Layoffs at Harvard stun staff members

From The Boston Globe: Harvard University’s most senior administrators had for months foreshadowed the possibility of staff reductions, warning at a series of meetings and forums that they probably would have no choice as the university deals with the precipitous decline in its endowment. But when the layoff number - 275 Harvard employees - was delivered in a memo from the university’s president, it came as a shock in most quarters of the campus. Few schools and departments, it appears, will be spared.

EARLIER...from The Boston Globe: Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., says it plans to lay off 275 staff members as the college grapples with budget pressures caused by a precipitous endowment decline. Facing a projected 30 percent drop in the value of its endowment, Harvard had already made the decision to withhold raises for about 9,000 faculty and non-union staff members for the next school year. And it has offered a voluntary early retirement program to about 1,600 staff members that ultimately shed more than 500 employees. But the savings were not enough