WSJ: When $26 Billion isn't enough

xiggi · December 20, 2005, 10:19pm

Based on the safe assumption that Dan Barkowitz -the Director of Financial Aid at MIT- knows the inner policies of its competitors, I can confirm that Harvard does not count the equity of the primary residence. MIT, as well as the remaining members of the 568 group, does use the equity but does only assess (at 5%) its capped valuation of 2.4 times the income.

PS This was true at the end of September, but may have changed. After all, three months seems to be a lifetime for financial aid specialists. :)

zephyr151 · December 22, 2005, 4:01am

“Free tuition would make our elite institutions into true meritocracies. …Why shouldn’t education be free, especially since its well within Harvard’s means to do it for both graduate and undergraduate students.”

It’s not, really. Free tuition would spell the end of the great private universities and the unique academic excellence they offer.

4thfloor · December 22, 2005, 6:59am

NOTHING is ever free.

Since money doesn’t grow on trees, it is only a question of whose money you take away to pay for it.

Then it becomes a question of how far removed the people who pay for it are from the people who use it, and how well that works out.

sakky · December 24, 2005, 11:53pm

I don’t know about that. I would point out that many of Harvard’s academic programs, arguably the most important most prestigious ones, are effectively free. The same is true at most of Harvard’s competing peer schools.

I am referring of course to Harvard’s PhD programs. They are effectively ‘free’ in the sense that few of Harvard’s doctoral students, particularly in the sciences and engineering, pay a single nickel for their education. Sure, they may have to ‘sing for their supper’ in the form of taking work as TA’s or RA’s. However, the fact remains that most of them do not pay anything out of pocket. This is not financial aid. They can get their financial support regardless of their financial status. Whether you were raised in poverty or whether you were raised as a blueblood, if you’re a Harvard doctoral student, and you’re wiling to take TA/RA work, you probably won’t have to pay a single nickel out of pocket. The same is true if you’re a doctoral student at MIT, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Berkeley, etc.

Furthermore, I would point out that much, if not most, of Harvard’s prestige derives from its PhD programs. The same is true at all the elite research universities. Harvard would not have the power-laden brand name that it has now if it didn’t have its myriad top-ranked doctoral programs. Let’s face it. Harvard devotes the lion’s share of its academic resources and its attention to its graduate programs than to its undergraduate program. The same can be said of any elite research university.

Hence, the point is, I don’t think that free tuition would necessarily spell the end of the great private universities and their unique academic excellence. If that’s true, somebody forgot to tell that to the Harvard doctoral students.

I wonder if Harvard could come up with an academic model that would allow its undergraduate and professional-school students to also get an education for free, regardless of financial background. In fact, Harvard Medical School, in conjunction already does offer such a program on conjunction with the NIH through the MD/PhD program, which provides for free tuition + stipend regardless of financial need, but in return for your sticking around for an extra 3-4 years to pick up your PhD. Perhaps similar arrangements could be made for all other students as well. It’s an interesting thought exercise.

4thfloor · December 25, 2005, 12:18am

I don’t think one can reasonably expect most of Harvard’s undergraduates to serve as credible TAs (that being how the PhD students “sign for their supper”). Some, yes, and some in the scienes. But not most.

marite · December 25, 2005, 7:48am

In order to make admissions into Ph.D. programs purely merit based (and to compete with peer institutions for the top students), Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences introduced 4 year packages of financial aid for all admitted students into Ph.D. programs. This applies to Ph.D. students in non-math/science fields where students tend to be supported through outside grants. Regardless of parental income, students are guaranteed a full ride for the first two years; they then have to teach for the next two years. They can compete for dissertation completion fellowships for the 5th year, the assumption being that it takes only 5 years to do a Ph.D. dissertation (totally unfounded). The need of Ph.D. students to teach to support themselves has the effect of lengthening the time to degree. To be able to offer this aid package, the graduate schools has shrunk the number of students admitted into Ph.D. programs. This is not by any means a sign of Harvard’s devoting most of its resources to graduate education. In fact, one reason it is so stingy (compared to Princeton which gives a full ride for FIVE years to all its graduate students) is that its fund-raising efforts on behalf of GSAS fell short by nearly half its target. The College, by contrast, raised more than its target.

While some math/science Ph.D. students are supported by outside grants, many still have to “sing for their supper” by acting as TFs in large lecture course. And they have to do so as soon as they get into graduate school. For international students, it can be as early as one month after they step off the plane. No wonder undergraduates complain about their unintelligible accents! I suspect more and more science graduate students work as TFs/TAs as the federal government reduces the amount of funding for the sciences it provides to universities.

sakky · December 26, 2005, 5:18am

Nobody is saying that they should necessarily be TA’s. TA jobs are not the only jobs that need to be done. I’m thinking of something like a greatly expanded work-study program. For example, I’m sure profs wouldn’t mind at all to have more research grunts available for them to do all their scutwork. There are a lot of unskilled jobs now currently handled by Harvard employees that could be reasonably handled by Harvard undergrads instead. For example, why exactly do all the janitors at Harvard have to be employees? Why can’t some of them be students instead? Certain Harvard students have some pretty kick-butt computer programming skills. So why does Harvard have to hire all these staff developers? Why not just hire some of those students?

Here are some examples of actual job postings on the Harvard Employment website that I think could reasonably be handled by a student.

So on the one hand, Harvard is sticking some students with hellacious bills, and on the other hand, Harvard is paying to hire outside people to do what is, quite honestly, some fairly low-skilled work. Am I the only one that sees something wrong with this picture? Look, if you’re capable enough of getting into Harvard, I would suspect that you’re probably good enough to handle the “Doorchecker’s” job or the “Potwasher’s” job.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not proposing to make any of these jobs mandatory. I would couch it this way. If you want to pay full freight, you’re free to do so. But if you want to defray your costs, here are some jobs that Harvard needs to fill.

In fact, I don’t particularly understand why graduate students only get offered TA and RA positions only. Why can’t graduate students also take some of the jobs that staffers do now? Yes, it’s technically against the ‘rules’, but why should those rules exist? In fact, I know some MIT computer science grad students now who didn’t want to take TA/RA-ships, but because of the 'rules, weren’t allowed to take staff jobs at MIT, so they instead secretly worked as part-time developers and sysadmins at Harvard. Harvard had no idea that they were grad students at MIT and MIT had no idea that they were working at Harvard in their spare time. I don’t understand why they were barred from taking staff jobs at MIT such that they had to sneak around and work somewhere else.

4thfloor · December 26, 2005, 7:43am

Very interesting proposals. For grad students, especially PhD students, one can still argue that the TA/RA is for “professional experience” rather than just work (which comes in handy when it comes to unionization issues), but you are talking about real work, as in janitorial work (for those who can’t write programs).

Well, I see nothing wrong with your proposals conceptually, but don’t think they will go far at all with the crowd that says “since Harvard has $22B in endowment, Haravrd should be free”. To those people, free really means “not lift a finger” type of free, money grows on trees type of free. Working for anything is not what they have in mind.

marite · December 26, 2005, 9:43am

One answer to Sakky’s proposal is union rules. I was told that volunteering in the libraries would be looked askance by professional librarians as it might lead to a decrease in their ranks. I expect that many other jobs that students could perform are similarly restricted.

wisteria · December 26, 2005, 10:05am

Harvard undergrads can and do work as janitors. “Dorm crew” jobs, with a starting wage of $10.45 per hour and possibilities for advancement, are some of the best paid jobs on campus for undergrads.

The fact of the matter is that it’s not reasonable for full-time college students to spend much more than 10-12 hours per week working. (And even then, students need to be in the kind of jobs that have the flexibility to allow them to cut back hours during mid-term and final exam periods.)

There are very few jobs at Harvard with a payrate such that 10-12 hours per week of work will generate $40,000 of income! (The annual full-time-equivalent salary for such a job would be $130K to $150K.)

Janitors don’t get paid that much, librarians don’t get paid that much, computer sys admins don’t get paid that much.

Students at colleges like Harvard have lots of opportunities to earn money (often in interesting and educationally valuable ways*), but at current tuition & fee rates, it’s not realistically possible for an undergrad to work his/her way through college with an on-campus job.

*Edit: I should add that I think lots of campus jobs can be interesting and educationally valuable. Research assistantships and course assistantship jobs are obvious examples of educational jobs, but food service and dorm crew jobs can provide a valuable education in and of themselves. (Learning how to work in a team to get a menial but important job done, getting some perspective into the kinds of jobs that people from some socioeconomic classes can expect to hold for a lifetime, etc.)

sakky · December 26, 2005, 7:51pm

I don’t know that union rules are really the bugaboo here. The way that union-controlled hiring works normally is that open jobs are offered exclusively to current union members. So if a librarian job opens up, that opening has to be advertised only to the current librarians.

But that’s not happening. These jobs are ALREADY being offered to the general public. These jobs are ALREADY being filled by regular Boston/Cambridge locals who are not members of any union. So if these jobs are being filled with non-union locals anyway, why is it so controversial to also offer these jobs to the students? Why exactly is it kosher for Harvard to go outside of Harvard completely to hire a regular local person to do janitorial work, but not kosher for Harvard to hire one of its own students to do that same work?

Or, to put it another way, why was it OK for Harvard to hire for part-time computer programming jobs those MIT EECS grad students who were looking for a little moonlighting money? Sure, they never said that they were MIT students, but what should that matter? The point is, they still weren’t members of any union, and Harvard hired them anyway. For all Harvard knew, these were just a bunch of guys who may have held a regular computer job in Boston during the daytime but wanted to work at Harvard at night for a little extra money.

marite · December 26, 2005, 8:26pm

I expect some profs will refrain from hiring non-work-study eligible students because they want their research fund to stretch further. Right now, if I understand correctly, Uncle Sam picks up 60% of the work-study wage, and the prof picks up the remaining 40%. If the prof hires a student who is not eligible for work-study, the prof has to pick up the entire 100% of the student’s wage.

As for hiring MIT students, I expect that no Harvard students applied for those jobs, or if they did, they were less qualified than the MIT students who did apply. A lot of tech support staff are actually Harvard students, both graduates and undergraduates.

Harvard’s costs are in line with many other colleges. It has the advantage over similarly priced colleges of location. Not all jobs are confined to the campus. The first Chinese restaurant in Cambridge had waiters who were all Chinese students studying engineering at MIT. I, myself, earned a tidy amount before grad school by waiting on tables one summer. A lot of Harvard students are employed through Harvad Students Agency. Years ago, I hired a local moving firm. It turned out that every single guy on the team was on the Harvard crew team; they were about to go off to Seoul to compete in the Olympics. I believe they won a medal, too. I know a former undergraduate who cooked his way through college, as did a graduate student (now a tenured prof in a well-known college).

sakky · December 26, 2005, 9:15pm

If those dorm crew jobs are the best paid job on campus for undergrads, then something is seriously wrong with the payscales. After all, looking at my links above, even the kitchenworker/potwasher’s job pays at least $13.10/hr. You also don’t have to be a Harvard-caliber person to do it, as according to the link, the only qualifications you need are that you can understand English, must be fairly neat and responsible, and be able to lift 50 pounds. I’m fairly certain that all Harvard students can understand English and be neat and responsible, and a good number of them can lift 50 pounds. Right now as it stands, that job is going to be filled by some local Boston resident. Why can’t a student do it instead? $13.10 sure beats $10.45.

<a href=“https://jobs.harvard.edu/jobs/summ_req?in_post_id=27712[/url]”>https://jobs.harvard.edu/jobs/summ_req?in_post_id=27712</a>

Furthermore, I’m not just talking about unskilled grunt labor. Harvard students are the cream of the crop and a lot of them already have extremely marketable skills. For example, some Harvard students have highly impressive computer skills. So why not offer them work maintaining Harvard’s computer systems and writing software for Harvard? This is work that Harvard pays somebody to do anyway, so why not pay the students to do it?

Or how about this as a thought exercise. I think we all know that many Harvard undergrads end up working in management consulting after graduation. That must mean that consulting firms see that Harvard students can bring a lot of consulting value to the table. So if that’s the case, then maybe Harvard can form its own small nonprofit ‘mini-consultancy’ that takes a bunch of the top undergrads and offers their services as part-time consultants to companies that want to pay. I would imagine that there are plenty of companies out there that can’t pay to hire McKinsey would nevertheless be willing to pay some lower fee to bring in a bunch of Harvard kids to analyze their business practices. Project leads could consist of Harvard alumni preferably ones who used to work in consulting (of which there are many) and who may be willing to donate their time in return for perhaps obtaining some plum Harvard title like “Harvard Advisor” or something like that. I’m fairly certain that there are a lot of retired Harvard alumni around the Boston/Cambridge area who don’t have a lot to do and so might be enticed by the opportunity to not only help out their old alma mater, but to also be able to tout themselves as official “Harvard Advisors”. Every participating Harvard student would get a discount on their tuition, that discount predicated on how much business the consultancy brings in.

The point is that plenty of companies out there are perfectly willing to pay millions to McKinsey and BCG, who then in turn hire lots of newly minted Harvard grads to do the actual work. Hence, it seems to me that there is an opportunity to cut out the middleman here. Instead of companies obtaining consulting services provided by Harvard people through McKinsey as the intermediary, why not just offer these services directly?

Now I agree that the consulting firms provide more than just ‘consulting aggregation’. They also serve to develop the skills of their employees and provide a strong internal network with which employees can talk amongst themselves and bounce ideas off each other. So I agree that consulting firms provide a strong development engine of human capital. Hence, I don’t think my ‘Harvard consultant’ will be as capable as a McKinsey consultant. But that’s why I wouldn’t charge as much as McKinsey would. McKinsey will charge millions for each engagement. I am not proposing to charge that. I freely agree that the Harvard consulting deliverables will not be as strong as the McKinsey deliverables. But they will be significantly cheaper.

I believe that this idea also can vastly increase the efficiency of the future hiring of Harvard grads. Like I said, a lot of Harvard graduates take jobs in consulting. But some of them find out that they don’t really like consulting, and furthermore some of them turn out to be quite bad at it such that the consulting firm regrets having hired that person. The essential problem is a lack of information - nobody really knows who is really going to like consulting and who isn’t, and nobody really knows who is going to be good at it and who isn’t. The efficient functioning of free markets is predicated on the availability of perfect information. Labor markets are riven with information imperfections and are therefore highly inefficient. The consulting firm doesn’t really know whether you are going to be a productive consultant. Heck, you yourself don’t even really know whether you’re going to be a productive consultant.

You give these students a ‘taste’ of how real-life consulting works, and some of them will find out that they don’t like it and so won’t pursue consulting. That’s a more economically efficient outcome for everybody involved - it’s better to know now that you don’t like consulting than to get hired by a consulting firm and then find out later that you don’t like it. Furthermore, those who do find out that they like it will have a strong resume plum that they can leverage to increase their chances of getting a consulting offer. In fact, I can even see a situation where the best ‘Harvard-consultants’ will get automatic job offers from McKinsey or BCG. Hence, you could almost see this as something like the ‘minor leagues’ of consulting, where the best players get called up.

But look, I’m just thinking out loud here. My point is that the Harvard student body clearly consists of some highly talented human capital that companies willingly pay top dollar to get once they’ve graduated. My question is, why do we have to necessarily wait until graduation to extract some of the value of that human capital? I have to believe that there are ways that the services of these students can be sold in the market in order to defray some tuition costs.

sakky · December 26, 2005, 9:34pm

Well, look. The truth is, plenty of high school kids, including some who later go to Harvard, have part-time jobs, many for far more than 10-12 hours a week. I know that in my high school, practically every teenager, including those who later went to elite colleges, held part-time jobs, some who worked over 20 hours a week (i.e. 4 hours a night M-F for the local restaurant equals 20 hours a week). Few of them got any job flexibility to take their high school exams or SAT’s. I don’t see that having college students work while going to school is any different from all these high school kids holding down jobs while they’re going to school. Not everybody who goes to Harvard lived an idyllic teenhood where Mommy and Daddy paid for everything.

Look, I don’t want to be harsh, but it seems to me that there is a strong whiff of spoiledness here. Just because you’re good enough to go to Harvard doesn’t mean that you don’t have to take a job to defray your bills. Harvard is not a Get-out-of-Work free card. It seems to me that some people want to go to Harvard, but don’t want to pay for the tuition and don’t want to take a job either. It doesn’t work that way. This is real life here. You can’t just say “Oh, final exams are coming up, so you have to give me some time off”. Lots of high school kids manage to successfully juggle part-time work and top academic performance without demanding time off during their exams.

Nobody is talking about defraying the entire cost. But at least you reduce the costs. However, it seems to me that some students aren’t even willing to do that. And then they complain that Harvard costs too much. Hey, if you really thought that Harvard cost too much, then I would think that you would be doing everything you could to reduce your costs.

sakky · December 26, 2005, 9:43pm

Some may refrain. But some won’t. That’s the point - there are jobs available. Maybe not a lot. But there are some. When you run out of workstudy students, then the only people left are nonworkstudy students.

And that only reinforces my point that if you want to defray your costs of education, there are ways for you to do it. You don’t have to rely only on financial aid. The Boston/Cambridge area has lots of part-time jobs.

Nevertheless, I would still emphasize that I think Harvard can do a whole lot more to match campus jobs with students who want them. Furthermore, I strongly believe that not all of these jobs have to be low-paying grunt jobs. Like I said, if McKinsey and BCG are willing to hire all these new Harvard college grads and put them on million-dollar consulting engagements, I gotta believe that there is a way for these students to price and sell some of the value of their human capital before they’ve graduated.

marite · December 26, 2005, 10:37pm

The problem with undergrads working for firms such as McKinsey and BCG during term time is scheduling. No one wants to hire folks who disappear for weeks on end as they take their exams, work on their papers, etc… Consulting firms do hire during summer when there is no scheduling conflict and lots of Harvard students (and students at other colleges) take advantage of these opportunities.

My S has received emails about job opportunities for the summer at places like Goldman Sachs, etc… He has yet to make an appearance at the Office of Career Services.

wisteria · December 27, 2005, 1:18am

sakky, you seem to be contradicting yourself.

In message #94, you wrote:

But back in message #84, you had written:

So it sure sounded to me like you were talking about a system in which Harvard undergrads would somehow find gainful employment generating enough revenue to offset the cost of their education.

As far as the difference between the $10.45 a dorm-crew student gets and the $13.10 regular payroll job for a potscrubber, I think the key is once again, scheduling.

The $13.10 potscrubbing job is for someone willing to commit to a fixed schedule and put a high priority on showing up. Such an employee is not going to automatically be given the flexibility to take time off during semester breaks or when a professor decides to schedule an evening exam.

A school like Harvard College* expects that the undergraduates it admits will make their education their top priority. If a professor schedules a special evening class meeting or exam (some professors do this in order to make sure their students have enough time to write a lengthy midterm), students should be able to put their educational commitment ahead of their work commitment. The kind of jobs students get through student employment (like dorm crew) offer exactly that kind of commitment. Students have the flexibility to decide when they will put in their hours each week. If there’s an exam Tuesday evening, they can clean their assigned dorm spaces Wednesday morning instead.

Potscrubbers don’t have that kind of flexibility–the pots need to be scrubbed promptly after each meal. The health department takes a dim view of dirty pots left overnight!

*EDIT: It should be noted that there is another undergraduate component of Harvard University that does NOT necessarily expect students to make education their top priority. The Harvard Extension School offers an alternative path to an undergraduate degree–in a program that allows students to juggle heavy work and/or family commitments, because they can take a part-time class load. In addition, Harvard Extension courses are often less demanding–as far as the length of the reading lists or the challenge of the problem sets–than Harvard College courses. The Harvard Extension school is also far more affordable than Harvard College–the tuition is a small fraction and it is quite possible for a student to work their way through a Harvard Extension School bachelor’s degree program. Indeed, Harvard offers their regular-employees (including the potscrubbers) the opportunity to take courses at the Harvard Extension School at a discount thanks to their employee Tuition Assistance Program.

sakky · December 27, 2005, 3:06am

Look, what I meant is that we can at least start off with a system where we can defray some of the costs. Once we got that going, then we can talk about devising a more elaborate system where potentially the entire costs might be defrayed. Yes, I agree that, like the MD/PhD funding deal, such a system might actually require that the undergrad take more than the standard 4 years to graduate. But the point is, all options should be on the table.

That’s a nice theory, but it breaks down in the face of reality. Like I said before, I’m sure most high schools would like to believe that they are the center of every student’s universe, but we of course know the reality that many high school students hold part-time jobs. Which has more priority? Each student has to be the one to decide and then juggle the commitments accordingly. However, I know that working at the local Dairy Queen (where a lot of my old high school friends worked) gave basically zero flexibility to kids whenever their high school exams or SAT’s rolled around.

I would point out that, let’s face it, the hardest part of getting admitted to an elite school is simply getting in. So, again, we had kids in my hometown who worked at that Dairy Queen that gave them zero test flexibility, and yet some of them were able to amass an academic record that got them into Harvard or other peer schools. So this notion of Harvard kids needing “flexibility” when their exams roll around…well. I hate to say it, but that just sounds like whining. Those Ivy-league bound high school kids at my hometown Dairy Queen got no flexibility, so why should Harvard kids automatically deserve flexibility?

Besides, this line of thinking is ITSELF a contradiction. As has been said on this thread, there is a family income gap of, say, between 75k-150k where such students really do feel financial strain in paying for Harvard. If Harvard wants these students . If Harvard really wanted its students to prioritize its education above all else, then Harvard ought to provide more financial means so that the students really can prioritize their studies. If Harvard doesn’t do that, then Harvard shouldn’t be shocked to find that some students feel that they have to go work at night.

I didn’t say anything about them working directly for McKinsey or BCG. I’m talking about Harvard setting up its OWN consulting practice, using students as its labor force. Students would then be able to pick and choose projects as their schedules permit. The more projects you pick and the better you do, the more your tuition costs will be reimbursed.

Think of it as something like a coop. Lots of schools run work coop programs where students hold a real job either part-time during their regular studies, or even for one entire “co-op” semester where they do nothing but work. Harvard could model its “Harvard Consulting” company this way, where students might take a semester off to work for this consulting company. Or, even better, it might be able to be done part-time during a regular semester.

Now, I do have to ask one thing. A number of you have now brought up the point that Harvard students supposedly have to disappear for “weeks at a time” when their exams roll around or when they have papers due, as if this is some sort of birthright. Why exactly are Harvard students disappearing for weeks at a time? It seems to me that if you know what your schedule looks like, and you know what is due and when it is due, you should be able to plan your schedule accordingly. If you have a paper due, you’re not supposed to be doing it just before it’s due. You can and should start the paper early. If you have a big test, you shouldn’t be trying to cram for it in the week before. You should have been studying for it during the entire term. Harvard students are supposed to be highly responsible students, so they ought to know how to manage their time correctly.

Besides, think of it this way. Many Harvard graduate students work as TA’s. Grad students also have big tests and important papers to write too. But that doesn’t mean that they have the right to let their TA responsibilities slide whenever they have something due. They don’t get to take off for weeks at a time. They have to take care of their own studies AND their TA responsibilities at the same time.

Some of you might be thinking that it would not be fair for those Harvard students to have to work during their exam periods while other Harvard students get to have that entire time to study. Well, again, I would point to those high school kids who are trying to get into Harvard but who have to hold jobs at the Dairy Queen during their high school final exam periods. They managed to suck it up and pull through. That’s what maturity and proper time management is all about. In life, you’re going to have all kinds of responsibilities that will weigh on your time - work responsibilities, family responsibilities, personal responsibilities, etc. It is up to you to learn how to manage your time.

marite · December 27, 2005, 8:33am

Sakky:

I write from experience. Harvard does not need flexibility and does not give flexibility. Yes, TAs do not disappear for weeks at a time to write papers and ram for their finals. Ordinarily, TAs are 3rd-year or above graduate students who have already passed their General Exams and therefore do not need to take exams or write papers. Undergraduates do, and they tend to cram and not be available for work during those times. They choose their jobs accordingly.
As for the comparison with the high school students working at Dairy Queen, I don’t understand you. I am sure that the Harvard students who work “suck it up and pull through.” What has that to do with what Harvard should or should not do?
As for Harvard setting up a consulting business, why should it? Consider the headaches involved in recruiting students with the appropriate skills and credentials, vouching for their integrity, level of excellence and, of course, drumming up business for them…That would be a totally new line of activity for Harvard. Harvard students who want to go into business are already doing so. Consider DormAid, TheFacebook.com, Let’s Go, etc…

wisteria · December 27, 2005, 11:06am

I worked 20 hours a week in high school and found it did not interfere with my high school education. My teachers never scheduled special extra class meetings or exams in the evening, so there were no conflicts and I didn’t need flexibility in high school. In addition, my high school didn’t offer particularly deep or stimulating classes, so the homework was pretty cut-and-dried.

I didn’t go to Harvard College, but the LAC I attended offered a rich array of demanding and interesting classes from stimulating teachers. I am sure I could have continued to work 20 hours a week in college and graduate, but I’m glad I took out loans instead, in order to keep my work hours limited during college. I never worked more than 10 hours a week in a paid job in college. In retrospect, sounds just about right given the challenging courses I was taking. If I’d been working 20 hours a week in college, I probably would have been forced to take less intense and demanding courses than the ones I actually took. And I wouldn’t have had time to do the optional readings, to explore intellectual and academic tangents to my coursework, to attend the public lectures and concerts, or to help younger students with their homework informally.

(At that time, the jobs available to me paid just a bit above minimum wage. I worked off-campus at a place pretty comparable to a Dairy Queen. My boss was flexible enough to give me and the other student employees time off so we could go home to visit my family during school breaks, even though the business was just as busy as usual during those weeks. Boy, the numbers seem unreal today. Minimum wage was $1.80 an hour, I was earning about $2.00 an hour, so that worked out to under $20 per week after payroll taxes. I was able to borrow $500 per year in subsidized loans, which I could defer paying until I finished grad school. It took a lot fewer hours to pay off the loan at the payrate I was earning after grad school.)

One promising sign: it seems that students have many more opportunities these days to take campus jobs that complement and enrich their education—e.g., as research assistants or peer tutors. I think there were valuable life lessons I learned from working 10 hours a week at the dairy-queen-like place where I worked in college, interesting people I worked with and got to know who provided a perspective on life I might not otherwise have encountered. (Working with other staff to figure out how to deal with sexual harrassment–an assistant manager who was following us into the walk-in freezer and getting a bit “too friendly”–was also an important life lesson.) But I don’t think I would have gotten much additional education from spending 20 hours a week working instead of 10.

On the other hand, sakky, it seems to me that colleges have already been moving in the direction you are proposing. My old college and many others (including Harvard) now offer students the opportunity to take jobs as research assistants. Some colleges also offer undergrad students the opportunity to be course assistants or peer tutors. And such jobs might indeed be sufficiently complementary to students’ education that working 20 hours a week in them is a reasonable choice.

As for management consulting, I agree with marite. Harvard (and other colleges) have no particular advantage in running a management consulting enterprise. If Harvard College deans wanted the headaches and hassles that come with running a management consulting business (and if they had the skills to do it), they could probably earn a lot more than their Harvard dean salaries. There would also be lots of issues relating to Harvard’s tax-exempt status, etc.

The core business of a university is teaching and research. An institution that tries to do too many things that do not contribute to its mission runs the risk of doing none of them well.

WSJ: When $26 Billion isn't enough

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