MSNBC has a deliciously number-filled article on "The Dangerous Wealth of the Ivy League". Buried in the second half of the article (after such tidbits as the fact that Harvard's endowment just produced an investment gain of nearly 6 billion -- yes, billion with a "b" -- in a single year) was a somewhat suprising statement by the new president of Harvard:
"One thing we all must worry about — I certainly do — is the federal support for scientific research. And are we all going to be chasing increasingly scarce dollars?" says Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's new president. Not that Faust seems worried about Harvard or other top-tier research schools. "They're going to be—we hope, we trust, we assume—the survivors in this race," she says. As for the many lesser universities likely to lose market share, she adds, they would be wise "to really emphasize social science or humanities ...
