The process of making ends meet at Yale has been painful, and widely publicized. But administrators there say they aren't alone in facing the tough times.

"Harvard has already begun to confront those issues," Turner says. "Harvard has recognized its problems, major difficulties generic to great research institutions."

Turner adds that institutions such as Harvard and Yale could not afford to keep spending the way they did in the past. "The institution that is able to address these problems forthrightly will by the latter part of this decade be genuinely competitive," he says.

The outgoing Yale provost makes a distinction between private institutions, which he believes are suffering from a need for change, and public institutions, which he says "face the problem of a decrease in tax revenues."

Both kinds of institutions have had to face labor relations difficulties. Negotiations with unions and with unions attempting to form occupied much of Schmidt's time, and organized labor also caused problems at the University of Massachusetts last year.

At Yale, Schmidt is not the first administrator to go this year. Dean of the College Donald Kagan and Provost Frank M. Turner are both stepping down at the end of June.

But wild fears of a power vacuum are probably unwarranted. Judith S. Rodin, dean of Yale's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, will assume the post of provost and will be responsible for the ensuing stages of Yale's restructuring process. And the Yale Corporation is expected to appoint an acting president within the month.

"I think it's a very great university, and I think people will rally round," says Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine.

Yale will survive Schmidt's absence, but questions will remain about his departure. No one besides Schmidt will know the real reason the administrator quit Yale. But in coming to the decision, the difficult economics of higher education in the 1990s likely crossed his mind.