Officals bemoan Bush's

According to top University administrators, President George W. Bush's fiscal budget for 2005 does not do much good for Duke. In fact, they said some of the proposed policies may even hurt the University.

The most salient topics of concern are federal research grants and financial aid--two areas in which administrators said the budget comes up dreadfully short. 

Vice Provost for Research James Siedow said he considers the recently proposed budget detrimental to the research enterprise. "From the research perspective, this clearly is a lean budget that can only negatively impact the academic research enterprise," he said. "While [nearly] all areas are tight, certain areas, [like Department of Defense spending on research], are being slashed to the core." 

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Bush's budget would decrease funding to the Applied Research sector by 12.3 percent and would skim 5.2 percent from the Basic Research division. Siedow said these figures are not consistent with past federal measures. 

"I think [the proposed budget] will have a negative impact on the excellent record we have established over the past half-decade of continuously increased external research and development funding," Siedow said. "[The Pratt School of Engineering], for example, is very dependent on Department of Defense funding. At 27 percent of Pratt's total, it ranks second only to the National Institute of Health as their major source of external research support." 

Director of Financial Aid Jim Belvin added that the budget would do little to reverse a worrisome recent trend. "This [proposed budget] unfortunately continues a trend that has served to transfer responsibility for supporting higher education expenses from the federal government to students and their parents," he said. "In the case of institutions like ours, who meet 100 percent of each student's demonstrated need, it has served to transfer this responsibility to the institution." 

In order to compensate for the proposed budget's shortcomings, Duke has had to institute drastic measures. 

"The trustees this past weekend approved planning parameters for Duke's 2004-2005 budget, and we are increasing our commitments to financial aid by 11 percent, more than double the percentage increase in tuition," Burness said. 

Given the current enormity of the federal deficit, administrators said their concerns will not likely be addressed in the near future, especially given Bush's other fiscal priorities. 

"Part of the problem is that between the costs of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the tax cuts of recent years, the federal government is at unprecedented deficit levels, and this is putting real constraints on discretionary domestic investments," Burness said. 

Siedow warned that if the current situation continues, the consequences will be difficult to ameliorate. 

"The problem with [the deficit] is that once you have allowed your technological infrastructure to deteriorate, it can take some time to get it back to a highly functional level. This is not a spigot you can turn on and off at will," he said.