Big Green Downsizes

Add Dartmouth College to the growing list of institutions hammered by the economic slump.

As income from its endowment shrinks, the school will cut its budget by as much as 10 percent, or $40 million over the next two years.

Of course, there is some small irony in that the government official charged with tackling with the economic crisis is a Dartmouth alum: Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

Paulson was an All-East offensive tackle for the Dartmouth football team, where he earned the nickname "Hammering Hank."  His possible successor at Treasury, Timothy Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is also a Dartmouth graduate, as is the C.E.O. of one of the biggest companies to be buffeted by the crisis, Jeff Immelt of General Electric.

Dartmouth, the smallest of the Ivies, will institute a hiring freeze and will review programs, the student newspaper The Dartmouth reports.

"This is a significant number," the college's president, James Wright, told the newspaper. "It will be hard. It will have consequences."

Dartmouth, which relies on endowment income for a third of its operating funds, has lost $220 million, or about 6 percent of its endowment, The Dartmouth reported.

"The current international economic downturn has its own unique and ominous qualities, affecting institutions, businesses and households," Wright wrote in a letter. "It is not unprecedented in terms of effects and consequences. As Dartmouth has done many times over the last 239 years -- including several times in the nearly 40 years I have been here -- we will meet this challenge."