How the Economic Hard Times Will Affect Colleges

By LAWRENCE WHITE

So what next? In rapid succession and over what seems like an impossibly short period of time, our nation's economy has absorbed a series of staggering body blows. In ordinary times, any one of them would have been the biggest business story of the year.

Trillions of dollars of the market value of publicly traded stock have evaporated in the past 12 months, a big proportion of it in September and October. Credit has dried up. Banks are unable or unwilling to engage in short-term