by Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Washington Post
The credit rating agency warns that the proposed $5.8 billion cut in funding to the National Institutes of Health would have the most significant impact on higher education. Roughly 80 percent of NIH’s budget supports grants to 300,000 researchers at universities across the country. Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, for instance, was awarded $651 million in NIH funding in 2016, while University of California at San Francisco received $578 million. Moody’s analysts are also concerned about the ripple effects of the proposed elimination of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Many of the schools rated by Moody’s receive grants from both entities, though the awards are a small portion of their budgets. Still, those grants often fund programs that are appealing to students and donors, who might lose interest in the school if certain arts programs disappear, Fitzgerald said.