"In the space of several months in late 2007 and early 2008, Harvard, Yale and several other highly selective universities enriched their financial aid programs to guarantee that students from families well up the economic ladder would get sizable grants to attend their institutions," writes Donald Heller in Inside Higher Ed. "As we are all painfully aware today, the changes were made at the beginning of a recession that has gripped the nation and shrunk the value of the endowments at those very same institutions by roughly 25 percent, forcing major cutbacks ... There is an additional step that to date none have taken that would help them cope with these reductions: rolling back the financial aid programs they implemented two years ago that provide generous grants to wealthy families."