Family Life

06.24.09 | FL News Team

Harvard, the oldest institution of higher learning in the U.S. is feeling the recession pinch. The university has announced plans to lay off 275 staff members. The cuts will begin this week at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the largest of the university's schools. Cuts at the medical school and central administration will begin next Monday. Each person being laid off will receive 60 days of pay plus up to two weeks pay for each year of service and the ability to continue medical benefits for 18 months.

Harvard is looking at a projected drop of 30-percent in the value of its endowment forcing managers to take extra close looks at budgets for any savings that could be found short of reducing staff. Now the easy cuts have been made including withholding raises for about nine-thousand members of the faculty and non-union workers for the next school year. Early retirements were offered earlier to about 16-hundred staffers. More than 500 accepted. About half of the positions being eliminated in the current effort are administrative or professional positions. The layoffs won't include professors. Harvard is the second-largest employer in the Greater Boston area with more than 18-thousand people on the payroll.