This year, for the first time in history, the twenty or so colleges (many of which are LACs) with the highest EPS will be required to pay a 1.4% tax on their investment returns. You can bet that the ones that did not make the cut are busy making sure they spend as much of their endowment income as they possibly can in order to continue outside the new tax law’s purview. The most likely beneficiary of all that largesse? Financial aid.
https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-tax-plan-college-endowments-2017-11