Yesterday’s mail contained a newsletter to neighbors (Cambridge, MA residents) from Harvard University. It was just after I read a news report on Harvard’s endowment, which earned 16.7 percent on an approximately $30 billion stash. In other words, Harvard earned around $4.5 billion, tax-free. After deducting for inflation, in other words, Harvard earned enough last year to purchase a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, complete with a fleet of fighter jets. What did the letter to neighbors say? It seems that one day per year, Harvard’s museums, normally $10 per person per museum, open their doors to Cambridge residents for free. That’s right, 1/365th of the time, Harvard will not collect every last possible dime. When is this glorious day to occur? September 17, 2006. I.e., the “connections” newsletter arrived in my mailbox several days after it would have been possible to visit the museums for free.
10 thoughts on “Harvard University, the good neighbor”
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Happened to check into Natural History Museum for Philip’s nephew (age 4) who was in Cambridge recently. As these things go, weather was gorgeous so we opted for Cambridge Common playground instead. But did note on museum website that it’s free to residents of Massachusetts on Wednesdays from 3 to 5 p.m. and on Sunday mornings from 9 a.m. to 12 noon (in emulation of the musee du Louvre, which is free on Sunday mornings and Wednesday afternoons — at least years ago when I lived in Paris).
Don’t know about the Fogg, etc., as four-year-old has low tolerance for art museums. It does seem a tad stingy of them to have chosen Sunday,Sept 17th as the Natural History Museum is free until 12 noon that day.
Eh… they don’t need the money, of course… I wonder if they charge admission just to keep the “riff-raff” out.
I respect Harvard, but I am less than impressed with their “sense of openness.” For instance, it always bugged me that MIT students had to play Frank Abagnale just to get into Widener Library. I wish that I had worked harder while involved in MIT student government to pressure Harvard into respecting the so-called reciprocity agreement between our library systems.
This seems really silly! Obviously Harvard and MIT have both contributed so enormously to Cambridge in every conceivable category that it is Cambridge that ought to pay Harvard, and not the other way around. There was even a careful study done on this; you can read the News Article, the Report Summary, or the Full Report.
This is the sort of problem that you encounter frequently, when working at a university (this is from experience of Australian universities, American are probably a bit better, but I expect they attract much the same people to administration). It is perfectly understandable as I have never seen the “Effective Use of the Calendar” course offered that many of these people need, but they seem to need to attend a course on everything else.
That is a truly astonishing sum. From what I can gather, the entire endowment of Oxford is about US$5 billion. No wonder it seems so much easier to get graduate funding over there.
This made me re-read your excellent “tuition-free MIT” article.
Now, I can see that the trustees may be saying to themselves “Harvard is over 200 years old and it needs to remain viable for hundreds of years in the future” (apparently, when the built one of the colleges at Oxford, they planted a grove of oaks on the assumption that in 400 years all the oak beams would need to be replaced.) So, perhaps they’re planning to have sufficient reserves to go through two back-to-back recessions and a major war or two. That’s really the only reasonable explanation, aside from simple kingdom-building.
On the other hand, if they did decide that they needed to spend it, there are some problems: a lot of what Harvard has to offer as an institution is exclusivity, so it’s not like they can really grow it. I suppose they could start spending 500k a year per student on instruction, but it’s not clear that they need to, it’s not like they really need to spend more to attract higher-caliber faculty. They have plenty of buildings, I’d imagine(and when they need new ones, I’ll bet they just hit up donors). They don’t have ROTC anymore, so they don’t need the aircraft carrier. I don’t know how much you could spend on computers; I suppose they could put giant interactive, touch screen plasma monitors on every empty surface. Maybe they could buy a fleet of luxury jumbo jets for field trips. Unfortunately, any time you’d be laying out that kind of cash for instruction, someone somewhere would expect results, and the last thing I read said that studied it suggested that the reason so many accomplished people come out highly competitive colleges is that so many accomplished kids go in, and that college-bound kids of a given achievement level tend to do roughly as well no matter where they end up at college.
As far as soaking their neighbors goes, I imagine it’s really just to keep people out of the museums. Oxford apparently does the same thing. (and apparently doesn’t need the money much, either)
Harvard’s art museums are always free to people with Cambridge Public Library library cards.
The natural history museums are free to Massachusetts residents on Sundays from 9 am to noon, and on Wednesdays from 3 to 5 pm except in the summer. (When did they come up with this annoying residence restriction? Do they enforce it?)
To follow-up Bob’s comment, would definitely be curious as to whether they bother enforcing residence restriction at NH on Sundays and Wednesdays. I am certain that le musee du Louvre made no distinctions on Sunday mornings and Wednesday afternoons whether you were a Parisian or a ruffian! The Wed p.m. is a throwback to an era, now all but wiped out in most of France, when school dismissed before lunch on Wednesday for cultural outings, sports, etc., with the mother in charge, with school in session most Sat mornings.
But I believe the Louvre has kept this tradition and anyone wearing shoes is allowed in free during the gratis periods.
By coincidence, I learned from British houseguests that Tony Blair, in a magnanimous gesture, made all of London’s museums free to the public. The National Gallery in London, the Tate, etc., used to be quite pricey (although there were some days they were free after 5 p.m., etc., and open until 8 or 9 p.m.). Another reason to visit fair England!
I have come to the conclusion that the private Universities in this countries are on a trajectory to become like the great monastic estates of the middle ages. These typically started as a few monks, dedicated to lives of poverty and prayer. But over the generations, since they tended to be well managed (elected Abbots rather than hereditary lords), free from taxation, and recipients of many bequests, they grew to become huge operations, with a paid workforce, huge cash reserves (that were lent out at huge profit) a all the other accoutrements of capitalistic enterprise (in feact a case can be made that they were the creators of capitalism). Of course, this wealth meant power, and eventually competing, secular powers sought to gain some of that wealth for themselves. In fact, hunger for monastic wealth was one of the primary reasons many local lords converted to protestantism (most clearly in England, which didn’t really have any theological problems with Catholicism.) I wonder if we’ll see a violent “stripping of the universities” in a feww centuries time?