Re the endowment debacle. I get that endowment commitments and overall illiquidity are a problem and that using whatever funds available now may produce problems in the future, but,

let's frame the debate in slightly different terms. 3 institutions (Harvard, Yale and Stanford) had (pre crash) combined endowments of ~$85 billion serving roughly 49K students. The University of California, by contrast, has an endowment of ~$8 billion and serves ~ 280K students

The debate about endowments is a debate about maintaining privilege. The intellectual and educational capacity of Harvard, Yale and Stanford would not take a real hit if they had 15% less in endowments, but their capacity to signal status might.

This is not the time to be skimpy within and across institutions. It is not the moment to think about the gilded buildings inst. might not be able to build in 10 years bc of money (well) spent today.