By: Editorial Board

In July, Brady Deaton and R. Bowen Loftin were among 165 university chancellors and presidents representing all 50 states to address a letter to President Barack Obama and Congress asking that our national leaders improve funding to institutions of higher learning.
On Thursday, Mr. Loftin, formerly the president of Texas A&M University, was named the new chancellor of the University of Missouri in Columbia. He replaces Mr. Deaton, who had been chancellor since 2004.

The letter signed by Mssrs. Deaton and Loftin urges Congress to undo the harmful effects of the sequestration cuts, specifically in terms of its damage to research and development. It further pointed out that the U.S., once the world’s leader in higher education research, was in danger of falling behind other nations, creating what the university leaders call an “innovation deficit.” 

By: Zach Kram

Eight months after the federal government’s sequester went into effect, Washington University is still feeling the effects of budget cuts to research funding.

With allocations to national research agencies slashed by significant portions, the University has lost millions of dollars in research capital, primarily from the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation—two agencies that sponsor many projects schoolwide.

In previous years, Washington University has received in excess of $350 million from the NIH, but the institute has had its budget slashed by 5.5 percent due to the sequester.

Combined with cuts to other agencies such as the NSF—which has seen a 3.4 percent cut in funding—this decrease means the University’s overall research federal funding has fallen about 11 percent, Vice Chancellor for Research Evan Kharasch said. The University saw a 9 percent decrease in its research allocations from all sources, he added.

While the University did not have a specific plan in place to soften the blow of the allocation losses, Vice Chancellor of Finance Barbara Feiner said the most basic recourse involves lowering expenses.

“This usually includes reductions in payroll, which can mean fewer staff,” she told Student Life. “Sometimes schools or departments within schools can ‘bridge’ funding for research from other sources.”

Senior Katie Jacobs, who works in a lab in the biology department, said her boss’ funding issues in the past couple months has led to a staff deficit.

“My boss in particular is having trouble right now because he is in-between grants,” Jacobs said. “One of his grants stopped in September and another didn’t start again until November, so our post-doc just left the lab, and [my boss] hasn’t been able to hire anyone new until his new grant starts.”

“In order to do research, you need a lot of money,” she added. “And if you want to hire people to work in your lab, you do it off of your grants you get from specific proposals.”

The sequester, which went into effect March 1 after Congress was unable to come to a budget agreement, comprises a set of automatic spending cuts for the years 2013-21 that predominantly affect discretionary spending. It was set up as a fallback so damaging that it would strongly encourage Congress to settle on a suitable budget.

By: Véronique LaCapra

It has been just over three months since the federal spending cuts known as sequestration first took effect.

A handful of programs were spared — but not scientific research, which amounts to about $140 billion in annual government spending.

As St. Louis Public Radio’s Véronique LaCapra found out, at universities here in St. Louis, some scientists are worried about what the budget cuts will mean for their research — and for their students.

By: Suzanne Hagan

I read with interest the “Research Roundup” (June 6), which listed the grant amounts awarded for biomedical research at both of our local universities. However, I wonder how much, if any, of these grant monies will actually be received, due to withholding of federal funds commonly referred to as sequestration?

At our monthly meeting for cancer survivors at the Siteman Center at Washington University, the physician who addressed the group noted that her grant monies were being withheld because of sequestration. I have to wonder if our representatives and senators think about the long-term, or even short-term, effects of their failure to work toward compromises necessary to do the mundane work of passing budgets during their 2 ½ day workweek.

I can assure you that this realization will hit them like a ton of bricks when they or their families are confronted by a disease like cancer and the doctors tell them that research that might have led to effective treatments, or even cures, ground to a halt during their tenure in Congress.

Sequester cuts to the rapidly developing process of turning genetic research into a major 21st-century industry -- and saving lives and health care costs -- are the equivalent of trying to build the Interstate Highway System with no ramps or the transcontinental railroad without the final miles in the middle.

In one of the most farsighted and successful government projects ever, Congress in 1990 authorized a 15-year, American-led effort to map the human genome and to make the results available, under careful conditions to protect pure science and personal privacy, to the world. Completed in 2003 at a cost of $3 billion, the Human Genome Project has now spawned a range of technologies -- from tailored drug therapies for cancer to preventative testing to the new big-data discipline of bioinformatics -- which not only are generating jobs, but which hold the promise of dramatically reducing health care costs.

All of that -- not to mention the lives of patients who desperately need advances in care -- is being jeopardized by sequester cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other research agencies.

For a proud but beleaguered city pinning its hopes on health care and medical research, the cuts will be devastating, said Dr. Larry J. Shapiro, dean of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The school is a leader in the fertile new field of quickly translating genetic information into real-time patient treatments, especially drug therapies for cancer. The cost of diagnostic sequencing is dropping fast, making it possible to more precisely tailor medical treatments to individual patients. The school has designed its own cutting-edge informatics software, which has the potential to set an industry standard. A pioneer in patient care, it is studying the best ways to give doctors and patients the data they need.

But out of a $400 million budget, Washington University stands to lose about $40 million in funding over an eight-month period.

There are many unknowns, but schools such as Washington University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are nervously watching and waiting to see how a handful of federal agencies handle sequestration — the automatic federal spending cuts that went into effect this month.

All they know now is that those agencies — including the National Institutes for Health and its massive $30.9 billion research pot — have to trim their budgets by 5 percent. Exactly how that’s going to happen is unclear.

“Information is coming out slowly,” said Evan Kharasch, Washington University’s vice chancellor for research.

The school gets the bulk — 77 percent — of its $620 million research funding through the federal government. Most of it comes from the NIH, though it also pulls in money from the National Science Foundation, NASA and other agencies.

But even though everyone knows how much the agencies must trim, there’s no easy way to know how those cuts will play out on a campus-by-campus basis, Kharasch said.

“It’s really not possible to simply do the arithmetic,” he said.

That’s because each of the agencies will get to decide how they go about balancing their budgets as part of this overall effort to cut $85 billion in federal spending.

The National Institutes of Health, for example, already has cut its current grants to 90 percent funding. And the agency may award fewer new grants this year.

Other agencies may decide to prioritize some research projects, meaning certain grants could be cut more severely than others.

And that’s making it difficult for schools such as the University of Illinois to make plans.

“Until you get rulings from the individual agencies, there’s not a whole lot that can be done,” said Randy Kangas, vice president for planning and budgeting for the three-campus system.

The system anticipates losing $40 million to $65 million this year, with up to $46 million of that coming from the Urbana-Champaign campus.

And with some jobs on campus tied directly to research grants, Kangas said it is likely that positions will be lost along the way.

The impact also will be felt by St. Louis University, which says it could lose $2 million to $4 million from its $40 million in federally funded research.

Cuts to the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense and United States Department of Agriculture could lead to MU losing research grants, according to a report from the UM System’s Government Relations office. These grants currently fund numerous projects, including some of MU’s cancer, cardiovascular, psychology, nanotechnology and insect research.

Students’ financial aid is also at risk. The report estimated 1,166 Missouri students would lose federal work-study benefits and nearly 2,000 students would lose federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants. Pell grants will not be affected by the sequester, although fees for subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford loans and PLUS loans will increase.

As a whole, the UM System will lose about $25 million in funding in Fiscal Year 2013.

Before the sequestration took effect, leaders in the Missouri Students Association and Graduate Professional Council sent letters to Missouri representatives and senators urging them to spare higher education funding as they tried to reduce the deficit.

“The proposed cuts are a blunt instrument that would slash valuable funding to programs, regardless of the success of the programs or the return generated by federal investment in education,” the letter stated. "Members of both parties agree that long-term deficit reduction should include, not eliminate, investment in higher education.”

Outside of MU, cuts to the Federal Aviation Administration are expected to close Columbia Regional Airport’s air traffic tower. City of Columbia spokeswoman Toni Messina said flights will continue to proceed normally, with pilots communicating with air traffic control towers in Springfield and Kansas City instead of Columbia.

“Air traffic can still come in and out,” Messina said. “We don’t anticipate that flights will end."

Messina said although flights will continue, losing Columbia’s air traffic tower could have some negative repercussions. Recently, a private plane had an engine fire while flying near Columbia and was able to communicate with the Columbia tower to arrange for an emergency landing at the airport. If the tower closes, pilots dealing with similar emergencies would have to arrange to land elsewhere.

“I don’t know if I want to call (closing the air tower) minor,” Messina said. “It’s not going to keep our traffic down, but you worry about cuts that do anything that may impact passenger safety.”

The airport had more than 25,000 takeoffs and landings and served more than 38,500 patrons in 2012, according to airport records.

According to the White House, across-the-board cuts would also reduce Missouri’s military, environmental and K-12 education spending by millions of dollars. Law enforcement, job search, nutrition assistance, public health and domestic violence programs would also experience smaller cuts.

The sequestration cuts are a provision in Congress’ 2011 debt ceiling negotiation. The legislation said if Congress did not produce $1.2 trillion in deficit savings, the government would instate automatic across-the-board budget cuts to defense and non-defense spending. Although the threat of cuts was designed to be so unpopular that Congress was forced to compromise, legislators failed to reach an agreement before they took effect.

Mark S. Wrighton, chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, and Dr. Larry J. Shapiro, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, said the American Association for the Advancement of Science calculated what the sequester would do to scientific research.

Wrighton and Shapiro said they were deeply troubled by the potential impact of the sequester and the harm it would bring to education, healthcare, scientific research, innovation and the economy.

"Our leaders in Washington must make a critical decision that will have far-reaching consequences for America's colleges and universities and the federal dollars they depend upon," Wrighton wrote in a letter expressing his concerns to Missouri's congressional delegation.

"These dollars represent lost opportunity for the nation. Students would find it more difficult to attend educational institutions of their choice. Scholars would find it harder to receive support for ground-breaking research. But ultimately, it would be our long-term national economy and security that would suffer without a well-trained workforce ready to invent and utilize ideas and technologies for the future."

Wrighton and Shapiro said they were encouraging people to consider signing an online petition begun by the American Association for the Advancement of Science that urges the White House and Congress to achieve a bipartisan budget compromise that avoids sequestration and "moves the country on to sound fiscal footing without sacrificing our nation's crucial investments in science and technology."

University leaders including Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton and Larry J. Shapiro, MD, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, say they are deeply troubled by the potential impact of a “sequester” and the harm it would bring to education, health care, scientific research and innovation and the economy.

“Our leaders in Washington must make a critical decision that will have far-reaching consequences for America’s colleges and universities and the federal dollars they depend upon,” says Wrighton, who sent a letter expressing his concerns to Missouri’s congressional delegation earlier this week.

“These dollars represent lost opportunity for the nation. Students will find it more difficult to attend educational institutions of their choice. Scholars will find it harder to receive support for ground-breaking research. But ultimately, it will be our long-term national economy and security that will suffer without a well-trained workforce ready to invent and utilize ideas and technologies for the future.”

Says Shapiro: “Such significant reductions in spending would have sobering consequences for our health, our economy, our future. These cuts would delay life-saving treatments, cost jobs and deliver a blow to this country’s global competitiveness.”

Wrighton and Shapiro encourage Washington University’s faculty, students, staff, alumni and others to examine what is at risk and share their concerns with legislators.

To that end, the two are encouraging people to consider signing an online petition launched by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that urges the White House and Congress to achieve a bipartisan budget compromise that avoids sequestration and “moves the country on to sound fiscal footing without sacrificing our nation’s crucial investments in science and technology.”

The petition goes on to say: “Almost every national priority — from health and defense, agriculture and conservation, to hazards and natural disasters — relies on science and engineering. As another fiscal cliff approaches, placing a significant burden on federal research and development investments, as sequestration would do, is nothing less than a threat to national competitiveness. Support for science is support for economic growth, innovation, and technological progress.”

If sequestration occurs, the AAAS projects that federal research and development funding will be reduced by about $54 billion by 2017. Such cuts would do significant damage to scientific research and would eliminate jobs and stall innovation, the organization warns.

If budget cuts hit NIH, Missouri would lose out on $23.7 million in funding and lose 369 jobs, according to United for Medical Research’s report.

In 2012, the state of Missouri received a total of $465.1 million in funding from NIH, according to United for Medical Research, a coalition of health organizations from across the country.

More broadly, the funding cuts would eliminate $1.12 billion in NIH funding across the country and cut more than 20,500 jobs supported by NIH.

Currently, NIH supports 402,078 jobs and $57.8 million in economic output, according to United for Medical Research. Here in Missouri, NIH funding supported 7,226 jobs in 2012.