<p>TABLE 4.<strong>Twenty institutions reporting the largest FY 2008 R&D expenditures in S&E fields: FY 200708<br>
(Millions of current dollars)<br>
Rank<br>
2008 Institution 2007 2008
**</strong><br>
All S&E R&D expendituresa 49,554 51,909</p>
<pre><code> Leading 20 institutions 14,645 15,363
</code></pre>
<p>1 *<strong><em>Johns Hopkins U., Theb 1,554 1,681
2 *</em></strong>U. CA, San Francisco 843 885
3 *<strong><em>U. WI Madison 841 882
4 *</em></strong>U. MI all campuses 809 876
5 *<strong><em>U. CA, Los Angeles 823 871
6 *</em></strong>U. CA, San Diego 799 842
7 *<strong><em>Duke U. 782 767
8 *</em></strong>U. WA 757 765
9 *<strong><em>U. PA 648 708
10 *</em></strong>OH State U. all campuses 720 703
11 *<strong><em>PA State U. all campuses 652 701
12 *</em></strong>Stanford U. 688 688
13 *<strong><em>U. MN all campuses 624 683
14 *</em></strong>MA Institute of Technology 614 660
15 *<strong><em>Cornell U. all campuses 642 654
16 *</em></strong>U. CA, Davis 601 643
17 *<strong><em>U. Pittsburgh all campuses 559 596
18 *</em></strong>U. CA, Berkeley 552 592
19 *<strong><em>U. FL 593 584
20 *</em></strong>TX A&M U. 544 582</p>
<pre><code> All other institutions 34,909 36,546
</code></pre>
<p>S&E = science and engineering. </p>
<p>a Excludes R&D performed by university-administered federally funded research and development centers.<br>
b The Johns Hopkins University includes the Applied Physics Laboratory, with $778 million (FY 2007) and $845 million (FY 2008) in total R&D expenditures. </p>
<p>NOTE:**Because of rounding, detail may not add to total. </p>
<p>SOURCE:**National Science Foundation/Division of Science Resources Statistics, Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges: FY 2008.</p>
<p>“science and engineering” includes medical schools which don’t have much relationship with the undergrads. It’d be nice if we can see the numbers net of the med school component to get the “real” science and engineering.</p>
<p>barrons,
I saw some information on the NSF budgets for Fiscal 2006 and, in comparing this data to that, I’m surprised that this isn’t much different from what we saw in F2006. At that time, the total budget was $47 billion vs $49.5 billion now (the breakdown that I saw then was 68% of the money going to public institutions and 32% to privates). Is that a function of Obama’s spending priorities not yet kicking in and there will be a materially larger increase next year?</p>
<p>There is a lot of discussion on CC about research. I think it is clear that research can have a large impact on a college’s prestige and sometimes its students (though nearly all of these would be grad students). University research is great and all, but I think that CC discussions sometimes have the effect of overstating what happens in the university research sector and what that means to undergraduate students. Heck, more than 80% of undergrads are in non-technical fields!</p>
<p>I also think that some CC discussions have the effect of overrating the impact of university research when compared with research in the private sector. When measured in a full context, university R&D represents about 13% of all R&D spending in the USA. Still a big and impressive number, but it’s not like the only smart and creative people in the world work in university research. </p>
<p>Research spending is, by a huge margin, most concentrated in science and technology fields. The breakdown of spending that I saw in the older NSF data was something like this:</p>
<p>60% Life Sciences ( this has been increasing over the last decade )
15% Engineering ( this has been about flat over the last decade )
8% Physical Sciences ( this has been declining over the last decade )
5% Environmental Sciences ( this has been increasing over the last decade )
4% Math & Computer Sciences<br>
4% Social Sciences<br>
2% Other sciences<br>
2% Psychology<br>
100% </p>
<p>Nearly all of the money for university research comes from government and industry.</p>
<p>The figures barrons presents here are for fiscal year 2007-08 which ended several months before Obama took office, and consequently can’t possibly reflect his spending priorities. The FY 2008-09 budget was also basically a Bush-era budget, adopted well before Obama took office. A small amount of federal stimulus spending got into the tail end of that fiscal year, but the big stimulus dollars and the current administration’s non-stimulus spending priorities won’t start to show up in university research until FY 2009-10, which we’ve just entered. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>While it’s true that corporations spend more on R&D than universities do, the vast majority of corporate R&D spending is on developing commercial applications for scientific and technological discoveries made elsewhere (often in universities), or on simple product design and product improvement. For example, General Motors (#2 globally in corporate R&D spending) and Ford (#6 globally) each spend about 8 times as much on “research & development” annually as the University of Michigan, but it’s mostly on things like meeting tightened emissions standards, trying to catch up to Toyota in hybrid technology, reconfiguring dashboard controls to make them more attractive and user-friendly, and designing new sheet metal configurations so next year’s cars look “new” and “different” in comparison to this year’s. </p>
<p>Yes, it takes smart and creative people to do these things. But the fundamental breakthroughs in human knowledge mainly originate in universities where most of the basic scientific research is done, and where the vast majority of research in not-easily-commercializable fields is carried out.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Should be “most,” not “nearly all.” The University of Michigan, for example, reports total research expenditures for its FY 2008-09 (July 1, 2008-June 30, 2009) of $1.02 billion. (This includes ALL research expenditures, not just science & engineering). Of that amount, $655 million (64.4%) came from various agencies of the federal government. Another 4.2% came from industry. And the state of Michigan and local units of government kicked in another 0.4%. The rest, roughly 1/3, came from non-government, non-industry sources like foundations and charities, the University’s own endowment, and “University of Michigan funds” which includes among other things licensing fees and royalties generated by the University’s rather substantial intellectual property holdings.</p>
<p>Are any LAC’s ever included in these rankings or broken out as a separate category? I would assume it only ranks research universities but was just curious after hearing many LAC’s talk about research opportunities at their school.</p>
<p>According to some experts, the next thing to boom - in a gargantuan scale - that would revolutionize the economy back in shape is the renewable energy. Those elite schools in California and Texas (Berkeley, Stanford, Caltech, UT, and probably Rice) would probably benefit from this the most.</p>
<p>There was an article written about this about a couple of weeks ago but I could no longer find it.</p>
<p>OnT: I wonder what the figures will be like when we separate the budget for medical schools. I’m sure the figures would change massively.</p>
<p>Good question, and barrons, thanks for the link ^^. Here’s what I come up with for the top 10 LACs in research expenditures:</p>
<p>LAC rank / school / all schools rank / total R&R expendIture FY 2007 </p>
<p>1 / Wesleyan / 298 / $7.878 million
2 / Wellesley / 339 / $4.634 million
3 / Williams / 349 / $3.983 million
4 / Bryn Mawr / 351 / $3.881 million
5 / Smith / 362 / $3.498 million
6 / Mount Holyoke / 370 / $3.127 million
7 / Pomona / 372 / $3.108 million
8 / Amherst / 379 / $2.926 million
9 / Barnard / 385 / $2.764 million
10 / Harvey Mudd / 387 / $2.739 million</p>
<p>From that point downward, there are lots of LACs in the $1 million to $2.5 million range. All these figures obviously pale in comparison to the $800 million to $1 billion+ range of the big research powerhouses. The LACs would say that’s fine as they define their primary mission as undergrad education, not research. But it is helpful to put the scale of the research effort into some perspective. Next time you hear LACs boasting about their “research opportunities,” keep in mind that the research being done is likely to be small-scale and in some cases at the margins of the discipline. Not that you can’t learn there, but in general you’re less likely to encounter the truly cutting-edge research in your chosen field. </p>
<p>Also noteworthy is how strong the traditional Seven Sisters are in this arena: 5 of the top 10 LACs in research are women’s colleges.</p>
<p>Not sure why you’d expect the CA and TX schools to do especially well here. Presumably most university research in this area will be government-financed, primarily federal, and predominantly through the Department of Energy. Here are the schools that received the largest DoE funding in FY 2007:</p>
<p>I think federal money for renewable energy research will be spread pretty broadly, and if anything “red” states like Texas may be at something of a disadvantage in the next few years as their senators will not be particularly influential when it comes time to divide up the pie.</p>
<p>RML mentioned Rice, and renewable energy.
Rice is a small university (more like a LAC really) and is not on any of the above lists.
But that does not mean there aren’t fine opportunities for undergraduate research at a school like Rice.</p>
<p>Last weekend I attended the DOE’s Solar Decathlon on the Mall in Washington DC.
This is an annual “bake-off” among colleges and universities who compete to design and build the most energy-efficient solar-powered house. A proposal is submitted to the DOE; selected teams take up to a year (or so) to design and build the structure on campus; then the structure is trucked to the Mall where it must be assembled and ready for visitors within 5 days. The houses are evaluated on many criteria (including attractiveness and cost as well as energy efficiency) and a winner is selected.
([U.S</a>. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon Home Page](<a href=“http://www.solardecathlon.org/]U.S”>http://www.solardecathlon.org/))</p>
<p>Rice currently (Saturday) is in 8th place among 20 teams from mostly much larger schools. They have been a regular participant in these projects for years. They create opportunities for maybe 100 students in diverse fields including architecture, engineering, physics, envi sci, etc. Very exciting, fun, rewarding stuff.</p>
<p>The volume of research at a school like Hopkins is impressive and wonderful but in contrast to a project like the Solar Decathlon much of it will be contract work for the DOD that many undergraduates, I think, would not find terribly rewarding. Chicago is another relatively small university that is not on these lists; yet, it has a long rich history of research breakthroughs in basic science, with numerous Nobel laureates to show for it.</p>
<p>So by all means consider these numbers if research opportunities are important to you but put them in perspective, and try to factor in quality as well as quantity of project work.</p>
I’m curious as to why you put research opportunities in quotation marks. Do you doubt that LACs have them? After all, it takes research to get into graduate school, and LAC graduates certainly have no trouble getting into graduate school. </p>
<p>That also assumes that this measure (NSF funding) is the only good measure of research, which in turn implies that important research is only done in the sciences. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Seems like something of an apples and oranges comparison here where some state U systems are shown as individual campuses and others as all-campuses combined. Looks like comparing apples to apples, as all campuses combined, the UC will blow the other state U systems out of the water.</p>
<p>I think it was a prospective’s parent on the Wesleyan forum who said, that if you restrict all the citations of articles written by Wesleyan faculty to just those in high profile publications, they would be the equivalent of a single member of the National Academy of Sciences (using the h-index as a guide) which, when you think about it, isn’t bad for an LAC.</p>