John Hechinger

September 11, 2009, The Wall Street Journal ­— It's a tie in the Harvard-Yale investment game. Both schools were thrown for colossal losses.

HARTFORD, Conn., April 23, 2009, The Wall Street Journal — Financially strapped colleges are angering their benefactors by selling school radio stations, auctioning Georgia O'Keeffe paintings and dipping into endowments for purposes their donors may not have intended.

Colleges and universities led by Stanford, Harvard and Columbia raised a record $31.6 billion in fiscal year 2008, but their fund-raising outlook has darkened amid the economic crisis.

Universities, museums and other nonprofits battered by investment losses are pushing states to ease legal limits on spending so they can tap their endowments to avoid imminent layoffs and deep cuts to programs.