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Favored Campus Projects Get Boost from Congress
Congressional spending on the projects of specific universities hit a high of $1.668 billion for fiscal 2001, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. "The 2001 numbers stand out by any measure: the largest single-year increase, the largest number of institutions receiving money, the largest number of projects," the newsweekly reported.
Awards targeted at certain projects, called earmarks, are granted at the behest of members of Congress who work to bring money into their own districts, rather than through an organized or competitive process. A state's chances of getting earmarks are greatly increased if its representatives serve on the right committees in Washington. For example, the Chronicle reported that New Hampshire, the only state with no earmarks in 1995, leapt to seventh among states this year after one of the state's senators became the chair of an appropriations subcommittee and began working to secure money for his state.
Projects supported by earmarks this year are varied. Dartmouth College was awarded $18 million for a study on the prevention of "cybercrime"; the University of New Hampshire was awarded $14 million to build a coastal marine laboratory and a pier for docking research vessels; and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks got $645,000 to develop a machine to debone wild salmon, according to the Chronicle.
Although earmarks, along with other forms of pork-barrel spending, are widely criticized as being both wasteful and unfair, there is little chance that they will disappear any time soon. Universities are unlikely to discourage such windfalls, and legislators have little motivation to stop a practice that wins them friends in their home states.
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