Slippin' Into Darkness...

I was slippin' into darkness, yeah

When i heard my mother say

You've been slippin' into darkness

Oh oh oh oh

Pretty soon, you're gonna pay.

Yeah, yeah.

WAR, 70s funk band

National Research Council

US research universities face serious decline unless the federal government, states, and industry take action to ensure adequate, stable funding in the next decade, says a new report by the National Research Council. Universities must work harder to contain costs, enhance productivity, and improve educational pathways for students to careers both within and outside academia, the report says.

Written by a 21-member committee chaired by Bank of America chairman Charles Holliday Jr., the report responds to a request from Congress to recommend 10 actions that the nation should take in the next five to 10 years to maintain top-quality US research institutions. Among those steps, the committee urged, was that of doubling the budgets of NSF, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and NIST that was called for in the 2007 America Competes Act. But for fiscal 2013, the administration requested just a 4.8% increase for NSF, and a 2.4% increase for DOE’s Office of Science. Only the relatively tiny NIST R&D programs got the magnitude of increase needed to keep it on a doubling trajectory.

While federal funding for research has flattened or declined since onset of the recession, state funding for research universities has plunged by 25% to 50%, the committee found. Tuition increases at both private and public universities are threatening to put college education out of reach for many. At the same time, other countries have increased their R&D funding and are pouring significant resources into developing their own research institutions, patterned after US universities.

Physics Today: US science and technology eminence in trouble, says report