Deadline looms for major higher education cuts - Alison Moodie, World University News

Although some key funding streams, like Pell grants, will be exempt from the cuts, many financial aid packages will see 8.2% reductions, including work-study funds and the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, both of which would fall to pre-2000 levels. "The potential for sequestration will not only undermine our national completion goals, but it will disrupt federal programmes such as TRIO and GEAR Up that serve our nation's most needy students,” Michelle Asha Cooper, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, told University World News. “We encourage Congress to find long-term solutions that don't directly conflict with America's education priorities, as well as our nation's global competitiveness." Research institutions such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation would fall victim to the same cuts. That means the NIH, for instance, would lose more than $2.5 billion in funding. http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20121004162048198