Potential federal budget cuts in research funding has been a hot-button issue for public institutions across the nation and although a recent report said cuts will have a limited impact on universities, campus officials are not yet certain how the cut will affect research at the University of Wisconsin.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Moody’s Investors Service released a report last Thursday that contradicted its more pessimistic report from January, saying the effect of sequestration was not detrimental to research institutions.
According to the most recent report published by Moody’s, the estimated five percent budget cut in federal spending will not significantly affect research universities like UW because of their relatively small scales.
Terry Devitt, director of research communication at UW, said he does not fully agree with the report’s findings and outlined how these budget cuts will affect research at this university.
“The cuts will essentially affect the ability of researchers to plan their research, hire people, staff up and fund graduate students,” Devitt said.
He also said although these cuts will probably not have a “crushing” effect, they will affect individual researchers trying to fund and produce research for our university.
Devitt said if these problems come up, research overall could decline at universities and the amount of research being produced could decrease. This problem, if substantial enough, may not only affect research universities but people in general who gain information from them, he said.
Devitt added UW has an advantage in how well they do in applying for research funding and conducting research.
However, he said, because the university has been so successful he expects they can continue to do well even with these cuts.
“The environment will be harder for those applying for funds, so we need to be efficient and plan well by finding other means of support,” Devitt said.
According to the UW Research website, the university was ranked second for research expenditures, fourth for federally funded research, second for non-federally funded research and fifth for the number of doctorates granted among U.S. public universities for 2008-2009.
UW also received $693.2 million in federal awards in 2012, according to the site. It said if the estimated cuts were 5 percent, between $30-35 million would be cut from the university’s research funding.
“The cut would affect researchers here because if there are cuts, it will affect the amount of researchers and the quality and number of published pieces they can make,” Jaime Luque, an expert on financial, public, urban and political economics at UW, said. “Without enough money, there can not be as many researchers, and the UW rank as a research university will drop.”
According to the Chronicle, Faiza Mawjee, the analyst who wrote the report, said “stand-alone research universities” suffer most from the sequestration due to not being able to use resources from other departments in the university, such as tuition and room-and-board fees.
Devitt said tuition and other student fees are never used to pay for research and the university uses extramural support for its research.
