The Academic departments get their money from the same source as everyone else;
With all respect, this is absolutely not the case. While funding for professors, buildings, etc are part of the mainstream budget, much of the discretionary spending comes from non-federal sources. It is not the same budgets!
There are general and department specific endowments. Supe's fund & endowment, etc.
They fund:
- Many AIAD's (travel & expense)
- Conferences for cadets
- Dean's teams (Bridge, canoe, & similar competitions)
- Academic trip sections (competition & just enrichment trips)
- etc
This is not to say there won't be fewer, just that the funding from external sources will still be available in many cases.
What could be hurt is how the supe's fund & endowment is allocated, it may go more to capital projects. But that's yet to be determined.
Same for DCA funding, both from the fed & private sources. It's not all the same pile of money. Some is restricted to certain activities, etc.
their AIADs are already being limited. I know that my major lost 10-20 slots already and expects to lose 5-10 more.
That is unfortunate, and the extreme measure would be to limit cadets to one IAD experience.
But some funding will remain as it's private and restricted to use for those types of activities.
This does put a very different twist on selecting IADS.... If you know you'll only get one, would you pick one (Airborne, for example) that you'd be very likely to get in the regular army? Or focus on one that would be a unique experience that you will not get in the RA?
There are already some complicated gates & priorities in summer training selection, and these changes will make it even harder for a cadet to chart that path without painting themselves in a corner.
Losing AIAD's would be unfortunate. What's the impact of losing CLDT? Lot's of opinions on that one, and from outside it's not clear who is right. It does seem more in line with USMA's core mission, even if not popular with most cadets.