New Reagan Budget Proposals May Raise Research Funding

Harvard could see a surprising increase in federal research funding for nearly all sciences next year under President Reagan's proposed 1984 budget, University officials said yesterday.

A Planned 18 percent increase in the budget of the National Science Foundation, which endows over $100 million of Harvard's federally sponsored research, and similar hikes in the research allocations for NASA and the Department of Energy, could result in more dollars for Harvard research, officials said.

Parker L. Coddington, director of government relations, yesterday called the allocation, announced Monday, "better than we could have possibly believed it would be a few months ago."

Most of the new federal money would support research grants, but the Administration has also budgeted increases for improving scientific instrumentation and training science teachers. Aid for social science research would increase after "taking a beating" over the last two years, he added.

Richard G. Leahy, the Faculty's director for research, said yesterday the special grants for instrumentation could help upgrade Harvard's scientific equipment.

Coddington attributed the "very good news in research" to the Reagan Administration's realization "that the U.S. is currently losing ground to its most important trade competitors and that the future is firmly based on a strong science and technology."

Biomedical research, however, would suffer in the new Reagan budget. The National Institute of Health (NIH), which provides federal funding for biomedical research, only received a 2 percent research budget hike. But adjusted for inflation, the increase amounts to a 2 percent drop.

"The University has not been good to health and biomedical research," Jane Corlette, another director of governmental relations for Harvard, said yesterday.

Medical student loans, nurse training allocations, and teaching hospital subsidies would also drop, she added.

The budget proposals, which go into effect at the end of September, remain subject to detailed revisions by Congress. Both Coddington and Corlette predicted yesterday that the legislators would probably add even more funding to the Administration's proposals.