<p>It’s wonderful that Middlebury can raise so much for education. </p>
<p>On the other hand, they’ll raise more than twice as much in the next five years as the entire endowments of schools at the bottom of the NESCAC ladder. It must be discouraging to be the president of colleges that overlap with the likes of Williams and Middlebury; the best you could ever hope for is to not be left entirely in the dust. That kind of money buys a lot of strategic flexibility in hiring and retaining faculty, making capital improvements, trying out innovative programs, boosting financial aid, supporting student and faculty research, etc.</p>