The U.S. Agency for International Development has abruptly told the group that runs its international higher-education partnerships that it could cut its operating budget by 80 percent, as of the start of the new federal fiscal year.
The agency, known as USAID, informed Higher Education for Development in an August e-mail message obtained by The Chronicle that its budget would be chopped, from $4.9-million to just $1-million, beginning on October 1. While USAID has not proposed direct cuts in the roughly $50-million in grants the group oversees, Higher Education for Development says such a substantial reduction in its administrative budget would make it impossible for it to manage the 41 active projects between American and foreign colleges.
The cuts may not be a done deal. In a written statement, a spokeswoman for USAID said discussions were continuing with Higher Education for Development, or HED, and the American Council on Education, which operates the group and governs it, along with five other higher-education associations.
The statement says that USAID routinely reviews its support for HED, the projects’ progress, and their relevance to the agency’s larger objectives. “All discussions with ACE/HED regarding programming and budget levels are ongoing at this time, and no final decisions have been made,” it says.
“USAID is highly committed to increasing our engagement with higher-education institutions to harness their intellectual energies, research capabilities, community connections, and capacity-building expertise to address the toughest development challenges,” the statement says.
The e-mail message to HED officials, however, was less equivocal, saying the message’s purpose was to “confirm that USAID plans” to reduce the HED administrative budget to $1-million and citing “earlier dialogues about budget shortfall in FY13-14" as a cause for the decline in support.
Projects May End Early
Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, said deep reductions were not anticipated, leaving HED just weeks to figure out how to continue the projects, which involve nearly 100 institutions in some 25 countries.
While Higher Education for Development could absorb—and has already made—some cuts, officials never expected such a sizable drop in funds, Mr. Hartle said.
As a result, HED has begun to inform its grantees that it may have to close its doors and suspend all projects.
Rosemary Ortlieb-Padgett leads one such project, a partnership involving three community colleges in the State University of New York system and Al-Kafaàt Foundation Schools, which operates a technical college, a university, and a network of learning centers in Lebanon. Together the partners have helped start an English-language program and career center in Lebanon; now they are working on a business-administration curriculum. While the project helps to build Lebanon’s educational system, American faculty members, she said, get an international experience they might not otherwise have.
Over time, the two sides have invested far more than the three-year, $460,000 USAID grant, in both time and money. Still, Ms. Ortlieb-Padgett said that if the grant money disappeared, “it would be paralyzing in many ways.” College funds can’t be spent on items like travel, and she would no longer be able to devote much of her time to the partnership.
“I’d like to say it wouldn’t happen,” Ms. Ortlieb-Padgett said, “but my fear is that the project would fall off a cliff.”
Little Warning
The suddenness of the proposed reductions was a surprise, coming so close to the start of the fiscal year. (Typically, such cuts are telegraphed months earlier, when the president and Congress make budget proposals.)
Had the group and its partner institutions been given an indication of the severity of possible cuts, they might have changed course or perhaps not gone ahead with certain projects, Mr. Hartle said. For example, one project, led by Virginia Tech in South Sudan, got under way only in mid-July. And a group of some 40 graduate students just began their studies in water-resource engineering, water management, and public health this month as part of a joint effort between the University of Connecticut and Addis Ababa University. The government of Ethiopia put up a share of the funds.
An “early closeout of the HED programs will obviously create significant financial impact to our partner institutions, damage the credibility of the involved parties, and leave unfulfilled the promised opportunities for educational and economic development,” UConn’s provost, Mun Y. Choi, wrote in a letter to Rajiv Shah, the USAID administrator.
The timing also took HED and its supporters aback because the group operates under a five-year cooperative agreement between USAID and the American Council on Education. The current agreement is not set to expire until the end of the 2015 fiscal year.
Shift in Direction
That said, it would not have been altogether unexpected for USAID to go in a new direction when the existing agreement is up. The agency has signaled it would prefer to directly operate its grant programs, rather than running them through separate groups like HED, Mr. Hartle said. It also has begun to put greater emphasis on tapping the research expertise of universities to delve into problems facing the developing world, something of a shift from the hands-on focus of the current HED projects.
Already, HED had been asked to make and had made some budget reductions, cutting spending on communications, research, and outreach, reducing travel costs, and downsizing, through attrition, its staff by six.
Mr. Hartle, a D.C. veteran, said he recognizes USAID may shift its priorities but argues it shouldn’t be at the cost of “disrupting successful relationships they’ve made a multiyear commitment to.”
With fewer than two weeks to go before the start of the new fiscal year, it’s far from certain how the situation will be settled.
While they would prefer to avoid any cuts, officials at HED and the council have made an alternative proposal to USAID, suggesting that support for the projects be extended through the end of the 2014 fiscal year. Although that would mean most projects would end nine to 12 months early, it would give the group time to shut down in a more orderly fashion, Mr. Hartle said.
Jack Bermingham, president of Highline Community College, in Washington State, said he hopes the impasse can be resolved. Work like that of his institution with Mataria Technical College, in Egypt, helps build relationships in critical parts of the world.
“It would sort of be pulling the rug out from these longer-term goals,” he said.