At the request of the National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Research Universities, the Council on Governmental Relations (COGR), the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) have assembled a set of ten recommendations for regulatory reform that would improve research universities' ability to carry out their missions without requiring a significant financial investment by the Federal government. The agencies firmly believe that compliance and regulatory oversight are essential to the conduct of federally-supported research. Rationalizing the Federal regulatory infrastructure is essential to the health of the university-government research partnership and to the efficient and productive use of federal research funding. Their recommendations are: (1) Harmonize regulations and information systems between agencies and statutes where reasonable and eliminate unnecessary duplication and redundancy; (2) Eliminate regulations which do not add value or enhance accountability; (3) Provide targeted exemptions for research universities similar to protections provided for small entities under the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA); (4) Ensure that regulations are meeting their goals in terms of performance, rather than simply in terms of process; (5) Extend coverage provided under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) to research universities and allow institutions to better account for new regulatory costs, and to charge these costs to Federal awards; (6) Simplify sub-recipient monitoring requirements; (7) Reinforce the original intent of the Single Audit Act; (8) Prohibit voluntary committed cost sharing across the Federal government and create a mandatory cost sharing exemption for research universities; (9) Establish protocols to address statutorily-mandated regulatory concerns; and (10) Designate a high level official within the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB's) Office of Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to serve as a Federal Ombudsman, responsible for addressing university regulatory concerns and for seeking ways to increase regulatory efficiency. Appendices include: (1) Costs of Research Compliance; and (2) Specific Suggestions for Easing Compliance Burdens on Research Universities. (Contains 4 footnotes.)