Vassar has taken steps to hold down spending on faculty and staff. Amherst and the University of Florida have raised new money specifically to spend on financial aid for low-income students. American University reallocated scholarships from well-off students to needy ones. Grinnell set a floor on the share of every freshman class — 15 percent — whose parents didn’t go to college.

WASHINGTON — If you want to understand why cutting the deficit is so hard, you can’t do much better than to look at the Business Roundtable.