Wachovia Corp. on Monday froze most of a fund holding $9.3 billion from 1,000 colleges, universities and private secondary schools, including several in the Philadelphia area, when it resigned as trustee.

The move illustrated how Wall Street's chill can reach distant corners of economic life. Colleges and universities use the Common Fund for Short Term Investments to get a better return than they can get from a bank account or money market fund on cash they need quick access to.

Wachovia blamed its decision to freeze most assets and to liquidate the fund on problems in the short-term credit markets, which less than two weeks ago led the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to bolster the nation's $3 trillion in deposits in money market mutual funds.

The bank said investors had access yesterday to 34 percent of their money in the fund. Commonfund anticipated that 60 percent of the fund would be liquidated by year's end.

The bank's involvement with the fund stretches all the way back to when Philadelphia National Bank, which became part of Wachovia through a series of mergers, first served as trustee in 1974.

The first problem colleges, universities and many nonprofit organizations experienced with short-term borrowing occurred earlier this year, when doubts about whether bond insurers would survive caused interest rates to skyrocket on so-called auction-rate securities, short-term notes whose interest rates are set weekly. That cost millions.

Now, this week's temporary freeze of most assets in the Common Fund for Short Term Investments sparked fears that some colleges or universities would be unable to make payroll or pay other bills. But, thus far, several local investors said the situation had had no adverse effect on them.

The Community College of Philadelphia, for example, had $22 million invested in the short-term fund. It has received $8.2 million over the last two days and is confident it will receive the rest of its money when a new trustee is named, said Lynette Brown-Sow, the college's vice president for marketing and government relations.

"Meanwhile," she said, "this situation does not affect the college's day-to-day operation, ability to pay vendors, meet payroll, or move forward with capital projects."

The Hill School, a private school in Pottstown with 495 students, got lucky.

It coincidentally withdrew its money from the fund Friday to pay bills, chief financial officer Don Silverson said. "It was fortuitous because Monday or Tuesday we learned that they were terminating the fund."

Haverford College has little money in the fund because members of the school's investment committee became wary this year and moved most of the money to U.S. Treasury funds at the Vanguard Group Inc., of Malvern, spokesman Chris Mills said.

Commonfund Group, a nonprofit group that manages the short-term fund, said no securities in its portfolio had defaulted.

However, the fund has experienced significant price volatility because of securities backed by mortgages and other assets that no one wants to buy. On Monday, conditions in the market were so bad that "virtually none" of the nongovernment securities in the fund could be sold for face value, Commonfund said in a statement.

The fund manager, based in Wilton, Conn., has $41 billion under management in 45 funds.

The Hill School avoided the problems of the Common Fund for Short Term Investments, but it has not escaped the financially painful volatility of the short-term debt market.

Silverson said the school had $7 million of notes whose interest rate is set weekly. In mid-September, the rate was 1.8 percent. Last week, he said, it shot up to 8 percent.