- Hundreds of Harvard University food service workers went on strike Wednesday morning, following months of stalled contract negotiations.
- Harvard University remains the clear front-runner of all universities in the USA with the largest endowment of $37.6 billion.
- Workers want minimum salaries of $35,000 a year.
- Harvard says, nope, we can’t afford that.
Yes, we know that endowments have strings attached. Those strings tie the hands of Harvard, but they also demonstrate clearly, what is wrong with the USA. The endowments are coming from a class of people who have declared that such funds are only to be spent on their class, not the lower class, eh?
Ethics and morals don’t seem to count for much among the elites, the privileged, the winners of this nation.
Please share widely!
I’d like to see the CEO of Wal-Mart, the president of Harvard, the owner of Papa John’s, the owner of an NFL team, and so on, all seated before congress and asked this series of questions:
What is the lowest full time wage in your operation? Does it allow that individual to support themselves, and if not, where do you expect them to get support in order to be able to supply your operation with labor at the cost that you are paying?
I heard on WBZ that other dining halls – usually for upper classmen- would be opened for students whose dining halls were closed.
Why isn’t that strike breaking?
…support financial aid packages for students who otherwise could not afford Harvard. That doesn’t sound like only helping the upper class.
“the upper class and those destined for the upper class”. Same thing to me.
Last I checked working your way up was part of the opportunity of this country. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being “destined for the upper class”.
don’t you?
…where those born into less means can make it to the point of having greater means, which is exactly what financial aid such as this helps to accomplish. Not everybody is going to end up in the same place, but the important thing is that your station in life is not eternally determined by your birth a la feudal Europe.
The relationship between father-son earnings is tighter in the United States than in most peer OECD countries, meaning U.S. mobility is among the lowest of major industrialized economies.…..
So, what’s next?
The point here ought to be that Harvard has billions of dollars but refuses to pay a living wage to ALL its workers.
Why not, Harvard? What’s your excuse?
…but we got talking about endowments and your hyperlinked statement above is a very good reason to make funds available to attend Harvard for those who don’t inherit or have the connections to make money.
To be sure, some endowment money is directly required to fund low or moderate income students.
My bet is that most isn’t. Most funds things that the university would (or could) otherwise pay for: professor salaries, research, TAs and RAs, even physical plant O&M. Free from paying for some of that, Harvard has money to (a) lower their tuition for students with lesser finances, (b) pay their employees more, or (c) spend on fancy stuff.
There is a funny pickle though: 50 years ago, Harvard only took the rich, and they were rightfully derided for it. Now that they have sliding scale admission and are in some way opening up opportunities to kids from lower and middle class backgrounds, they don’t bring in as much money in tuition…
Strictly speaking, this isn’t entirely true. I think you are off by about 50 years. For example neither James Bryant Conant, Harvard class of 1913 and President of Harvard from 1933 to 1953 nor Nathan Marsh Pusey, Harvard class of 1928 and President of Harvard from 1953 to 1971, came from wealthy families. Conant did institute a great many internal reforms and was a strong proponent of meritocracy in admissions (although this did not extend to abolishing the jewish and Catholic quotas that many universities, including Harvard, had at the time) and Pusey was instrumental in recruiting minorities and women (after doing away with the aforementioned quotas) as well as greatly increasing the endowment and the number of buildings and professors.
Yeah, I don’t buy it. Especially in the context of our present system of financial aid where much of the slide in the scale is made up in funds not deriving from Harvard. Between federal aid to students, scholarships and private loans, I don’t think the differential Harvard is losing is all that great.
I think the case can be made that Harvard has only indifferently managed their growth including the growth in the size of the campus, number of professors and students and the growth of their endowment since the 1970’s. Similar contretemps between food service workers and Harvard occurred after the recession in the early 2000’s as are being seen now. I don’t know, however, that the unique nature of the complexities are all that manageable, or, in fact, what it would mean to manage such a unique undertaking well…
Which I am quite proud of. And we always admitted peoples of all faiths, genders, and races. In the 1920’s we attracted so many Jewish students that we were derided as ‘Jew Chicago’ which remains one of the mottos on Hillel’s t shirts to this day. Our most famous Jewish alumni these days is a certain senator and presidential candidate from Vermont.
“A liberal education… frees a man from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family and even his nation.”-Robert Maynard Hutchins, 4th President of the University of Chicago.
…Harvard class rank was based on station of one’s family rather than academic achievement.
Elizabeth Warren worked there for a while, has she chimed in with any advice to her fellow employees?
It’s whom they feed upon eat that is at issue.