbert Grant funding will still be only a tiny fraction of the total $54 million the College awarded in direct need-based scholarships last year.

According to Parks, the overall cuts in higher education funding the state will be negligible to Harvard.

“It should have very little impact on our institution,” she said. “This is really an issue for just about every other institution in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

Among those other institutions are community colleges, which are expected to have to make large adjustments to cope with the cuts.

Mary L. Fifield, president of Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, said that Bunker Hill will have to make significant budget cuts to compensate for the reduction in state funding.

She noted that about 68 percent of Bunker Hill’s funds come from the state, and that Massachusetts’ reductions contributed to an expected shortfall of $1 million in Bunker Hill’s budget.

“The cuts in higher education are really short-sighted,” Fifield said. “Bunker Hill, as are other public community colleges, is scrambling to make the necessary cuts to maintain program quality and responsiveness to the local communities.”

Parks said she realized the difficulty community colleges may face from the cuts.

“Especially for community colleges, they don’t have that type of funding [that Harvard has],” she said. “It’s a big deal for them.”

Parks said the Harvard would only face any real financial troubles if the state cuts become extreme.

“At the level that the cuts in the funding are at now, we would have no problem making up the difference,” Parks said. “If all the [state] money were to disappear, we may have to sit back and think about things.”

—Staff writer Alexander J. Blenkinsopp can be reached at blenkins@fas.harvard.edu.