NYU is among the higher education institutions in America that will experience cuts in government funding as a result of the sequester that took effect March. 1.

President Obama and the parties in Congress have worked to reduce the country’s deficit by more than $2.5 trillion through increased tax rates and spending cuts. Congress passed a law in 2011 agreeing to $1 trillion in automatic cuts if Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion in 2013.

“The whole design of these arbitrary cuts was to make them so unattractive and unappealing that Democrats and Republicans would actually work together and find a good compromise of sensible cuts as well as closing tax loopholes and so forth,” Obama said in a public statement.

The federal budget cuts, which occurred without action by Congress, will reduce federal financial aid for students and research funding at public and private universities.

According to the White House, California will be hit the hardest with 9,600 students losing federal aid. About 4,520 students in New York will also lose federal assistance, although tuition rates and Pell Grants are said to remain the same.

NYU will lose an estimated total of $22.86 million of federal funding for the Washington Square campus, NYU Langone Medical Center and Polytechnic Institute of NYU, according to Philip Lentz, director of public affairs. Cuts will impact student aid at the university, research at both the university and Medical center and Medicare for the Medical Center.

Lentz also said financial aid coming in the forms of fede-ral work-study, Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants and Teach grants will decrease by approximately $563,000 out of $11.05 million total awards.
“The federal spending reductions sequestration,if left unchanged by Congress, would not have any impact on FWS and FSEOG students until the fall semester,” he said.
Research funding is expected to decrease by approximately $15.9 million out of a total of $312 million, according to a released analysis of how the reductions may affect NYU.
Lawrence Mead, professor of American Politics and Public Policy at NYU, commented on the government sequester.
“We have to distinguish between cutbacks to government in general in all levels and cuts in Washington,” Mead said. “Cuts in higher education are only one part and not even the biggest part [of the federal budget cuts] to take place.”
“[The cuts in student aid] won’t affect me because I’m an international student,” said Sean Ng, a psychology and economics junior in CAS. “It is expensive to sustain those overseas sites and operations.”
Research will also suffer under the sequestration. However, NYU is equipped to handle the cuts mostly because the school’s funding come from other sources.
“There is no doubt that sequestration will have an impact on science and innovation now and for years to come, not just at NYU but throughout the country,” said Dr. Dafna Bar-Sagi, senior vice president and vice dean for science, chief scientific officer at NYU Langone Medical Center.

A version of this article was published in the Monday, March 10 print edition. Sofia Ferrandiz is a contributing writer. Email her at [email protected].