A tough budget year could have meant big cuts for science research funding, but as mapped out in the Obama administration's plan for the 2011 fiscal year released on Monday, it doesn't, writes Jennifer Epstein for Inside Higher Ed. Though President Barack Obama vowed in his State of the Union address to freeze discretionary domestic spending, his $3.8 trillion budget shifts priorities to find increases for science and technology research and education that well outpace the 1.1% rate of inflation expected over the next year. The budget proposes non-defence research expenditures totalling $61.6 billion, a 5.6% increase over 2010 levels.

"We are fortunate in this situation in which we find ourselves to have in President Obama a leader who 'gets it' with respect to the importance of science and technology for meeting so many of the major challenges facing our society," said John P. Holdren, assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, at a briefing on the budget.

Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site