It distresses and alarms me that universities can go from seemingly functioning well to near collapse so quickly. Are Brandeis's troubles all Madoff's doing, or were finances shaky from before?

Some institutions--Hampshire College, for example--have been on notoriously shaky ground for a while. I guess Brandeis just seemed very *solid* to me.

This also worries me, as a general situation for numerous universities and not just Brandeis, because I worry about how the current generation of college-age kids can possibly *go* to these schools if the schools' finances are so dire. In such dire straits, can any scholarship students be admitted at all? How will ordinary kids afford college, if colleges can't afford to give scholarships?

But those concerns are tangential to the distress you must be feeling--and for that, I'm really, really sorry.