The Obama administration proposed a budget Monday which could increase funding for educational arts and humanities programs, including those in higher education institutions, by more than five percent. The proposed budget would boost funding allocations for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) from $146 million to $154 million for the 2013 fiscal year.
The NEH awards grants to higher education, as well as to public television, museums and individual scholars, said Larry Myers, director of the NEH Office of Planning and Budget.
"We have more than 30 operations that we grant funds to every year. They receive money from us to do their projects," Myers said. "One way our money goes out across communities is our partnership with state humanities councils."
The NEA endowment would fund art centers on campuses, while the NEH allocation would fund research grants.
NEA spokesperson Victoria Hutter said the increased funding for humanities and arts programs would benefit college communities.
"The arts do provide for a variety of benefits for citizens in communities [by providing] economic, community and educational benefits," Hutter said.
University Center for Politics spokesperson Geoffrey Skelley said the budget will undergo many changes before it becomes finalized.
"[T]here is going to be a great deal of arguing and fighting over what spending is in the final budget, and I suspect it will be conspicuously different from the budget the president has offered," Skelley said. "In terms of timeline, I will simply say it could take awhile, especially since it's an election year where every increase or decrease in spending will be inspected with an even larger magnifying glass."
Barry Toiv, spokesperson for the Association of American Universities, said current budgetary reductions often come from cuts in discretionary spending, which is the portion of the budget which funds research.
"If this bigger step is not taken then the pressure is going to continue on discretionary spending and in the long term the continued pressure will force cuts in research and education," Toiv said.
The University is a member of the AAU, which is an association of public and private research universities in the United States and Canada.
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