Harvard’s FAS Received $300 Million Last Year. Its Graduate School Has ‘Pretty Much No Funds.’

Despite bearing the name of billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin ’89, the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences “has pretty much no funds,” Dean Emma Dench said in an interview with The Crimson last month.

“We have very little money sitting in our bank,” said Dench.

In April 2023, Griffin donated $300 million in unrestricted funds to Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Alongside his donation, Griffin stipulated that GSAS — and all of its individual student clubs — would be required to bear his name.

Yet none of Griffin’s donation goes directly to GSAS.

Unlike the rest of Harvard’s graduate schools — which are funded by individual endowments — GSAS draws the majority of its funding from the pool of money that is owned by the FAS.

Unrestricted gifts like Griffin’s are used for general purposes, with distribution left up to the discretion of the administration. According to Dench, GSAS is “largely dependent on unrestricted money from FAS” to pay graduate students’ stipends.

In an email statement to The Crimson, an FAS spokesperson wrote that Griffin’s gift was “intended to support the School’s mission and to advance cutting-edge research and expand access and excellence in education for students and scholars regardless of economic circumstances.”

Still, a 2023 report by the GSAS Admissions and Graduate Education Working Group called GSAS’ increasing use of FAS’ unrestricted funds to pay stipends “unsustainable.” Instead, the GAGE report urged Harvard to directly put “greater investment” into graduate education.

During the 2024 admissions cycle, the FAS provided $76.5 million in financial aid to graduate students, a nearly 6 percent increase from the previous year. The majority of the money — $60 million — came from restricted funds such as endowments and sponsored research. The remaining $17 million came from unrestricted funds.

The money supported a raise in Harvard’s minimum stipend to graduate students, which was raised to $50,000 last fall. The raise represented an increase of up to 14.4 percent from the previous academic year, depending on the academic program.

Despite a 3 percent increase in tuition rates for GSAS students, net tuition for the fiscal year declined by 25 percent due to increased financial aid for tuition and health fees.

Aside from the FAS, GSAS student stipends are also funded in part by each graduate school at Harvard except for the Law School.

“Each of the partner schools is responsible for funding their Ph.D. students, so it’s actually not GSAS, specifically, who’s got the money in the bank,” said Dench.

GSAS maintains its own small endowment of gifts restricted to specific purposes, but uses unrestricted funds from the FAS to fund the rest of its stipends for graduate students not covered by partner schools.

“Over recent years, as the costs of Ph.D. education have gone up, the disproportionate draw on FAS is on unrestricted funds,” Dench said.

—Staff writer Maeve T. Brennan can be reached at maeve.brennan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @mtbrennan.

—Staff writer Angelina J. Parker can be reached at angelina.parker@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @angelinajparker.