Harvard Has $68 Billion — But Not Enough To Pay Its Workers

When I was first offered a research position at Harvard in 2022, I was thrilled. Then I researched the cost of living in Cambridge.

First and last months’ rent, a security deposit, and a realtor’s fee could easily exceed $10,000 before my first paycheck. Many landlords required tenants to earn at least three times the monthly rent. My Harvard salary didn’t meet that threshold. Not even close.

This gap isn’t a coincidence: Harvard has repeatedly prioritized appearances over its workers’ well-being. This is one of the reasons my union, Harvard Academic Workers-United Auto Workers, voted to authorize a strike. After more than 25 months of bargaining, we will walk out on November 10 if the administration doesn’t offer a fair contract.

HAW-UAW represents Harvard’s postdocs, researchers, non-tenure-track faculty, and other academic workers. Many of us teach courses, help run Harvard’s core research facilities, or work alongside, train, and mentor students in labs. We’re a separate union from the Harvard Graduate Students Union, whose members are on strike right now, but we’re bargaining with the same administration and confronting the same problem: Harvard’s pay needlessly undermines our members’ financial security.

As a first-generation student, I had worked hard to find a path into academic science, and Harvard felt like a chance to build a future in it. I accepted, believing that my opportunities and pay would grow as I gained experience. For many of us, that payoff has not materialized. Our wages have not kept pace with the cost of living, and staying to complete our research has required extraordinary financial sacrifices.

Since 2022, the problem has only grown more urgent. Consumer prices in the Boston area have risen about 15 percent, while Harvard has raised health care premiums by approximately 43 percent in 3 years, refused cost-of-living increases, and frozen many workers’ wages. Many are effectively earning less each year.

We’re now asking for a 12 to 15 percent wage increase to help restore some of what our members have lost due to Harvard’s financial choices. At our 51st session, Harvard’s 3.5 percent proposal remained far short of that.

The administration says it cannot afford our demands. The annual financial report tells a different story.

Harvard’s already-enormous endowment grew by $11 billion in fiscal year 2026, to $68 billion, capping three years of strong growth. Meanwhile, the administration cut salary and wage spending by $104 million, then reported a $100 million operating surplus.

The report itself acknowledges that “a surplus, and a smaller community — sit uneasily together.” But the emotion Harvard’s administration should feel is not unease. It is shame.

For workers affected by the cuts, that contradiction was already familiar. Harvard’s surplus came partly at our expense. Jobs were cut and wages frozen, forcing us to absorb part of the cost of balancing Harvard’s books — even as the University invested nearly $1 billion in capital expenditures in fiscal year 2026, including construction and renovation projects. Recent renovations include over $7 million to restore the marble façade of a building at Harvard Medical School and an undisclosed sum to re-gild the Adams House dome.

These choices show what Harvard considers worth paying for. Why are the appearance and preservation of buildings treated as essential, while the material well-being of the people who work inside them is not?

A marble façade in mild disrepair is not a crisis. The Adams House cupola needing a fresh layer of gold leaf is not a crisis. Workers being unable to afford food, housing, or childcare is a crisis.

When Harvard’s wages aren’t enough to live on without outside support, they determine who can build a life and career here and who is pushed out. I’ve seen family wealth function as an unspoken prerequisite for academic research: Highly qualified postdocs have wanted to join our research community but couldn’t afford to live here on Harvard’s wages, while others can stay because their families help cover expenses, effectively subsidizing Harvard’s labor costs.

Without that support, others are more likely to take on debt, or leave. As wages fall further behind the cost of living, even as its endowment grows, who can remain is increasingly shaped not just by talent or commitment, but by who can survive Harvard’s pay. That is exclusion by another name.

Economic stability helps make academic excellence possible. When workers can’t afford to stay, projects lose continuity, labs lose experienced researchers and staff, and students lose mentors. Harvard loses. Good research takes time, and the University cannot build expertise when low wages, unaffordable housing, or inadequate childcare keep forcing workers out.

Harvard’s financial report says that this year’s $100 million surplus “demanded an extraordinary amount from this community.” It also says that employees affected by these changes deserve “our respect, and our recognition of all they contributed to Harvard.”

If Harvard’s administration truly respects us, it should put that respect into our contract.

Our graduate student colleagues are already on the picket line. If the administration continues to drag its feet through our November 10 strike deadline, our union’s 2,600 members will join them. We will show Harvard that buildings cannot go on strike, but we can — and we will.

Ashley N. Scott is a research associate in the Department of Anthropology.