Yale University has announced that it still needs to trim $150 million from its budget to account for the damage done to its endowment by the economic crisis. Yale – the second richest US university, after Harvard – lost $6.6 billion from its $22.9 billion endowment between June 2008 and June 2009. Since then, the university has been struggling to balance its books.

Cuts are to include salary freezes, changes to some employee benefits, and a 10-15% reduction in the number of new graduate students in the School of Arts & Sciences. (It must be a bit more difficult to get into grad school these days. Quite a few programs have cut graduate student admissions to save money.) In addition, the New York Times notes that "support from the provost for a number of research and other programs would be ‘reduced but not eliminated’.”

The cuts could be a boon for energy conservation, at least: Yale, located in chilly New Haven, Connecticut, also intends to dial down campus thermostats to 68 degrees.

Photo: Sage Ross