Harvard’s deep cuts to Ph.D. admissions are on track to leave undergraduate courses short of teaching fellows within two years, a looming squeeze already pushing departments to prepare contingency plans.
For now, the impact is delayed: G1 and G2 students do not teach, giving Harvard a brief buffer before the much smaller incoming cohort reaches the teaching-heavy G3 year. But TFs run sections, tutorials, and much of the grading across the humanities and social sciences. With fewer of them on the horizon, departments are being forced into early planning.
Some faculty expect to shoulder the burden themselves.
The higher education industry is in decline.