This Business Officer document is blurbed, "Stimulus funds for university research can be a mixed blessing, causing an institution’s facilities and administration rate to shrink. A case study presents strategies to keep rates in check."

The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) presented higher education institutions with an unprecedented level of funding to expand and improve their research opportunities. Since ARRA's creation in February 2009, however, the government and academic community have debated the best approach to accounting for the additional funding and capturing its effect on facilities and administration (F&A) rates—the amount of overhead, or indirect costs, associated with federally funded research that universities can recoup.

The government, understandably, wants justification of every ARRA dollar awarded; ARRA grants come with a host of documentation and reporting requirements. Equally understandably, universities with increasingly tight budgets seek to recover from the government a significant percentage of their overhead costs. These costs have escalated with ARRA's administrative requirements, as universities must devote more staff time to gathering and submitting the required data. Given the government's regulations and stance in F&A rate negotiations, university leaders now question whether they'll be picking up more of the research tab—and, if so, just how much it could cost them.

Stephen J. Troop and Nell Gross argue that Canadian higher education is both in a better space and structured more appropriately to thrive instead of just survive the current economic conditions.

Some inevitable belt-tightening aside, Canadian policy makers at the federal and provincial levels are working hard to spare colleges and universities, preserving as much money as possible for research and operating expenditures and keeping tuition costs affordable. The reason? They recognize that a strong higher education system is key to long-term economic competitiveness and a successful society. If the United States doesn’t act soon to shore up its higher education sector, its loss will quickly become Canada’s — and other countries’ — gain.

That American colleges and universities have been hit hard by the economic crisis is clear. Private institutions saw the value of their endowments plummet. Public colleges and universities have fared far worse. The State of California, struggling under a $20 billion budget deficit, cut higher education funding by 6.8 percent in 2009-10, furloughing faculty and staff in both the University of California and California State University systems, reducing the number of slots for entering students, and raising tuition dramatically. Budget shortfalls in New York, New Jersey, Arizona, Florida and elsewhere have likewise meant millions of dollars in campus cutbacks.

Federal stimulus money helped cushion these blows, and an expansion of the Pell Grant program, opposed by many Republicans, has provided some relief to students. But the stimulus money is nearly spent, and with the recovery stalled out, American higher education seems destined for more pain in the years to come.