Story of the Year: The Amazing Shrinking Endowments

Coming in with a whopping 44.19 percent of the vote was last year's precipitous decline of college endowments. The sad part was that many schools were boasting decent finishes to the fiscal year in June and July. Then September hit, and colleges' exposure to real estate, the stock market, and, well, the entire global economy has made some schools cry uncle while others are only in really bad shape.

I'm no fortune teller, but I suspect these money-related problems could be 2009's big story, too.

Full results.