by Graeff, Frank – Grants Resouce Center
Higher education provides the largest share of U.S. basic research, according to a new report from the National Science Foundation (NSF). According to the NSF’s Science and Engineering Indicators 2018 report, U.S. academic institutions spent $72 billion on research and development in 2016, the last year of available data. About $40 billion of that total went to basic or fundamental research, which accounts for 49 percent of all basic research funding performed in America. While the business sector is by far the largest performer of R&D in the U.S (72 percent of all research done in the US), industry focuses more on applied research and technology development, leaving fundamental research to academia.
About 54 percent of all academic R&D is sponsored by the federal government. Of that total, 90 percent comes from six different agencies: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (mostly through the National Institutes of Health), the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Although federal support provided over half of all research funding to universities, 2016 continued a five-year decline in the percentage of government support for R&D. On a related note, the share of academic R&D spending borne by the institutions themselves has risen to its highest levels ever – a quarter of all academic R&D comes from university funds.
These trends differ depending on whether an institution is public or private. Public universities relied more heavily than private ones on state and local government funds (8 percent versus 1 percent) and more heavily on their own funds (27 percent versus 21 percent). Private universities instead relied more heavily on the federal government (60 percent versus 51 percent), business funding (7 percent versus 5 percent) and nonprofit funding (8 percent versus 6 percent).
To read the full report, which also includes information on the scientific labor force, public attitudes towards science, innovation metrics, and U.S. research output in a global context, click here. To read the highlights focused on academic R&D, click here
