Harvard cuts graduate seats despite retaining $2 billion in court victory against Trump administration
Harvard announced it was cutting a majority of Ph.D. seats in two departments despite scoring a court victory against the Trump administration.
The school successfully sued to regain access to over $2 billion in federal funding.
One of America’s leading Ivy League institutions appears to be struggling financially despite recovering massive amounts of money in a recent lawsuit.
Harvard University recently cut more than 75% of its science division Ph.D. seats and 60% of those in the arts & humanities division, according to a report by The Harvard Crimson.
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The university said the cuts are intended to “balance both [Harvard’s] academic and fiscal responsibilities.”
Other departments affected by the cuts include the German department, which will not enroll any new students, and the Organismic and Evolutionary Biology department, which is shrinking its class size down to just three students.
The school is also looking to save money by reducing faculty expenses. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, for instance, will not hire any new full-time staff in the next fiscal year, The Harvard Crimson reported.
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The reasons for the financial hardships at the university are unclear, as the school recently regained a significant sum of its federal money in a lawsuit. The Trump Administration had recently attempted to freeze over $2 billion in funding to the school, but a federal judge ruled that the move was unconstitutional, previously reported by Campus Reform.
The Trump administration has since begun to investigate alternative courses of action, including targeting the school’s admission of foreign students and its accreditation status.
In addition to the $2 billion it recently recovered, the school said it had an endowment totaling $56.9 billion dollars in fiscal year 2025, with just $6.8 billion in operating expenses.
All relevant parties have been contacted for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
