"The financial headlines out of Washington and Wall Street could not be scarier, with words like 'collapse' and 'crisis' and 'failure' spilling out of news reports to an extent not seen in decades," Inside Higher Ed reports. "But as talk of pending national economic doom has reverberated for much of this year, though, predictions of blunt force impact on higher education - in terms of evaporating student loans, families unable to pay for college - have largely failed to materialize. This week saw some of the first tangible signs that the broader turmoil in the financial credit markets is having a direct effect on colleges and universities, notably the restrictions placed on the availability of money from the Common Fund for Short Term Investments, in which about 900 colleges store some of their financial assets."