U.S. College Endowments Lost 24 Percent in Six Months

Illustrating just how severely the financial crisis is affecting higher education, even wealthy colleges like Harvard are freezing salaries, offering early retirement, reassessing construction projects and considering selling off art collections.

Smaller schools, with endowments of $10 million or less, fared even worse with their endowments losing 30.2 percent, according to the study which will be released Thursday.