On Friday, the Association of American Universities, of which Penn State is a member, sent a letter to President-elect Obama recommending six actions his administration should take to, “help college students and universities weather the economic downturn and boost the nation’s economic recovery.”

The six recommended actions are:

1. Ensure access to a college education through grants and loans.
2. Create a mechanism to address credit market dislocation and enable colleges to finish construction of current building projects and begin construction of shovel-ready projects.
3. Provide an additional $750 million for academic research facilities modernization and instrumentation programs at the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Institutes of Health.
4. Provide an additional $150 million for the Department of Energy’s new Energy Frontier Research Centers program as a means of stimulating university energy research and training capacity to address the nation’s energy challenges.
5. Provide $1.8 billion to enable research universities to hire more young scientists and engineers for tenure- track faculty positions.
6. Significantly improve academic infrastructure around the country by creating the broad academic infrastructure program discussed in the forthcoming letter of the higher education associations.

Is this the bail-out universities need?