Dr. Scott Hadland, chief of adolescent medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, posts the relevant part of the memo from Harvard:
Universities throughout the nation face substantial financial uncertainties drive by rapidly shifting federal policies. ...
We need to prepare for a wide range of financial circumstances, and strategic adjustments will take time to identify and implement. Consequently, Harvard will implement a temporary pause on staff and faculty hiring across the University.
The news comes as Harvard-affiliated Mass. General Brigham begins its second round of layoffs and as the Musk/Trump administration pulls $400 million in grants from Columbia University in New York.
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Comments
What will
By Anonymous
Mon, 03/10/2025 - 7:16pm
Harvard ever do? Hope they don’t drain their billion plus endowment.
Read the article.
By makeshift_vicinity
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 3:46am
The article is literally only about what Harvard will do: they'll stop hiring people. We all already know that giant private universities with huge endowments are rich. Please stop patting yourself on the back for pointing that out.
Then, try to catch up with the rest of us. Harvard doesn't necessarily care about the public good. That's why we had federal research grants. With those taken away, no one gets hired to do research. Not just at Harvard, but at public universities. So where does that leave your smarty-pants reply?
It's not about saving Harvard, dingbat. It's about how the USA's academics and research, once best in the world, is being destroyed. What are you, a Republican?
Read the article.
By makeshift_vicinity
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 3:54am
The article is literally only about what Harvard will do: they'll stop hiring people. We all already know that giant private universities with huge endowments are rich. Please stop patting yourself on the back for pointing that out.
Then, try to catch up with the rest of us. Harvard doesn't necessarily care about the public good. That's why we had federal research grants. With those taken away, no one gets hired to do research. Not just at Harvard, but at public universities. So where does that leave your smarty-pants reply?
It's not about saving Harvard, dingbat. It's about how the USA's academics and research, once best in the world, is being destroyed. What are you, a Republican?
Harvard is rich, but...
By necturus
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 6:45am
...their budget is based on the income they expect to receive from their enormous endowment, plus the money they get from the federal government. Their endowment will suffer from any drop in the value of the stocks they hold. It lost a third of its value in the 2008 crash. Their federal income stream will get cut off unless they kowtow to Trump, and perhaps even if they do. So, Harvard will have to make cuts, as rich as Harvard is.
Don't be surprised if they propose renaming the Business School, or some such, after Trump or Musk.
Levitsky and Enos said it pretty well
By deedle
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 11:32am
As Profs Steven Levitsky and Ryan Enos wrote in The Crimson a few days ago ("Harvard Must Take a Stand for Democracy"):
If history is any guide, Harvard will cave
By necturus
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 1:13pm
Throughout its nearly 400-year history, Harvard has never once stood up to the powers that be. It surrendered to McCarthyism in the 1950s; it surrendered to Elise Stefanik and company a year ago; and it will surrender to Trump. In the end, money talks and Harvard listens. The threat of losing its federal funds will make Harvard jump through whatever hoops Trump puts in front of it.
reducing scientific research in the USA
By deselby
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 12:53am
Just because some students and faculty at research universities are protesting Israeli ethnic cleansing.
Denying Americans free speech rights on behalf of a foreign apartheid state.
Wait. I thought the whole
By Frelmont
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 7:07am
Wait. I thought the whole hubbub on university campuses (and the tacit and not so tacit assent of the Democrat messaging infrastructure) was because of the pro-Hamas-led call to exterminate Jews from their homeland and particularly the harassment campaigns against Jewish students.
Also, as large as the endowment seems, it still is a vulnerable hedge against assaults like Summers and as another reply pointed out: economic downturn.
You must eradicate from
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 8:42am
You must eradicate from yourself childish folly.
You were wrong
By lbb
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 9:12am
"Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave."
"By our beards (if we had them), thou art."
"By my knavery (if I had it), then I were."
As usual, Frelmont, your premise is bullshit. Your argument is therefore specious, and the entire exercise is embarrassing to watch.
There’s the rub.
By Frelmont
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 12:41pm
There’s the rub.
Which premise? The premise of Hamas adjacentness, or the premise of Israel, of Judea and Samaria?
You are not allowed to criticize the State of Israel
By necturus
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 1:24pm
You can protest against China's persecution of the Uighurs, or against Myanmar's persecution of the Rohingya, or against Russia's war in Ukraine.
But criticize Israel's treatment of Palestinians, and you are an anti-Semite (never mind that Palestinians are Semites too, and even descendants of the same ancestors as Jews). You will face the wrath of your government, much as Poles used to face if they dared criticize the Soviet Union.
reducing scientific research
By NoMoreBanks
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 9:03am
reducing scientific research in the USA because research, at it's best, is about helping everyone, developing cures and making them accessible, relying on facts and evidence instead of gut feelings and financial pressures, and educating the next generation. the oligarchs are undoing scientific research because they want poor people to die of disease instead of being a "drain" on society (and use them as biofuel, look up Vance's mentor Curtis Yarvin), and because curing pediatric cancer doesn't make line-go-up in oligarch's bank accounts.
Any other reasons are smokescreens. Trump couldn't point out Israel on a map.
The greater Boston economy
By necturus
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 4:49am
...is heavily dependent on two industries: higher education and health care.
This administration's cuts will affect both. Get ready for some hard times.
Time was Boston was
By Frelmont
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 1:01pm
Time was Boston was predominantly a financial hub. Even in the current decline it’s be nice if our efforts in servicing such a fraction of the world’s wealth would pay some sort of dividends. How is it that even as we multiple industries, and a lucrative, if highly immoral state lottery and gaming scheme we can’t get our trains to run reliably, or maintain our roads?
Boston, like much of New England, was once a manufacturing hub
By necturus
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 1:34pm
In 1861, Massachusetts had a greater industrial output than the entire Confederacy.
Even as late as the 1950s, what is now called the Needham Business Center was set up by the New Haven Railroad as an industrial park on the land from which the dirt had been dug decades earlier to fill Back Bay. Every building had its rail spur. The last industrial rail customer in the area shut down circa 2010, and the rails are now gone. It's a story that was repeated all over New England during the past half century.
Who manages your trust fund?
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 2:17pm
Boston is still a financial center. Not as big as NYC, but then again we have 1/10th their population.
I wish.
By Frelmont
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 3:04pm
I wish.
Maybe things are improving, but the topTop 5 results in google for Boston+financial+hub yielded *below: (I know Google sux. I used to type a fraction of a sentence from any random book and could get a specific result, now it’s garbage all the way down.)
*https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2022/...
MGB
By JPNative617
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 7:03am
There's more to the MGB layoffs than federal polices.
MGB has spent over $100M on an Epic Beaker implementation over the last 3 years. These layoffs were expected, and common with every large IDN that purchases Epic's EHR and LIS.
It's also worth noting that many of these IDN's make IT and lab staff reapply for their jobs before and during implementation, and end up replacing them with Epic employees. Many of these site employees are let go post-go-live once the organization has worked them to the bone.
I'm not saying this is the only factor for the layoffs, but it's a significant contributor.
Again, less jargon?
By Lecil
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 10:38am
Could you translate a bit of that for those of us not actively in academia? :)
EHR Implementation Explanation
By bird
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 3:25pm
I'm not an expert, nor am I in academia, but I am in tech and can distill this a bit.
Epic is an EHR (Electronic Health Record) system. It includes MyChart (the site/app for patients) and is meant to replace physical paper health record systems or other EHR's. In large orgs, "an implementation" is the process of rolling out a complicated software system like this one, and migrating all the existing employees, activities, and resources from the old thing to the new.
An IDN, in this context, is an Integrated Delivery Network, or a large system of hospitals and smaller practices that provide coordinated healthcare under one umbrella, like Mass General Brigham or Beth Israel Lahey.
JPNative617 is claiming that many IDN's plan to get rid of employees who aren't familiar with the new software system, replacing them with people who know that system better, and that this is a major contributor to the layoffs.
As someone who has no horse in that race, I have no idea if that poster's claim is correct, but I hope this helps you understand the claim being made.
JPNative617 or others, please correct anything I've misunderstood or overlooked.
“and end up replacing them
By Steeve
Tue, 03/11/2025 - 11:34am
“and end up replacing them with Epic employees”
As someone who’s worked with Epic for over a decade, and did the Epic installs at MGH, BWH, and MEEI, this is not a thing.
“Epic employees” aren’t hired ever. You have your TS and maybe a Boost consultant to fill gaps, but the former is part of your Epic subscription, and the latter pretty rare. I’ve only ever seen it at EBNHC where the Prelude analyst was so incompetent she needed weekly meetings with the TS, and still needed to bring in a Boost consultant because she couldn’t understand the stuff she was paid $100k+ to know.
The “Epic people” are just people from outside the org who got Epic certified and work in IT and then got a job at eCare or whatever it’s called now.
Fair Point
By JPNative617
Wed, 03/12/2025 - 6:25am
I don’t work for Epic, but do work closely with hospitals that are/have.moved to Epic.
I’ve only heard anecdotally that this happens, including recently from a large health system in the mid-Atlantic who has signed with Epic. My reps contact, who is a long time employee, was given the honor of staying employed until go-live and will then be laid off.
My larger point is that based on the cost of a Beaker implementation, layoffs across the organization are a part of the strategy.
To add to the comment above:
Epic EHR - MyChart
Epic Beaker - LIS or Lab Information System is where the orders to instruments are sent and results received.
There anre also many other pieces of hardware and software from multiple vendors that sit behind Epic. Some need to be reinstalled or repurchased in the pre-implementation stage which also comes at a significant cost.
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