Universities are just beginning to realize the impact that Trump's budget proposal, released on March 16, will have on their campuses. The budget, as it now stands, proposes to eliminate multiple science, education, and arts programs in favor of a $54 billion increase in military spending. This "budget balancing" move comes despite the fact that the next biggest military spender, China, budgets one-fourth of what the U.S. expends, and that Russia actually cut its defense spending by 25 percent this year.
Though grants currently in place will remain, the money for a wide array of major programs and projects could vanish by 2018, costing UC Santa Barbara millions. Specifically targeted are programs investigating climate change. To put it into perspective, UCSB's Office of Research counted more than $132 million in direct and indirect federal funding in 2015-2016. Total campus operating expenses that year were $960 million. But an even greater cost will be to students, whose quality of education could be lowered. "We might be actually facing a generational loss of scientists," avowed Gretchen Hofmann, chair of UCSB's Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology department.
"I can train and graduate four PhD scientists for about the cost of one F-35 fighter pilot helmet," exclaimed Douglas McCauley, an environmental biologist in the same department. "That could be one scientist who goes on to reduce incidences of child blindness in Santa Barbara County, another who helps harvest salmon without causing their populations to crash, or one who recovers an endangered species, and another that figures out how to save corals from bleaching," he said. "These are all real examples of PhD research in our department."