Cornell President Takes the Bus

Perhaps Wall Street should take a page from university playbooks. Moved by falling endowments and declines in fundraising, university presidents are voluntarily forgoing benefits and even giving themselves pay cuts to set an example, Bloomberg reports. The presidents of Brown University, Stanford, Middlebury, and Washington University have lowered their own salaries--in Brown's case by as much as 17 percent. Travel expenses have also gone. Instead of flying, Cornell's president now takes the bus between the school's Ithaca and New York campuses whenever possible, while Barnard's president has saved the school $50,000 annually by eliminating the chauffeured car that has served university presidents for the last 30 years.