This is Clearly a Time of Uncertainty

From Goldie Blumenstyck writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education (requires subscription or other paid access):

"In [a] survey sent to chief finance officers at four-year colleges in September, 62 percent of the respondents said they did not think the worst of the financial pressures on their institutions had passed. Nearly two-thirds of them worry that 2010, 2011, or 2012 or later, will be even tougher."

Is it good or is it bad that Moody's thinks higher education is solid? "It's important to remember that this is an industry that has been in a golden era for a decade or more," says John C. Nelson, managing director for the Moody's group that evaluates colleges' creditworthiness. "It shows how just fundamentally stable the business model of the university is. They can absorb a lot."

Some say that "[t]ere is not really a crisis for public universities." And the number of private institutions which rely heavily on hard hit endowments is only about 100. However, Moody's expected the decline in net-tuition revenue for the 09-10 academic year to be the biggest for private colleges since the late 1980s.