Now that the final results for the year to June 30 2009 are in from Harvard, Yale and other prominent endowments, it is possible to take stock of the implications of the dreadful year they have just experienced. There has of course been no shortage of schadenfreude, as will always happen when self-satisfied institutions come up short of their own grandly stated ambitions.

In the case of Harvard, which has experienced traumatic internal ructions over the management of its endowment in recent years, and which nobody could describe as suffering from an excess of modesty, the poor results have turned a little local difficulty into a national media event. The $9bn (£5.6bn, €6.1bn) decline in the value of its endowment in the 2008-09 year has prompted any number of prejudices to be aired and old academic scores to be settled.