A 20-percent decline in federal funding for university-based research nationwide is expected over the next five years and beyond, the University Board of Regents learned at a meeting Thursday.
"There is a projected down-turn of federal spending (moving towards the year 2002)," Vice President for Research Frederick Neidhardt said. "The gap between federal revenues and spending is an unsustainable trend."
The University ranks first in the nation for total research expenditures, Neidhardt said, after an adjustment is made to remove Johns Hopkins University, due to the fact that much of its research dollars are passed through a national physics research project.
"It's not time to panic, but time to prepare to panic," Neidhardt said.
U.S. Rep. Lynn Rivers (D-Ann Arbor) said that in the past year there was a 30-percent cut in applied funding and a 20-percent cut in basic funding for research.
"I do suspect that the budgets will continue defunding and there will be massive cuts in funding - both would impact the University substantially," Rivers said.
Rivers said she is not in favor of the cuts.
"Not only are we dealing with money for medical research, but also our ability to defend ourselves as a nation," Rivers said. "We are increasing our reliance on foreign technology. If we don't do research on our own shores we will be outstripped by foreign countries."
Based on University spending figures for research, the cut in federal support could become a problem, Neidhardt said.
Niedhardt noted the University is in better shape than other top research universities because only 64.3 percent of its total funds come from federal support. Other universities, including Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology receive 75-85 percent of their funding through federal dollars, Neidhardt said.
"Of these top universities, we are at least a little bit less dependent on federal support," Neidhardt said.
Federal research funding contributes $27.3 million to tuition and stipends for undergraduate and graduate education, $156.3 million for salaries of faculty, technicians and undergraduates, $12.1 million for equipment, $6.8 million for books and $700,000 for building renovation and construction.
Physics Prof. J. Wehrley Chapman said that since approximately 97 percent of his research support is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, a decrease in funding could hurt his program.
"We are all concerned that funding shrinkage will affect grad students," Chapman said. "What happens is that in the future we will have fewer grad students if we have less money."
Physics graduate student Sarah Truitt said federal cuts in research create an unstable job market for graduate students.
"The whole prospect job climate has sort of gotten worse," Truitt said. "It sort of makes our field feel like a shrinking field instead of one with lots of opportunity."
According to Neidhart, the University's responses to the projected cuts include:
"The University receives under 8 percent of its total research funds from industrial support," Neidhardt said. "There is room to grow, but none of us think that it will make up for the projected 20-percent decline in federal funds."
George Hartford, senior director of corporate and foundation relations for the University, said that during the past eight to 10 months, his office has worked to determine how the University can make its research programs more attractive to 65 corporations that might give $100,000 or more to the University.
"The most prominent area where you could bolster your fundraising would be from corporations and foundations, as the federal funds begin to dwindle," he said.
Since the University is one of the top research institutions in the nation Hartford said he believes the University's research abilities will be attractive to the private sphere.
Physics chair Ctirad Uher said the answer to receiving more industrial funding in his department is to conduct better and more visible research.
The potential problem with being supported by corporate funds, Uher said, are differences in the way academia and corporations function. The two could also benefit from cooperative efforts, he said.
Other universities also are making preparations for the projected federal- funding cuts. Stanford University has recently started an initiative to do more corporate fundraising, said Cecilia Evangelista, special assistant to the vice president for development at Stanford University.
"A lot of federal funding will hopefully be replaced by private funding. We will have to do more corporate fundraising in the future to pick up some of the slack from the federal side," Evangelista said.