The Wall Street Journal‘s headline lays out the claim:

Elite Colleges Have a Looming Money Problem

The article goes on:

[T]here are financial problems below the surface that could emerge if the bull market stumbles and especially if some proposed Trump administration policies are enacted.

And this:

…Ivy League endowment returns, which could have been worth 20% more since the 2008 financial crisis if invested in a classic stock and bond mix.

We all could have done better. That’s irrelevant. The bare fact is these endowments, as the table of Ivy League endowments below shows, are plenty big enough, and they’re still growing, for all the temporary losses of the Panic of 2008.

*Per Wikipedia, a/o June 2023
**Calculated from undergrad + grad student enrollment

It’s all crocodile tears. If the schools were truly worried about their dwindling endowments—just $1 billion could fund 100 professorships or permanently cover tuition for 100 students—they could cut the claptrap and waste out of their expense structures. Those structures include such…foolishnesses…as bloated management teams that include a plethora of DEI staff and Inquisition bureaucracies designed to convict a male student on the basis of a female student’s bare accusation.

No, these schools have rich endowments; they’re not financially challenged. They just might lose their access to the Federal feedbag. Which they should anyway.