The inability of the federal government to avert the “sequester” — automatic and across-the-board spending cuts of $85 billion that came into effect last Friday — will seriously affect the state of ongoing and future research at Stanford, according to University administrators.
The University projects it will collect $296.5 million in undergraduate student fees for the 2011-12 academic year, reflecting a 3.8 percent increase over last year, and will award $148.9 million in undergraduate financial aid, a 1.5 percent increase over 2010-11.
Congress’s Aug. 2 approval of a last-minute debt ceiling increase marked the beginning of at least a week of instability in the U.S. economy, which included Standard & Poor’s (S&P) downgrading the country’s credit rating, volatility in the stock markets and the Federal Reserve Bank’s announcement that it will maintain low federal interest rates. American economists, including those at Stanford, have a variety of theories as to how the situation came to be, as well as how it will play out.
Federal funding for Pell Grants may decrease significantly if the Senate also passes the H.R.1 bill recently passed by the House of Representatives. Stanford’s Financial Aid Office is confident that these proposed cuts, if enacted, would have a limited impact on the University’s need-based financial aid policy.