Surprise! Harvard to Merge Business School with Kennedy School of Government

When some of Harvard's graduate students return for the spring semester, they're going to find a few changes. In a surprise holiday press release, Harvard announced plans to merge Harvard's renowned School of Business with the equally prestigious Kennedy School of Government. Tentatively the newly merged school will be named the Ted Kennedy School of Cronyism.

Standing under a banner featuring the newly created school's namesake, Harvard's leadership proudly displayed their new slogan, promising "A Bridge to Everywhere," continuing a disturbing new trend of associating bridges with Kennedys.

"We've decided to do this as a proactive step. It seems that more and more there isn't really any difference between the two entities in the real world," said the release. "Increasingly in real-life situations, we are seeing that successful corporations have to productively interface with their Washington colleagues."

While the details are still being worked out, one thing is clear. The Government side will take precedence over the Business School operations. "We're totally comfortable with that," said one unnamed business professor. "Just like in the real world, we're going to let the government side call all the shots. We're just along for the ride."

Gone will be the classes on labor-burden costing and profit spreadsheets, instead replaced by new classes on union negotiation and how to calculate your carbon footprint. "We're less interested in our cash burn rate, and a lot more interested in our carbon burn rate."

Another interesting addition to the class offerings is one that prepares students for some of the unique challenges of today's economy. Called "CEO 101", the class consists of one Government Student and one Business student teaming up. The two are given a limousine in which to ride around Boston while they mug middle class people. The object is to liberate cash from the working class that they don't even have. One pilot program reportedly demonstrated that by taking trinkets and jewelry, the students could increase returns by 2-300 percent over the simple cash the <strike>victims</strike> participants had.

A few critics have wondered whether the move is a sign of deep cynicism at Harvard, as they are finding the graduates of the two schools often competing for the same jobs, but none of them were willing to go on the record for fear of being labeled "haters."

"We want to prepare our students for the real world. We have to stop pretending there's a free market out there. It's all government now. They can't live their lives in a pretend universe anymore."