<p>"Princeton University expects the value of its endowment to fall 30 percent of its fiscal year 2008 peak of $15.8 billion by June 30 of this year, Princeton President Shirley Tilghman announced in a university-wide letter Monday. She also said Princeton hopes to cut $88 million from its budget for the next fiscal year. Previously Princeton had anticipated an endowment loss of only 25 percent. Princeton will freeze pay for tenured faculty and staff with salaries over $75,000, Tilghman said Monday, saving the university $4 million."</p>
<p>Financial aid won’t be affected. The situation is quite bad but Princeton is actually doing a bit better in this area than its peers. Quietly, Yale is currently increasing its loss estimates to between 35% and 40% and has already let key backers know. Harvard is saying nothing at present but published reports (and my faculty friends at HLS) have indicated that Harvard’s losses at this point are already higher than Yale’s. All of these schools will struggle with their budgets for the next few years but financial aid is highly unlikely to be affected at any of them. What will be cut instead is new construction and staff. Program cuts may follow next.</p>
<p>^ ^ No, agreeing with the reply immediately above, it looks to me like Princeton is very much in earnest about admitting students without dinging them if they can’t pay full list price out of pocket.</p>
<p>Really? I’d love to see proof of this, though I wouldn’t doubt it. I can only hope the ghetto Ivies don’t have similarly spectacular losses in the works as a virtue of simply not having had as much money to invest so exotically in the first place</p>