Harvard University’s arts and sciences faculty intends to cut its number of Ph.D. student admission slots by up to 75% for the next two admission cycles, the Harvard Crimson, a student paper, reported on Tuesday.
The reductions—outlined by five Harvard faculty members—are a part of a larger slowdown in doctoral program admissions at the Ivy League school, which began in April after the Trump administration froze more than $2.2 billion in federal funding over the university’s mishandling of Jew-hatred on campus.
While a federal judge ruled on Sept. 3 that the Trump administration must restore Harvard’s funding, the university is still facing “budget troubles,” per the Crimson. Harvard reported an operating loss of $113 million in its fiscal year 2025 financial report—its first budget deficit since 2020—last week.
Hopi Hoekstra, dean of Harvard’s arts and sciences faculty, announced on Sept. 30 that the school would be admitting Ph.D. students at “significantly reduced levels,” due to “uncertainty around research funding and an increase to the endowment tax.”
“To balance both our academic and fiscal responsibilities, cohort sizes will be significantly reduced over the next two years as we evaluate the future model for Ph.D. education” in the arts and sciences, Hoekstra wrote.
According to the student paper, Ph.D. admission slots for the science division will be decreased by more than 75% and for the arts and humanities division by about 60%.
An overall scale of reductions for the social science division was not immediately clear, but several departments within the division have experienced decreases from 50% to 70%, the paper stated.
