theskeptic's Journal: NSF and pork laden 400 billion

wsj article- As Bush Vows to Halve Deficit,
Targets Already Feel Squeezed

With guns -- or military spending -- growing, the butter is likely to include some of the most visible areas of domestic spending, including the Medicaid health program, subsidies to Amtrak, agricultural research and even some federal education programs.
In the just-finished fiscal 2005 budget, which came in 10 weeks late, big cities received less federal aid to comply with anti-pollution laws and job training requirements. The National Science Foundation, which underwrites the country's basic research saw its funding cut from 2004 levels.

Now, I read in a washpost article that the NSF budget had been reduced by 104 million for next year. One of the problems of this-

NSF provides a lot of grants to tech colleges.
The NSF decides what projects to fund out of its budget for that academic year. When funds have been cut by a 100 million, there are less projects to fund. This means, colleges get less grants. This means students who are studying engineering and sciences get less grants to do research or in many cases, will not even get grants because it is something like the miniumum wage. You pay 8 $ or nothing at all. Paying 2 $ will not help because it won't be enough to get that project off the ground.

And herein comes a problem. As technology has become more advanced, grant sizes need to be even bigger than before they can achieve something useful.
Stipends are really really important to graduate students. This is what enables to even join a university to do their MS or Phd. And this is primarily important to small colleges/universities. Big colleges receive a large amount of state funds, well known colleges can rely on their endowments. But if small colleges do not receive adequate funds, how do they attract grad students? And as I stated before, grant sizes need to reasonable. If a big college gets 40,000 grant for one project. A similar project in a smaller university might get 20,000 for the same. If grant sizes are reduced, the smaller college might only get 10-15,000 and the bigger one will get 30,000. If the small college can't get tangible results in that 10-15k, then next year they won't even get a hearing when grants will be disbursed. That 10-15k will just be appropriated to the bigger college.

This threatens the very economic viability of that small college. Grad students in small colleges and universities receive monthly stipends that barely cover their apartment rent. In a private college or big university, that amount will be 3-6 times more.

It is the NSF grants that is so important for research assistants.400-500 $ a month for stipends might seem less but the grad student can manage with this.
If colleges cannot attract students, then there are fewer graduates in the country. Companies are already moving their R & D depts to the east.
Science is gonna suffer in the US.

The cut in the National Science Foundation's 2005 funding will mean about 1,000 fewer federal research grants. That will affect perhaps 2,000 senior university researchers and 1,000 science and engineering graduate students, estimates Joel Widder. A longtime NSF official, he now works for Lewis-Burke Associates, a company that helps universities navigate the government's grant-approval process. Two years ago, the law that re-authorized the program promised that the NSF's budget would double by 2007. Who guarantees promises?

As Bush Vows to Halve Deficit, Targets Already Feel Squeezed