The so-called “302(b) allocations” for the House Appropriations committee have been released and they look very positive for those of us anxious to see whether Congress will continue its commitment to double the budgets of some key federal science agencies. The 302(b)’s are the allocations each of the subcommittees responsible for producing the 12 appropriations bills necessary to keep the federal government operating each year gets to spend on their particular bill. If the Budget Resolution determined the overall size of the federal discretionary spending “pie,” the 302(b) allocations determine the size of each slice.
For FY 2008, the subcommittees that have jurisdiction over some of the science agencies we care about — NSF, NIST, DOE Sci, NIH, NASA, and DOD — have each gotten pretty reasonable-sized slices. The House Commerce, Science, Justice subcommittee, which determines funding for NSF, NIST, NASA and NOAA, received from the Congressional leadership a bump of $3 billion to their allocation compared with last year — $53.35 billion for FY 08 vs. $50.34 for FY 07 — a level $2.11 billion higher than the President requested for FY 08.
The Energy and Water Committee received a $1.30 billion bump — enough to support a healthy increase to the Department of Energy’s Office of Science in the first FY 08 appropriations bill to get marked up, as we reported previously. The Labor/HHS/Education committee, which funds NIH, received a $5.53 billion bump — more than $9 billion higher than the Administration requested for FY 08.
While these increases don’t guarantee the appropriators will continue Congress’ commitment to doubling the budgets of NSF, NIST and DOE Sci, as called for in both the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative and the Democratic Innovation Agenda, it certainly does make the job of finding money to fund the increases a whole lot easier. We’ll keep an eye on the process and let you know how it goes. So far, so good.
While we see articles about the decline of computer science majors, particularly women, almost daily, the latest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting piece (sub. reqd.) about what a couple of universities are doing to attract and retain women in computer science programs.
Lucy Sanders of the National Center for Women in Information Technology has perhaps the key quote in the piece about the problem of recruiting and retaining computer science majors. “You walk into an intro class, and you start learning a programming language that eventually gets a machine to spit out a string of numbers,” says Lucy Sanders, chief executive of the women-and-technology center. “That’s not what computing is about. Computing is about solving real problems in medicine, or oceanography, and that’s what people who do it love. But the intro courses don’t teach that at all.”
We’ve also noted on CRA’s Computing Research Policy Tumble Log a couple of related articles in the last few days. One from Ars Technica, and another that’s an AP story.
Update: The article does confuse enrollment and interest in computing at one point. Interest in computer science as a major among women dropped 70 percent between 2000 and 2005, not actual enrollment….
The Department of Energy’s Office of Science would see significant increases under the FY 2008 House Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill marked up by the E&W Approps Subcommittee yesterday. Though we don’t yet have all the detail about increases in individual accounts, we do know that the Office of Science would see an overall increase to $4.516 billion in FY 2008, which is $120 million above the President’s request for FY 2008 and $719 million above the FY 2007 level, or an increase of 18.9 percent.
Presumably the increases in DOE Science will be spread reasonably equitably throughout the agency, which would mean the agency’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research program should see an equally significant increase in FY 08. But we won’t see real detail until the full appropriations committee marks up the bill in June.
For now, it’s good to know that the appropriators appear prepared to continue their commitment to doubling the budgets of key federal science agencies, as spelled out in the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative and the Democratic Innovation Agenda. Next up should be the House version of the Commerce, Science, Justice appropriations, which will include funding for the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We’ll have all the details as we get ‘em…
From the CCC Blog
- A Retrospective on Alan Turing’s Influence Erwin Gianchandani
- Microsoft Research Names 2012 Faculty Fellows Erwin Gianchandani
- Revisiting “Where the jobs are…” Erwin Gianchandani
- “Troves of Personal Data, Forbidden to Researchers” Erwin Gianchandani