CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust began her tenure in 2007 when the university's prosperity seeemed limitless. With its ballooning wealth, Harvard planned almost frenzied growth, from a building boom into Boston to vast increases in financial aid for students.
Billions of lost endowment dollars later, though, Faust faces a much different reality. The university estimated a 30 percent endowment drop for the fiscal year that ended last week.
Much of Faust's time now is spent figuring out how Harvard can weather the downturn, through layoffs, early retirement packages, cuts in services, even changes to breakfast menus for undergraduates.
Faust says her presidency is like a marriage, saying she "signed on for sickness or health or richer or poorer. And it's turned out to be quite a ride."
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