Fury as Harvard University encourages students to apply for food stamps from government

An event at Harvard University encouraged some graduate students to apply for food stamps, despite the school’s $53billion endowment.

Earlier this year, Harvard University Health Services reminded grad students that they could fuel their bodies and stock their pantries by using government assistance to pay for groceries.

‘Did you know that Grad Students may qualify to receive assistance paying for food & groceries?’ read a flier for the event.

Harvard’s endowment makes it the richest university in the world, a fact that sparked outrage among community members who argued that paying graduate students a livable food stipend would barely even register in the school’s massive budget.

Graduate students are also paid a $40,000 yearly wage by the university.  

Harvard University has an endowment of $53.2billion – making it the richest university in the world

An event last year hosted by the university’s student health center encouraged grad students to sign up for food stamps in order to afford groceries

‘Harvard’s endowment is over $50 billion. Undergraduate tuition is over $55k a year. Yet the grad students who do most of the teaching, advising, and mentoring at Harvard are so underpaid that they’re eligible for food stamps,’ wrote one Harvard student on Twitter.

Harvard has some 21,766 graduate students. If the university were to sacrifice 1/50th of its $53.2billion endowment, it could, in theory, pay each student $48,883 – a nearly $9,000 increase over their current stipends of $40,0000. 

The Harvard Graduate Student Union has gone on strike to advocate for higher wages – once in 2019 and again in 2021.

The more recent strike, which was a three-day work stoppage, amounted to the union vowing to strike again if the school did not agree to its bargaining terms.

The school then forced the strikers to sign an agreement allowing Harvard to retain salary funds in an amount equal to the time students withheld labor.

A student at the time wrote on Twitter: ‘@Harvard’s $53B dollar endowment is larger than the GDP of dozens of countries, but it’s trying to force underpaid student workers to repay three days of wages from last week’s strike.’

Harvard’s current yearly grad student wage is arguably not enough to live on in  Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the average rent is $3,477.

Graduate students at the University of Michigan, Rutgers and MIT also recently launched similar protests against their institutions.

Graduate students in Cambridge – where the average rent is close to $3,500 – earn $40,000 a year

Food stamps are designed to help low-income Americans afford basic groceries

Famously, Harvard added $10billion to its endowment during one year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The same year, 2021, ended with a $283million operational surplus.

Food stamps, or what the government calls the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is a service intended for low-income people and families. It helps those living in poverty afford basic food items.

According to Pew Research, more than 41million Americans currently use food stamps.