The topic of higher-education financing--particularly as it relates to the price of college and access for low-income and middle-income students--has been front-and-center with policy makers and opinion leaders and will undoubtedly remain so with the Obama administration and Congress. Recent discussion has focused on the role of university endowments: Do they help with access? Should colleges be required to apply more of their endowment revenues to ensure they remain affordable to low- and middle-income students? Such questions were at the forefront in September as the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and Rep. Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, convened a round table to discuss endowments--what they are, how they work, and their relationship to college costs. In this article, the author contends that too many taxpayers do not realize how much endowments help students afford college.