The situation is described as dire. Careers are threatened and important medical research is neglected because of a long-running slump in federal support. That was the message that Drew Gilpin Faust, president of Harvard, recently delivered in Washington. At about the same time, Bill Gates warned that lagging federal support for academic science deprives industry of advances needed for making competitive products. Similar alarms date far back and continue to come from other leaders of academe, science, and industry.
The complaints are valid. To the detriment of many desirable goals, science is hurting. But since substantial relief from the U.S. Treasury is unlikely anytime soon, attention should be given to several little-discussed realities of science and money:
Well-endowed universities spend remarkably little of their own money on scientific research, preferring to have Washington pay the bills. And industry, which mines university science for new ideas, and depends on academe for well-trained researchers, is a surprisingly minor source of support for academic research.
Data collected by the National Science Foundation from universities, industry, and other sources for “Science & Engineering Indicators 2008,” along with endowment data compiled in The Chronicle’s Almanac of Higher Education 2007-8, show the following:
In 2006, Yale University — endowment $18-billion — received $348.5-million in federal research funds. In institutional funds, derived from tuition, endowment, and gifts, Yale spent $29.8-million for research.
Stanford University — endowment $14-billion — received $540-million in federal research funds. It spent $40-million of its own money for research.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology received $476-million in federal research funds, while spending $10.5-million of its own money. The MIT endowment stood at $8.3-billion in 2006.
Harvard, currently the endowment leader, with $35-billion, has annually received around $400-million in federal research funds in recent times. In the statistical compilations regularly published by NSF, Harvard consistently reports 0 for its own spending on research. The offered explanation from Harvard is that it does not tote up the figures.
The sums that Washington provides for university science are not limited to what goes on in the laboratory. In addition to the costs of conducting research, universities are reimbursed by the government for indirect costs that arise from the presence of research on campus. These include administrative services, library facilities, security, animal facilities, and depreciation for laboratory buildings. The National Institutes of Health, with a total budget of $29-billion, spends about $6-billion a year on indirect costs. That’s money that never gets to a laboratory.
Occasional attempts to reduce spending on indirect costs propel medical school deans to Washington, where they invariably stave off cuts by arguing that medical education and science will be seriously harmed by any reductions. Indirect cost rates, generally amounting to 50 to 75 percent of direct costs of research at NIH, invite skepticism but are politically untouchable. Congress has taken a tougher approach on research financed by the Pentagon, setting a maximum of 35 percent of direct costs.
All in all, universities spent $46-billion on research in 2006, with federal agencies providing 63 percent of the total and universities providing 19 percent. The balance came from various other sources. Among them was industry, which is lavish in its praise for academic science, but stingy in helping with the costs.
Industry spent $226-billion on research and development in 2005, about double the federal government’s R&D spending. But virtually all corporate R&D money is spent in company laboratories, where the focus is on applied research and development of products. The basic research that underlies many industrial advances is concentrated in universities and is universally regarded as an indispensable ingredient of industrial competitiveness.
Though a direct and grateful beneficiary of research conducted in university labs, industry’s financial support is small and has actually been declining in recent years. Industry provided about $2.5-billion of the $46-billion spent in university labs in 2006. “Industrial support counts for the smallest share of academic R&D funding,” NSF reports, “and support of academia has never been a major component of industry-funded R&D.”
Token sums from plump university endowments will not ease the plight of science, nor will industrial praise for academic research have any real meaning unless accompanied by realistic contributions to the costs.
These matters are left out when academe and industry rattle the tin cup in Washington.
