Boston University recently signed a five-year, $104 million agreement to pay the City of Boston, following Boston’s multiyear agreements with Northeastern University and Wentworth Institute of Technology. Harvard is among the major nonprofits still negotiating a multiyear agreement with the city.
These agreements are Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOTs). Boston has worked with nonprofits on voluntary PILOT payments for decades, and adopted its standard formula in 2011.
In the past two years, the City has begun supplementing that framework with formal multiyear agreements to secure more predictable commitments. But most people likely don’t know this system exists at all. So here’s how Boston’s PILOT program works — and where Harvard fits into it.
What is a PILOT, and how does Boston’s program work?
Nonprofits generally don’t pay property taxes on property used for their nonprofit purposes (in Harvard’s case, teaching and research), but those properties still rely on municipal infrastructure and services, including fire protection and public roads.
To help offset those costs, Boston asks its institutions with more than $15 million in tax-exempt property to contribute 25% of what an institution would otherwise owe in property taxes.
Up to half of that amount can be credited through qualifying “community benefits,” such as college scholarships, public health clinics, or high school programs that directly benefit Boston residents. The rest is expected to come as cash.
That formula establishes Boston’s standard annual request. The newer multiyear agreements adapt that framework to set what an institution contributes over a longer period, which may be less than the full expected cash amount.
Boston’s approach is only one model; where Boston starts from a standard formula, Cambridge, for example, has historically negotiated separate agreements with Harvard and MIT without one.
How much does Harvard contribute?
For fiscal year (FY) 2025, Boston requested $14.6 million based on Harvard’s approximately $1.52 billion in tax-exempt property in Allston and Longwood.
Harvard received about $7.3 million in credit for its community benefits and contributed $4.2 million in cash, meeting 79% of the city’s request and leaving a difference of $3.1 million.
Harvard wasn’t alone. BU met 77% of its requested contribution and Northeastern met 66%, and across all educational institutions, Boston received 68% of what it requested.
Harvard separately makes PILOT payments to Cambridge, and in 2025 made a one-time, $6 million payment as it continues to renegotiate its rate.
Why doesn’t Boston receive the full amount it requests from Harvard?
The program is voluntary, so Harvard isn’t legally required to pay the full amount. The gap also reflects disagreement over what should count as an institution’s community benefit contribution versus how much should come in cash.
Harvard has previously argued that Boston’s formula “undervalues what institutions are doing and undervalues what the city of Boston is capturing from institutions doing great things.” It also notes that between FY15 and FY24 it paid $81.5 million in ordinary property taxes on property that is not tax-exempt.
City officials and advocates respond that community benefits are not a substitute for unrestricted revenue that can fund municipal services, particularly in a city where more than 50% of land area is tax-exempt.
Why do these agreements matter?
Universities regularly need Boston’s cooperation on campus development and infrastructure, giving the City leverage to seek PILOT commitments at the same time.
For example, Boston negotiated Northeastern’s new agreement while also approving a 10-year campus plan that includes expanded student housing and redevelopment of their arena, though city officials said BU’s agreement wasn’t tied to a similar development negotiation.
Harvard is still negotiating new PILOT arrangements with both Boston and Cambridge, but neither city has announced a timeline. We’ll be here to break down any agreement when it’s reached.
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Dozens of College Staff Laid Off as FAS Restructuring Continues
Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) laid off 36 College employees and offered at least 28 others a choice between a changed role and a layoff in its latest restructuring round, according to documents obtained by The Crimson.
The restructuring disperses the Center for Public Service and Engaged Scholarship’s programs across other Harvard College offices, changing its role as the College’s central hub for public service. The Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship, for example, will move fully into the Office of Undergraduate Education. At Phillips Brooks House, which had been under the Center’s purview, 11 of 23 staff positions were affected, including six director or assistant director roles.
FAS said the figures obtained by The Crimson may not reflect employees’ ultimate status because some whose positions were eliminated could move into newly created roles.
The College also eliminated the standalone Harvard College Writing Center as an administrative unit, moving oversight of writing tutors to the Academic Resource Center (ARC) while leaving tutoring itself largely unchanged. Longtime director Jane Rosenzweig and Harvard Writing Project director James Herron were laid off. Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh said students will continue “with the same tutors, trained in the same ways, doing the same invaluable work with students.”
The Office of Student Services has also been eliminated under the new structure, with Dean of Student Services Michael Burke among those laid off.
Across five rounds of restructuring since May, at least 83 FAS positions have been affected. FAS has said additional changes are forthcoming. Up to 25% of FAS staff are expected to be impacted by the restructuring.
Harvard Corporation Member Says Board Working More Closely With Overseers
Harvard Corporation member Mariano-Florentino “Tino” Cuéllar (AB ’93) said the Corporation has increased collaboration with Harvard’s Board of Overseers, whose candidates are nominated by a committee of the Harvard Alumni Association.
Asked by Harvard College Dean David Deming (PhD ’10) on his podcast about criticism that the Corporation selects its own members, Cuéllar said the question was “fair to ask” but argued that Harvard’s governance should balance “responsiveness and insulation” — remaining responsive while preserving the ability to resist short-term pressure.
The Board of Overseers must approve new Corporation members, and Cuéllar noted that Overseers also participate in search committees. He said the two governing boards now work together more frequently, including through joint meetings and shared sessions.
Cuéllar’s comments come amid continued scrutiny of how the Corporation makes major decisions. Since Claudine Gay’s resignation, the board has increased meetings with faculty, deans, and other affiliates, but critics have pointed to the private extension of Alan Garber’s presidency, the lack of publicly released recommendations from a committee reviewing the presidential search process, and the Corporation’s largely internal process for selecting new members as signs that its decision-making remains opaque.
Education Secretary Calls on Universities To Publish Reform Plans in Letter Crafted with AAU Input
In an open letter, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon called on all post-secondary institutions to publish, by the end of 2026, their commitments to “rigorous teaching, pathbreaking research, and national service,” along with plans to strengthen admissions transparency, campus discourse and disruption, viewpoint diversity, affordability, academic rigor, foreign influence safeguards, and workforce and national security contributions.
Unlike last fall’s proposed university “Compact,” the letter doesn’t tie this call to any new federal benefits, mandates, or enforcement mechanisms.
The new initiative was developed with university leaders, including presidents from the Association of American Universities (AAU), whose members include Harvard.
Among those who helped draft the letter were WashU Chancellor Andrew Martin, Arizona State (ASU) President Michael Crow, University of Kansas President Doug Girod (AAU board chair), and Johns Hopkins President Ronald Daniels (AAU vice chair).
AAU President Barbara Snyder plans to encourage member universities to support the initiative.
American Council on Education (ACE) President Ted Mitchell called the letter “much less pugilistic,” saying it “identifies several important positive principles — and it calls out a couple of things that we know we need to do better.”
White House OSTP Report Proposes Major Changes to Federal Research Funding Processes and Recipients
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a report it called “the first comprehensive rethinking of the U.S. science and technology enterprise in over 80 years.” It argues that the system has become increasingly “calcified,” that its institutions “are no longer sufficient for the new frontier,” and that federal research should “prioritize the individual scientist over legacy institutions.”
The report includes several recommendations that, if adopted, could have significant implications for research universities:
On funding different institutions: The report argues that the current system “channels resources overwhelmingly” to university-based, principal investigator-led research groups and recommends that federal funding “support a broader range of performers.” It cites organizations funded through the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) X-Labs program and “curiosity-driven institutes” as alternative models that may be better suited than traditional academic laboratories for some “infrastructure-heavy, multidisciplinary” projects.
In Fiscal Year 2025, Harvard reported $629 million in federal research funding (down 8% from the prior year due to the federal government funding freeze on its grants in effect at the time the fiscal year closed). By October 2025, Harvard reported that most of the frozen funding had been restored after U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled the government’s freeze of more than $2.2 billion in research funding illegal.
On graduate students and early career scientists: The report calls for funding models that “bet on people, not just projects,” including portable graduate fellowships that students could retain when changing institutions or principal investigators, and greater support for early-career researchers to pursue independent work.
On grant writing and approval: The report recommends streamlining grantmaking, arguing that consensus-driven peer-review panels can favor “the least divisive ideas rather than the most promising” and that university researchers “spend nearly half of their federally funded research time on paperwork rather than on research or teaching.” It proposes “golden tickets” allowing individual reviewers to back unconventional proposals and “fast grants” requiring “just a few pages of writing” and decisions within a month.
Since 2024, Stanford has sought to reduce administrative “frictions,” including by centralizing research support so faculty can spend less time on paperwork and more on research.
On indirect costs: The report calls for “reining in” universities’ recovery of indirect costs — the portion of federal research grants that reimburses institutions for shared expenses such as facilities, utilities, and administration — arguing that some of the funding supports “administrative bloat,” and recommends redirecting more of that money toward “real scientific infrastructure.” It doesn’t propose a specific indirect cap, though the recommendation follows a 2025 federal effort to impose a 15% cap on NIH indirect-cost reimbursements, which was blocked in court while Congress preserved the existing negotiated-rate system.
More News
More News at Harvard
The Boston Globe: “Union Researchers and Teachers at Harvard Authorize Strike Amid Stalled Contract Negotiations”
Harvard Gazette: “Garber warns of disruptions to ‘unprecedented’ scientific progress: Policy Changes for International Students Threaten U.S. Competitiveness”
Harvard Gazette: “A Century of the SAT”
The Crimson: “Henry Chu '90 Named Permanent Nieman Foundation Curator”
The Crimson: “Harvard to Shutter Dudley Community After More Than 90 Years”
JNS: “Legal Group Asks Court to Use ‘Substitution Test’ in Harvard Jew-Hatred Case”
The Crimson: “To the Editor: On Epstein and Freedom of Association” — by Council on Academic Freedom members and Harvard professors Jeffrey Flier (HMS), Edward Hall (FAS philosophy), Jennifer Hochschild (FAS government), Randall Kennedy (HLS), and Eric Maskin (FAS economics, AB ‘72, PhD ‘76)
More News Beyond Harvard
Inside Higher Ed: “National AAUP Starts Endorsing Political Candidates”
Brown Daily Herald: “Paxson to step down at end of 2026-27 academic year”
Wall Street Journal: “U.S. Weighs $100,000 Fee for Foreign Students Wanting to Work After Graduation”
STAT News: “White House Offers Its Science Blueprint: More AI, Less Life Sciences”
Financial Times: “Concerns Rise as Volume of Research Soars and Quality Drops”
The Atlantic: “Is the Age of Reading Over?”
Pirate Wires: “Exclusive: The Trump Administration's Plan to Overhaul the American PhD”
Yale Daily News: “In Private Talks, McInnis Leaves Faculty Leader Assured on Trump Deal”
Columbia Daily Spectator: “Columbia Student Workers’ Union Drops Israel Divestment Demand Amid Contract Negotiations”
Vanderbilt University: “The University and Its Purpose: A Declaration of First Principles”
Daily Princetonian: “Major Gift from Leinweber Foundation to Strengthen Theoretical Physics Research”
University of Michigan: “U-M Alum Passes Family Legacy on With $10.77M Gift to the Political Science Department”
Heterodox Academy: “Faculty Attitudes Toward Diversity in Their Disciplines: A National Survey”
Chronicle of Higher Education: “Dear Humanities Profs: We Are the Problem” — by Providence College English professor Eric Bennett (AB ‘97, PhD ‘09)
Chronicle of Higher Education: “When Bad Research Feels Good” — by University of Toronto psychology professor Michael Inzlicht
Senator Todd Young: “Young, Colleagues Introduce Bill to End Legacy Admissions”
Free the Inquiry: “Democrats Sour on Higher Education in Latest Gallup Polling”
The 74: “Settling Scores: Experts Debate Why AP Performance Has Soared”
OpenAI: “Accelerating Scientific Discovery with ChatGPT for Academic Researchers”
Financial Times: “Universities Should Arm Students with AI ‘Eval’ Powers”
Symbolic Capital(ism): “On Inequality and Socialism” — by Musa al-Gharbi, author of We Have Never Been Woke
Radically Pragmatic: “What's Wrong with American Studies?” — by Richard Kahlenberg (AB ‘85, JD ‘89) and Lief Lin of the Progressive Policy Institute
Popular by Design: “Reality May Have a Liberal Bias, but the Social Sciences Still Need Conservatives” — by University of Notre Dame political science professor Alexander Kustov
Contents May Shift: “Science Is So Back” — by Kristin Ellis