FAS to Restore Ph.D. Admissions to 80 Percent of Historical Levels

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences will increase Ph.D. admissions slots across its three divisions to 80 percent of historical levels this admissions cycle, rolling back cuts that reduced seats last year by roughly 50 percent across divisions.

The change, announced in a Wednesday morning email to faculty, comes after the school raised $100 million toward Ph.D. fellowships and launched a second $100 million fundraising drive following an outpouring of donor support. FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra wrote in the announcement that the school was also “making progress” in leveraging restricted funds “to support core academic priorities.”

The FAS initially reduced Ph.D. admissions for its two upcoming admissions cycles by more than 50 percent across divisions last fall after the federal government froze $2.7 billion of Harvard’s federal funding.

The cuts were steepest in the Division of Science, where seats were slashed by about 75 percent — a decision that provoked backlash from faculty who said the cuts threatened the future of Harvard’s scientific teaching and research.

Those cuts were eventually walked back to roughly 50 percent across all divisions as Harvard’s federal funding began flowing back in, but the reductions had already created tension among senior FAS administrators.

Hoekstra fired former Dean of Science Jeff W. Lichtman in January after months of back-and-forth over the scale of the cuts. At one point, Hoekstra had proposed bringing Ph.D. admissions to zero in the Division of Science, while Lichtman pushed for less significant reductions.

In May, Hoekstra told faculty that the school would increase admissions this year, though she did not provide specific percentages. A few months later, the FAS announced that it had launched a second $100 million fundraising challenge for endowed Ph.D. fellowships after the first was completed within four months.

The Wednesday email puts a divisional figure to Hoekstra’s projected increases in May, though she wrote that admissions in individual programs could fall above or below 80 percent.

The method of allocating slots will differ across divisions, Hoekstra added. The Division of Science will resume using “block grants” to be managed by departments, a practice that was paused amid the disruption to admissions last year.

Under that system, the entire division receives funding for graduate students, and the divisional dean allots funds to specific programs, according to FAS spokesperson James M. Chisholm. Those programs can choose to use funds through multiple years.

Departments in the Social Science and Arts and Humanities Divisions will continue to receive specific slot allocations, Hoekstra wrote in the Wednesday email.

In the Philosophy department, this year’s admissions complicate Hoekstra’s announced increase. The department front-loaded the six slots it was allotted across this year and next year’s Ph.D. admissions cycles, making it unclear how the increase to 80 percent will affect future admissions.

“There’s still a lot of uncertainty around what exactly it means for individual departments,” Philosophy professor Bernhard Nickel said. “Nothing in Dean Hoekstra’s email indicated which departments would get how many slots.”

In the email, Hoekstra also announced the formation of a faculty committee chaired by Psychology professor Fiery A. Cushman ’03 to assess Ph.D. cohort sizes in the long term.

The Ph.D. admissions increase also comes after a historically strong fundraising year for the FAS, which raised roughly $800 million in fiscal year 2026 — far above its $500 million goal. It follows additional cost-cutting measures from the FAS, including a summer restructuring that eliminated 165 staff positions.

Faculty welcomed the increase as a way of strengthening graduate cohorts after a year of harsher cuts.

“I think it’s basically good news,” Molecular and Cellular Biology professor Sean R. Eddy said. “It’s better than 25 percent or 50 percent.”

Government professor Jennifer L. Hochschild wrote in a statement that the change was “terrific news” and that it would allow the department to accept “a few more of our most exciting applicants.”

“Of course, we eagerly await the year when we can admit 100% of our allotment,” she added.

Professor Jason Beckfield, director of graduate studies in the Sociology department, expressed optimism about the upward trend.

“Last year’s cuts undermined the very future of knowledge,” he wrote in a statement. “This year’s partial restoration is a significant step in the right direction.”

—Staff writer Abigail S. Gerstein can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at abbysg.97. Follow her on X @abbysgerstein.

—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at amannsm.38. Follow her on X @amannmahajan.