Instead of giving these schools more tax dollars, maybe they could spend some of the money in their multi-billion dollar endowments.

Katherine Landergan of Boston.com reports.

MIT, Brandeis, Boston University, UMass, Harvard presidents urge the federal government to fund research and financial aid

Several presidents from local schools published a letter this week urging Congress and President Obama to reinvest in higher education research initiatives and student financial aid.

The Association of American Universities and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities published a letter Wednesday in Politico. The letter was signed by a number of local presidents, including Frederick M. Lawrence of Brandeis University, Robert A. Brown of Boston University, L. Rafael Reif of MIT, Drew Faust of Harvard University, Robert L. Caret of the University of Massachusetts and Chancellor Kumble R. Subbaswamy of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The letter, which was signed by dozens of presidents, says that it is “troubling” that the United States has dropped to 12th place among developed countries for the number of young adults who have a college degree.

According to the letter, “the combination of eroding federal investments in research and higher education, additional cuts due to the sequestration, and the enormous resources other nations are pouring into these areas is creating a new kind of deficit for the United States: an innovation deficit.”

The letter also says that “ignoring the innovation deficit will have serious consequences: a less prepared, less highly skilled U.S. workforce, fewer U.S.-based scientific and technological breakthroughs, fewer U.S.-based patents, and fewer U.S. start-ups, products, and jobs. These impacts may not be immediately obvious because the education and research that lead to advances do not happen overnight. But the consequences are inevitable if we do not reverse course.”