Harvard University will offer voluntary redundancy to 1,600 or so of its non-faculty employees. The offers are to target staff who are 55 years or older and have worked for the university for at least a decade.

The "early retirement program" was unveiled on 11 February and is the latest sign of the budget crisis facing the world's wealthiest university. The university's endowment, which in June 2008 stood at US$36.9 billion, shrank by 22% late last year (see _Nature_ 457, 11–12; 2009). The university estimates that the drop may reach 30% by the end of its fiscal year in June.

To cope with the crisis, departments have frozen faculty hiring and have begun to draw up contingency plans in case large building projects — including a proposed new science complex — are put on hold.