Federal funds for higher education may be cut

While next year's $2.8 trillion federal budget proposed by the White House last month includes additional support for research and higher education, the longterm outlook for federal spending suggests that universities like Princeton may lose significant federal funding in the next five years, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.

The Post analysis, which draws on a 673-page White House document detailing plans to cut the federal government's deficit, concludes that billions of dollars in education cuts would be necessary for the administration to achieve its deficit-slashing goals.

Among the cuts would be about $1 billion in funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is slated to receive $28.6 billion in 2007, an increase of $10 million from 2006. By 2010, the Post estimated, federal financial assistance for students would fall to $13.7 billion from $19.2 billion this year.

Over the next five years, the Department of Education would face cuts to dozens of programs if the Bush administration's budget were to be approved by Congress, including about $1 billion in cuts to the department's $2 billion higher education program.

Scott Milburn, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, said that the document the Post analysis used was "internal modeling" and that the administration requests funds only one year at a time, and that those requests appear in the official budget proposal every February.

According to this year's budget plan, as part of the new American Competitiveness Initiative, federal support for research in the physical sciences, mathematics and engineering is set to double in the next ten years. The budget also includes an eight percent increase to the National Science Foundation's 2007 budget.

Also in the near term, the proposed 2007 budget includes $24 million for colleges and universities to work with schools in teaching foreign languages that are considered "critical to U.S. national security." It is part of a larger $114 million plan, announced in December, to improve instruction in languages like Arabic and Chinese.

Though there are cuts to certain programs this year, Education Department spokesman Chad Colby said "there has only been more spending on education under the Bush administration," noting increased funding for the federal Pell Grant program and other higher education programs. He did not comment on how shifts in funding for higher education might hurt universities. "I do not have an official position," Colby said.

According to the Association of American Universities (AAU), a group of 26 major research universities in the United States and Canada, the 2007 federal budget "recommends the most significant investment in basic, university-based research" in the sciences and supports the competitiveness of university research programs but falls short in providing enough support to universities.

In a written statement, then-AAU president Nils Hasselmo said "[t]here are important elements of the President's budget that we believe are inconsistent with his emphasis on competitiveness."

Despite the doubling of funding for the NIH that was completed by the Bush administration, funding for the NIH has remained the same in recent federal budgets, effectively beginning to "undo" the increases because of inflation and ever-increasing costs, Hasselmo said.

NIH spokesman John Burklow said the proposed budget "reflects the tough choices that had to be made to best preserve our investment in biomedical research and to support research for medical advancements that will improve the length and quality of human life."

The 2007 budget provides sufficient funding for the competitive Research Project Grants (RPG) program "to preserve to the greatest extent possible the ability of scientists to obtain individual support for their research ideas," Burklow said, adding that "there are no plans to discontinue funding any noncompeting grants."