Provost Crunches University Budgets

For the first time since the University-wide capital campaign kicked off in the early 1990s, senior central administration officials are visiting each of the University’s schools to discuss financial and academic planning.

The budget reviews, led by Provost Steven E. Hyman and three of the University’s five vice presidents, will finish tomorrow morning at the Graduate School of Design after nearly two months of meetings.

The reviews come as schools are forced to reexamine current programs and consider cutting back future plans because of the current recession.

“We really want to make sure the schools are on firm footing,” Hyman says.

Though formal budget reviews are an annual occurrence, the combined meeting of senior central administration officials with top level administrations at each school is a rare occurrence—part of the efforts of the new administration of University President Lawrence H. Summers to increase coordination between schools.

“I think it’s very important that the central administration function so that all people who need the information and can contribute it are in the room,” Hyman says. “It creates a spirit of cooperation.”

Hyman emphasizes that the budget reviews looked beyond the balance sheet, and encouraged schools to continue to be academic innovative.

Taking risks, Hyman says, is also important. The challenge is “balancing vibrant, ambitious plans with a good dose of fiscal reality,” he says.

The reviews, which each lasted for several hours and were generally informal in tone, were based on annual budget reports and other statistics submitted to Mass. Hall.

“It was very relaxed. The provost structured the meeting so that it was very open,” says School of Public Health Dean for Academic Affairs James H. Ware.

Playing Left Field

The budget reviews come five months after Hyman first entered his Mass. Hall office, pledging to work with Summers to reshape the ambiguously-defined provost position.

And as he begins to develop a sense of the inner workings of the University, Hyman says, the redefinition process has begun.

“We’re beginning to recreate the job,” Hyman says. “As the provost’s role was developed, the provost also became kind of a left infielder—he picked up the stray balls.”

Hyman points to the budget reviews as an example of the provost’s evolving role.

At many universities the provost plays the leading role in logistical and financial matters, the traditional concern of Harvard’s vice presidents.

Under the administration of former University President Neil L. Rudenstine, knitting the University together was proclaimed as a top priority, and cited as one of the reasons the Office of the Provost was recreated after its 40-year absence from Harvard’s administration.

But still, Hyman says, opportunities for increased collaboration remain and are essential for the University’s success.

Though specific changes are still in the works, Hyman says that he is “sharpening the focus of the provost’s office” to center around University-wide academic planning—from interfaculty initiatives to developing the University’s land in Allston.

Such centralized planning efforts by the provost have drawn criticism in the past. Some in various schools complained that former Provost Harvey V. Fineberg ’67 weakened the time-honored autonomy of other parts of the University by strengthening the provost’s role.

But officials present at the budget review meetings say that the collaboration with the center was beneficial to the individual schools.

“It was an opportunity to get together with the leadership in a way that was new, and I thought very effective,” Ware says.

And though they say it is too soon evaluate whether the provost’s role is changing, leaders at the various schools say an overpowering central administration is not a concern.

“I don’t think it’s going to develop in a way that’s going to be oppressive and uncomfortable,” says Graduate School of Education Dean for Administration and Academic Services Joel Monell.

Balancing the Budget

With the faltering economy, many of Harvard’s schools are facing budget woes not seen in a decade at the world’s wealthiest University.

Last month Kennedy School of Government Dean Joseph S. Nye announced the school’s estimated deficit for Fiscal Year 2002 is now $5.6 million. And many schools have had to tighten their financial belts in recent months.

The budget review meetings, Hyman says, addressed how to “best face the results of an uninspired stock market.”

At a time when “the budgetary outlook for everyone is uncertain,” Knowles says that these meetings are particularly important.

Officials at each of the schools say the economic slowdown has forced them to reevaluate programs.

At the budget review meeting, School of Public Health officials discussed the school’s financial planning process, which includes cost-cutting measures and a streamlined focus on several programs, Ware says.

Harvard Business School Chief Financial Officer Donella M. Rapier says the school’s capital plans were one among many topics discussed at their budget review meeting, which also addressed academic programs and fundraising plans.

Though the economic downturn has been particularly hard on HBS, she says the school is in “pretty good shape.”

“If there is a deficit, it will be small,” she says, “but only through tremendous efforts of a lot of people.”

And though the budget reviews are a return to past practices of the University, participants have they have a different style.

The meetings in the early 1990s were more focused on the capital campaign’s goals. And, according to Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles, they were also much longer.

“I felt as if I’d given one of those Kremlin seven-hour speeches on the next five-year plan,” Knowles writes in an e-mail about the earlier review.

—David H. Gellis and Elisabeth S. Theodore contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Catherine E. Shoichet can be reached at shoichet@fas.harvard.edu.