Federal funding: Where does it come from, where does it go?

John Walda, who became IU’s executive director of federal relations in January, explains the changing climate of federal funding for higher education.

By Susan Williams

“I’m really here to be helpful,” Walda said. “Partnerships with government and business are critical to the success of the university and state, and I’m happy to play a role in advancing these efforts, particularly as IU’s relationship with the federal government continues to expand through research and special initiatives in information technology and the life sciences.”

Walda, an attorney from Fort Wayne who served on the IU Board of Trustees from 1990 to December 2001, including eight years as the board’s president, has reorganized federal relations efforts to more effectively match faculty research projects with government and business needs and interests. This means that he has instituted a more clearly defined process for gathering faculty research requests and a more transparent system for selecting those that have the best possibility of being funded.

In a recent meeting with the deans on IU’s Bloomington campus, Walda explained current and projected trends in federal funding for higher education projects. His information shows that since 1996, earmarked funding—that is, money which is legislatively directed as opposed to agency granted—has grown precipitously, somewhere between 400 to 500 percent.

“Appropriations projects have become an important and necessary component in any university’s federal relations agenda,” Walda said, “but while the overall funding level of academic earmarks has increased (see accompanying charts), the average earmark size has declined by roughly 40 percent in the last 10 years, from an average of $2.5 million in 1991, to a little less than $1.5 million in 2001. So, it stands to reason that we choose our requests carefully and wisely.”

But while federally directed funding for higher education has increased, Walda pointed out that those funds still represent a very small portion of the total amount of research monies provided to universities by the federal government. “Most federal research funding is still awarded from agencies on a peer-review basis,” he said, pointing to figures showing that in 2001, approximately $15 billion dollars of total federal higher education research funding was awarded, with earmarks contributing significantly less than $2 billion to that total. Approximately $12 billion of that came from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“I draw two general conclusions from this information,” said Walda. “First, our efforts to receive legislatively directed funding have to be coordinated with efforts to secure additional competitively awarded federal funding.

“Secondly, the federal relations operation must focus on ways of assisting faculty, researchers and administrators in anticipating and securing funding from other areas of the federal spectrum. Generally speaking, our efforts here will be focused on providing early, accurate intelligence of emerging federal-funding trends and facilitating IU’s participation in the larger federal policy-making process.”

Walda also emphasized the need for his office to maintain a close relationship with administrators in IU’s Research and University Graduate School (RUGS).

“We’ll work together to target important federal agencies and programs and monitor their upcoming budgets as they are formed in the congressional appropriations process,” explained Walda, who also will keep an eye on authorizing bills moving through the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate that could alter or expand higher education and research funding.

Walda and his federal relations staff also can give a political leg up to certain projects, especially if they know about proposals in advance.

“I want to be sure that my office is aware of any major IU proposal that could benefit from political support,” he said. “Clearly, we can’t and shouldn’t exert political pressure within agencies like NIH and NSF. However, there is room for political support in most other federal agencies. Also, if you have been denied funding for a proposal and your sources are telling you that politics is involved, we’d like to know about that.”