Harvard Scientists Will Be Hard Hit By Reductions in Federal Spending

When President Johnson asked Congress to pass his 10 percent income tax surcharge this summer, Congress demanded--and passed--a $6 billion cut in federal spending, and that cut is being severely felt at Harvard.

"It's going to be tough," Richard G. Leahy, assistant dean for Resources and Planning, said yesterday, "especially so since all the cuts from the National Science Foundation were handed directly down to the university."

Leahy said that the NSF--which last year provided Harvard with some $5.7 million in research money--has established expenditure ceilings for each university, and has given the responsibility for allocating funds directly to the universities.

"This is the first time that this has been dropped in the university's lap," Robert E. Gentry, director of the Harvard Office for Research Contracts, said yesterday. In the past, almost all research money has been awarded to individual professors heading projects, and the money has therefore been negotiated on a grant-by-grant basis. But, after the federal spending cuts, NSF set up fund ceilings for each institution--in Harvard's case, $5.395 million--based on the institution's expected allocations minus a certain percentage.

"We're all a bit hazy on exactly what criteria they used in establishing these ceilings," Leahy said. He explained that if the expected rate of growth in support--and in the past few years Harvard's general level of research funding has gone up about 14 percent each year--and the increase in cost of living were considered, Harvard's actual percentage cut of nine or 10 percent becomes more in the order of 25 or 30 percent.

Grant-by-Grant Analysis

In order to decide which NSF money should be cut at Harvard, Dean Ford has set up an ad hoc committee composed of representatives from each department involved. The committee has had two meetings already, and its plans are now to make "pretty much a grant-by-grant analysis," according to Leahy.

"Everybody went through the summer assuming nothing was going to happen," Leahy said, "and a lot of people who had received legitimate awards from the NSF made commitments to graduate students, assistants, and junior associates, and have made plans for their own research. Now they are told that they can only spend 80 percent or so in this year."

Individual Compromise

Leahy feels that the National Institutes of Health, which saw the cuts coming early and negotiated directly with the individuals who were receiving grants, handled its cuts more effectively. NIH funds--which last year amounted to some $25 million at Harvard--ended up being cut about 15 percent across the board, but each person receiving funds has been able to compromise individually with the federal officials.

"With the NSF approach," Leahy said, "the university finds itself trying to play Solomon in cutting individual research. There is a lot of elasticity in the system, but certain people will be hurt. And there is every indication that things won't be much better next year."