* Enlist the help and encouragement of some of the well-endowed schools and their alumni for the schools that aren't as well off. For example, Rudenstine says, the Business School has worked hard in the past few years to help the Ed School because the business community is becoming more concerned about the problems of public education.

"It's not enough to make [the Ed School] wealthy, it's not even enough to make them feel like they're where they should be, but that's the shift in attitude and it's a very positive one," he says.

* Do more fundraising for a central administration pool in order to distribute the money to smaller schools or to finance inter-school programs that involve a rich school working with a less-endowed school. "If you had more discretionary money in the center, then you could do a lot of things," he says.

* Spend more time and effort on raising money for the smaller schools. "But there's probably a limit there because graduates of [these schools] don't tend to make a lot of money," he says.

Rudenstine is optimistic that these changes will, over time, begin to shift the balance toward the smaller faculties--especially if the University can get more money in the center to allocate.

"Right now, there's very little money in the middle," Rudenstine says. "That's a very big difference, a fundamental difference, from virtually every other major university in America."