"If there's a silver lining in the dark cloud hanging over campus budgets, it may be this: Colleges' investment losses could ease Congress's demands for mandatory endowment payouts, at least in the short term," The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. "In part that's because colleges tend to spend greater portions of their assets when endowments dip, even if overall spending declines. It's also because mandatory payouts would generate less money for student aid in the current downturn than they would have when endowments were posting double-digit returns. That doesn't mean lawmakers will cease pressing colleges to spend more of their assets on student aid."