Deming Pledges to Cut Back-Office Functions Over Student Programming as College Faces Budget Cuts

Harvard College Dean David J. Deming said Thursday that he would cut administrative functions before scaling back student-facing programming as the College braces for significant reductions tied to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ $365 million structural deficit.

Speaking at an open forum, Deming said “back office” operations — such as processing expense reports, vendor payments, and staff travel — were “the first places” he would look to ease financial pressure on the College.

“We have a lot of things we do that you would never really know or care about, frankly,” he said. “And those are the first places I’m looking to try to save money.”

Deming pointed to the federal endowment tax — raised to eight percent last summer under the Republicans’ tax and spending bill — as a major driver of the FAS’ budget shortfall.

“That blew a hole of roughly $100 million per year in the FAS budget,” Deming said. “That’s not a one-time thing. That’s an every year thing that is enshrined into legislation.”

The FAS has rolled out a series of cost-cutting measures in response to the deficit, including a 25 percent reduction in non-tenure-track faculty budgets, sharp cuts to Ph.D. admissions, and flat spending for fiscal year 2026.

FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra announced earlier this month that a sweeping administrative restructuring — led by the Task Force on Workforce Planning in consultation with McKinsey & Company — will begin this summer. The overhaul is expected to centralize certain functions, including visa and payroll processing, and to consolidate reporting lines across the faculty’s more than 2,300 full-time staff.

The College’s budget is administered through the FAS, and Deming acknowledged that the restructuring process applied “very much” to Harvard College. He said specific changes were still being developed and would not be finalized for “a few months.”

Deming said his guiding principle in budget decisions was minimizing disruption to undergraduates.

“I don’t want students to feel that they’re having a diminished experience because of difficult financial decisions that we have to make,” Deming said. “We’re a residential college. We serve students.”

He acknowledged that the cuts may ultimately reach beyond what he hoped.

“I’m looking for ways to trim that don’t sacrifice the student experience,” Deming said. “Which is not to say I’ll be able to accomplish that, just to be clear, but I’m gonna try.”

Beyond administrative reductions, Deming said he was looking for “new ways to do things” more economically, such as renegotiating contracts with outside vendors — the kind of small-scale savings he said the College would not pursue under normal financial conditions.

“We’re looking under the couch cushions for quarters,” he said.

“Anything I can do that will save jobs and save the student experience, I’m going to try,” Deming added.

Harvard’s administrative workforce has drawn sustained criticism in recent years. The number of administrators the University employs rose more than 40 percent between 2004 and 2023, a growth pattern that has attracted scrutiny from faculty and students.

Deming framed the financial decisions as painful but unavoidable.

“It’s not fun,” he said. “No one likes to be in this situation, but it’s something we have to do.”

Asked whether artificial intelligence had a place in administrative work, Deming said he would be reluctant to use the technology to replace functions currently performed by College staff.

“I feel like a certain amount of conservatism about that is important,” he said. “If we ever rolled out any AI thing, I would want to have it alongside whatever we did before.”

Deming drew a comparison to airline customer service, where higher-status passengers are routed to human agents rather than chatbots. The distinction, he said, was less about competence than about signaling care.

“An awful lot of what we do, I think needs to remain person to person,” Deming said. “Students might say they’re coming looking for some factual information, but they’re also looking for guidance.

“I’m pretty reluctant to give that up,” he added.

—Staff writer Sebastian B. Connolly can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at sbc.23. Follow him on X @SebastianC4784.

—Staff writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at ser.85. Follow her on X @summerellenrose.