President Bush's proposals on such topics as toughening accreditation standards and limiting the use of human embryonic stem cells in research may not have made him popular in academe over his two terms. This article reports that the president's willingness to spend federal money on many of colleges' top priorities might improve the perception of his higher-education legacy. The priorities in the president's final $3.1-trillion budget reflect President Bush's tendency to recommend substantial support for higher education, at least in some ways, ever since he took office, in 2001. This final budget proposes an 18.5-percent increase in spending on Pell Grants, continuing a series of requests during his second term to bolster student aid. The president's support for research has been more mixed. His 2009 proposal encourages lawmakers to restart a drive to double spending for research on the physical sciences to spur economic growth, but he has proposed no increase at all for the National Institutes of Health. Despite the ups and downs for the sciences in Mr. Bush's budgets, federal funds provided to fundamental research have grown at a significantly faster rate than inflation during his tenure.