Interesting People mailing list archives
Defense Appropriations
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 07:53:55 -0400
From: farringt () ENIAC SEAS UPENN EDU [ The Dean of our Enggineering school djf] Date: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 07:39:04 -0400 You may recall that I sent you a series of notes in June regarding moves to reduce drastically DOD funding levels for university research. The results are now in, as the following message from David Morse summarizes. They are not catastrophic but certainly not good either. As I mentioned in the first faculty meeting of this year, the general pressure in Washington is to decrease levels of university research funding and to decrease its financial contribution to overhead and staffing costs. Note the comment regarding overhead rates in the last paragraph of this message. It may seem that reducing overhead is a great thing - and it often is from the standpoint of the immediate needs of an individual researcher - but it ultimately saps our ability to support space costs and provide general service to aid and foster research. In that way, decreases in overhead have a long-term negative effect on the quality of the research environment and serve to emphasize our dependence on income from teaching as the principal support of the school - tuition from undergraduate, graduate, and ExMSE students. [ this is not intended as a negative but just a statement of fact djf] David Morse writes: "The House-Senate conferees on the Defense appropriations bill for FY 95 completed their work last evening, and I thought you'd be interested in the resolution of the university research issue. The conferees cut approximately $180 million from general university-based research, which represents a reduction of approximately 10% from current DoD levels. While not as severe as the 50%+ reduction approved in the original House version, it will be painful to Penn researchers, who received approximately $13 million in DoD support through the 6.1. and 6.2 research programs last year. It is unclear at this point how the cut will be applied by DoD, and how it will affect ongoing programs and anticipated new research initiatives. The breakout is as follows: $13.75 million from Army; $62.245 million from Navy; $18.45 million from Air Force; $86.49 million from Defense-wide initiatives. It would seem appropriate to try to get the Defense Department to request a restoration of these funds in a supplemental appropriations request early next year, since Perry and Deutch have been so visibly supportive of university research as the "jewel in the crown". The conference report also asks DoD to address concerns about the level of indirect costs and the variability in overhead rates by February 1, 1995. This is similar to language in the conference report in the NIH appropriations bill, and discussions now pending between the university community and the Administration on changes in cost policy will have to reach fruition quickly."
Current thread:
- Defense Appropriations David Farber (Sep 28)