
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 4, 1995                   TAG: 9506060038
SECTION: EDITORIALS                    PAGE: D-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BUDGET PLANS

VARTAN GREGORIAN, president of Brown University, in a speech last fall observed that ``as many as three-quarters of the best universities in the world are located in the United States. What sector of our economy or society can make a similar claim?''

Good question. Higher education in America is the envy of the world. It contributes hugely to competitive advantages that the United States enjoys in a knowledge-based global economy, as well as to the economic and social mobility that keeps alive the American Dream.

So why - another good question - is Congress intent on doing harm to universities?

The answer would seem to have more to do with ideology and politics than with the failings of higher education. Current congressional proposals lack even a basic sense of proportion and discrimination. The House GOP budget resolution would, for example, kill the National Endowment for the Humanities, wipe out Pell grants and make student loans harder and more expensive to obtain, among other things. As if that weren't enough, it also would ax federal contributions to academic science research.

It so happens that research and development in proportion to the size of the U.S. economy have been shrinking for years. Not enough young scientists are being drawn into essential fields of basic research. And national research continues to be skewed by pork-barrel priorities and military prerogatives.

None of this seems to have given House GOP zealots pause in their push to cut civilian research funding from $32 billion to $25 billion over five years. It's hard to imagine private industry (not drawn to basic research) or philanthropy (stretched thin as it is) taking up anything approaching this much slack.

Sure, a lot of academic research is baloney, and a lot of funding wasted. A lot of research, now government-subsidized, could be supported by private businesses.

That doesn't change the fact that wholesale slashing of the business of research universities, as now recommended, would undercut the knowledge and technical base that is a launchpad for America's future.

These budget proposals aren't sound. They should be soundly repudiated, by the Clinton administration and by the American people.

by CNB