<p>I did a fair bit of research on this. Brandeis lost about 1/3 of their endowment in the last couple of years - a biggish deal but not an impossible situation. In fact, instead of becoming more “like the other ivies” (tempting to emulate when the $ is plentiful) this set-back has made them re-look at their priorities and be creative about their way forward, so, to me, that’s a good thing. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? They had to do some restructuring but it seems as though they did so in a way that protects their undergraduates - at the expense of their graduate students. I spoke to literally dozens of students of all ilks while my son was visiting (of course, he didn’t see me do this!) and (1) ALL of them loved the school and the faculty (2) most of them were not fond of the administration’s stances on many issues but didn’t see that as disruptive of their education (3) none felt the belt-tightenings thus far (reduced library hours, reduced game room hours, etc) had a negative impact on the quality of their student lives. The official stance is that all the schools lost a chunk - and many lost more $ than Brandeis. What they don’t say is that the other schools had a much larger cushion, so the losses, while more in $ are actually less in proportion to their total wealth. Brandeis biggest financial difficulty right now is that, because they are such a relatively young institution, they don’t have the large alum base to draw upon that a university producing graduates for the past two hundred years has - especially the loyalty of multi-generational well-heeled legacy families. Moreover, the kind of social agenda that Brandeis cherishes means that many of their alum go off to do good works at the expense of high salaries, further reducing the deep pockets Brandeis can turn to. Nevertheless, it is exactly this commitment to social justice, intellectualism that attracts the best and brightest students, and, with careful, creative and transparent leadership that is a recipe for Brandeis’ successful future. It’s only $ - they made it before, they’ll make it again.</p>