Congressional Earmarks for Higher Education, 2008

Earmarks are noncompetitive grants directed by Congress to specific constituents, including colleges and universities, usually in lawmakers' own districts or states. This practice -- also known as pork-barrel spending -- is controversial because it bypasses the normal competitions for federal grants.

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NOTES ON THESE DATA

This database and accompanying news articles are based on a Chronicle survey of earmarks at institutions of higher education for the 2008 fiscal year, which began on October 1, 2007.

To assemble this list, The Chronicle relied on Congress's own definition of earmarks, first written last year: appropriations for specific amounts, directed by lawmakers to specific recipients, outside of the competitive award processes normally used by federal agencies to distribute grants. Using that definition, Congress listed earmarks in its spending bills for 2008 for the first time.

Legislators expressly identified the intended recipients in reports accompanying the appropriations bills, in letters of disclosure filed by House of Representatives members, and in news releases issued by senators and representatives. (The Chronicle obtained descriptions of the projects from those same sources.)

For some earmarks, the intended recipient was not spelled out in any of those sources. Most of those projects were sponsored by members of the Senate, which unlike the House chose not to disclose the recipients. As a result, this database may be incomplete.

Federal agencies assert that they also have a say over who gets money from Congressional earmarks and how much. The agencies often require the intended recipients of earmarks to submit grant applications that are reviewed before the recipients receive financing.

However, experts familiar with earmarks say these reviews appear to be pro forma because agency officials almost always give earmarked funds to the recipients favored by Congress. The agencies may take until the end of the fiscal year to complete the reviews and release the money.

For some earmarks, Congress specified multiple recipients and did not say how much money each was to get. The Chronicle's database lists the full amount of each such earmark for each academic partner involved, noting the amount as "shared." The project description usually indicates how many partners were involved in the project. In some cases, universities shared the money with corporations, municipal governments, and other organizations outside of academe.

The Chronicle did not consider those shared amounts when it ranked academic institutions and states receiving the most earmarked money.

The full value of each of these shared earmarks was counted only once in determining the total dollar amount of all 2,306 earmarks involving academic recipients this year.

Some earmarks listed did not go directly to an institution but still directly benefited it. The Chronicle included some earmarks, for example, provided to teaching hospitals affiliated with academic medical schools for research carried out by faculty members.

Dollar amounts reported may not be precise. Some agencies may subtract small amounts from the earmarked awards for their administrative costs. Further, some universities may redistribute some of their earmarked money to other colleges or corporations. Our list may not reflect all of those redistributions or reductions.

Some Department of Transportation earmarks in this database show no entry (N/A) for the Congressional sponsor. These projects were financed through a transportation bill (the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: a Legacy for Users) enacted in 2005, before Congress established that sponsors be publicly identified.

The Chronicle carried out annual surveys of academic earmarks between 1990 and 2003 using a somewhat different methodology. It relied on federal agencies' interpretations of Congress's intended recipients when they were not identified in spending bills. A database of those projects is available at http://chronicle.com/premium/stats/pork/legacyindex.php

TIPS ON SEARCHING

You may enter words or phrases that you want to find in the keyword search box. This query will look for the exact word(s) within the following categories in this database:

• Descriptions of academic projects financed through earmarks.
• Institutions receiving earmarks.
• Federal agencies financing earmarks.
• Congressional sponsors of earmarks (last names only).

Unlike some search engines, this one does not allow and, or, and not connectors to search for words in separate categories. For example, if you enter the search string Maine and blueberry in the keyword box, the search engine will not produce an earmark designated for the University of Maine for research on blueberries. But if you search on the University of Maine or blueberry, you will find such an earmark.

You can nevertheless search several of the categories at once. To perform such a search, type a search term in the keyword box and narrow the search by using the other boxes to pick specific states and agency names.