Bush's proposed budget may affect funding

President Bush's proposed 2006 federal budget calls for the elimination of certain loans for higher education and limited increases in research funding, both of which could affect universities across the country.

Congress began deliberating Tuesday on the budget, which would cut more than $1.2 billion in Perkins loans, a type of low-interest loan available to undergraduate and graduate students.

The cut will likely have little effect on Princeton students, according to undergraduate financial aid director Don Betterton, because aid is primarily provided through University grants.

"Since we don't give initial student loans, the University only has a modest amount of loan activity compared to other schools," he said.

But the University does provide some aid in the form of federal loans, he said. "The two most common reasons students request loans from our office are to buy computers before freshman year and to pay for [eating] clubs for junior and senior years."

If Perkins loans are abolished, he said, the University will instead use the Stafford loan program to grant aid to students in need of such funding. "Most of our families realize that when federal programs change we will compensate so it won't do them any harm," he added.

The proposed cuts in educational and research funding could, however, affect the funding of University departments.

University government affairs director Diane Jones said she is most concerned about expected cuts in funding to the Department of Energy's fusion and energy sciences research programs.

Projects at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, especially the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project, would be cut and "many graduate students and other researchers would be affected," she said.

The effects of the proposed budget on other departments are less certain, Jones said, but many science departments rely on grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), both of which would be affected by the new budget.

The NSF would receive a 2.4 percent increase in research funding, but also a decrease in its education budget. The NIH's funding would increase by 0.7 percent, which would be directed primarily toward research.

"If [the increases] went primarily to bioterrorism research we might not see much going our way, but we might see some benefits in funding if the increases are in other areas of research," Jones said.

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However, molecular biology department chair Lynn Enquist is worried that the small NIH increases will be reallocated within the NIH and will actually decrease funding to members of his department.

"Our department is funded in large part by the NIH and not by the NSF," he said. "Other departments tend to have the NSF and other federal sources of funding but every [molecular biology] faculty member has at least one NIH grant."

The proposed budget also has some other department heads concerned.

"It's fair to say that the funding for science will go down in real terms for all departments," physics chair Daniel Marlow said.

Professors in the electrical engineering department are concerned that they will not be able to maintain current projects and meet prior commitments, chair Peter Ramadge said.

"It has put a chill through the faculty," he said.