University President Frederick Lawrence was among several university presidents around the nation to sign a letter from members of the Association of American Universities and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities published in Politico on July 31. The letter urged Congress to close the "innovation deficit," or the "widening gap between needed and actual investments" in higher education and research, as stated in the letter.

"I signed [the letter] because I believe that higher education and university research have been instrumental in creating opportunity in the United States and that this belief is core to our mission at Brandeis," wrote Lawrence in an email to the Justice.

According to Lawrence, the letter is not solely referring to the decrease in federal funding and additional budget cuts from the sequester, or the $85 billion across-the-board federal spending cuts made effective in March 2013 by the Budget Control Act of 2011, but also the fact that these investments lag behind those being made in other nations.

"The primary way that we are seeing an impact [of insufficient investments] is in the increased competition for research grants and the government agencies' imposing budget reductions on approved grants," Lawrence wrote.

The letter stated that "the U.S. has fallen to 12th among developed countries in the share of young adults who hold college degrees. Our nation is rapidly losing ground, and further cuts including sequestration will only exacerbate the problem."

The letter highlighted potential outcomes of decreased investments in higher education and research, including "a less prepared, less highly skilled U.S. workforce, fewer U.S.-based scientific and technological breakthroughs, fewer U.S.-based patents, and fewer U.S. start-ups, products, and jobs."

According to Lawrence, the government funds the University through grants and contracts, which only account for 22 percent of the University's $23 million operating budget.

According to a March 19 Justice article, the National Institutes of Health was cut by 5.1 percent this year due to the sequester, and the National Science Foundation announced that it would fund 1,000 fewer projects this year.

Assistant Provost for Research Administration Paul O'Keefe was quoted in the March 19 article, stating that over the past three years, Brandeis has received an average of $48 million per year in federal research funding.

According to O'Keefe, two thirds of those funds, or about $32 million, come from the National Institutes of Health, while 12 percent, almost six million dollars, comes from the National Science Foundation. O'Keefe said that the remainder of the federal funds Brandeis receives-about 21 percent, equaling about $10 million-comes from other federal agencies.

According to Sherri Avery, director of financial aid, sequestration and federal budget cuts affected financial aid to attend colleges and universities, as well.

Avery explained that due to sequestration, the Stafford Loan origination fee went up from one percent to 1.051 percent and the fee on the Grad and Parent PLUS Loan went from four percent to 4.204 percent. Students who take out such loans are therefore paying increased fees.

"Due to this change, the difference in the net proceeds on the Stafford Loan was pretty minimal at a total of $2-$3 less per academic year for an undergraduate student," Avery wrote in an email to the Justice.

According to Avery, the only other effect on financial aid was a decrease in funding from the Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education Grant, which went from $4,000 per year to $3,716 per year. This grant is for students who are planning a career in teaching in a high-need field of education in a low-income school. "We only have one student at Brandeis who receives this award," wrote Avery.

According to Avery, the majority of the financial aid that Brandeis students receive comes directly from the University, and federal grants only accounted for 6.25 percent of the total grant and scholarship assistance received by undergraduates during the 2012-2013 academic year.

Although the University does receive federal funding, Lawrence said that it is difficult to draw a direct correlation between cuts in government spending and cuts at the University.

Lawrence stated that signing the letter is as much about urging the government to keep government investment in higher education and research competitive with other nations as it is about any impact on the Brandeis specifically. "The bigger impact is the research that doesn't happen because it didn't get funded, the big ideas that can't be tested because there isn't funding for them, and the discoveries that aren't made because a researcher couldn't get a scientific grant to follow up a hypothesis or finish an important series of experiments," he wrote.

According to Jeff Lieberson, a spokesman for the APLU, in an Aug. 1 Boston.com article, the letter was sent individually to each member of Congress and the White House.