Nerd News,Financial Apocalypse Edition: Monetary Meltdown Reduces Harvard Endowment By 22%

The ivory tower isn't immune from the mass financial chaos that's apparently engulfed....well, everything. Take a look at this:

In a sign of the economic times, Harvard has sent a letter to its deans saying that the university's $36.9 billion endowment fund lost 22 percent of its value in the last four months and could decline as much as 30 percent by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

. . . Harvard depends on its endowment for about 35 percent of its operating budget, and some of its schools rely on endowment income to cover more than 50 percent of their expenses.

Ouch.