Hat tip to Megan Buscho '06 for this recent NYT piece on growing tensions between schools and cities; "as endowments everywhere sink with the economy, town-gown relationships, often carefully nurtured during the boom years as colleges and universities sought to expand, are fraying." Read the whole thing here.
How is Puget Sound doing? There was a university forum on our finances yesterday, and the short answer is: pretty good. Incoming class is strong (so far--there is always the question of who will actually show up), and ironically our smaller endowment has worked to our advantage. Since we rely less on it, we had less to lose in the market. The administration has been pretty conservative in planning and construction, and we can see the benefits of that.
