Feb. 1, 2007

Corporate Research Support Rebounds

After a three-year slide, industry funding for university research and development in science and engineering fields reached an all-time high of $2.3 billion in the 2005 fiscal year. Support rose by 7.7 percent, according to data from the National Science Foundation Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges.

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The report notes that the increase was enough to stabilize industry’s share of total academic R&D funding, which had dropped from a high of 7.4 percent in 1999 to below 5 percent last year. Corporate funding, important to colleges for financial reasons and as a sign that their research has real-world support, accounted for 5 percent of R&D funding in science and engineering in fiscal 2005.

In all, colleges reported research and development expenditures of $45.8 billion in 2005, a 5.8 percent increase from a year earlier and a 50 percent increase from fiscal 2000. (When adjusted for inflation, academic R&D rose by 3 percent in fiscal 2005, the report notes.)

Duke University ($135 million) led the way in industry-financed R&D expenditures, followed by Pennsylvania State University and Ohio State University, as seen in the table below:

Industry-financed R&D expenditures at universities, 2005

Institution	Total (in 000s)
Duke U.	134,608
Pennsylvania State U. *	87,928
Ohio State U. *	81,423
Massachusetts Inst of Technology	72,121
U. of Maryland at Baltimore	57,806
Purdue U. *	46,571
U. of Washington	45,281
North Carolina State U.	38,710
U. of Texas at Austin	35,045
U. of Pennsylvania	34,483
U. of California at San Diego	34,259
U. of Michigan *	34,191
U. of California at San Francisco	34,175
Stanford U.	34,072
Georgia Inst. of Technology *	33,117
U. of Arizona	32,914
U. of Rochester	31,094
U. of South Florida	28,863
U. of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center	26, 766
U. of Minnesota *	26, 433

Note: Asterisk indicates all campuses of a university.

Of the 640 institutions surveyed, the top 20 in terms of overall expenditures accounted for nearly one-third of total academic R&D spending. Johns Hopkins University easily outdistanced all other institutions again in 2005, thanks in large part to the $678 million it received for its Applied Physics Laboratory. The University of Michigan drew the second-most funds, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison was third. (A list of the top 20 appears below.)

Federally financed R&D grew by 5.6 percent, which ends what was a trend of double-digit growth in recent years. Federal dollars made up 64 percent of total support, and institutional funds were the second largest source of money, increasing 6.5 percent to $8.3 billion.

The Department of Health and Human Services gave the largest share of federal funding in the 2005 fiscal year ($15.9 billion), mostly in support of the medical and biological sciences. NSF provided the second largest amount of federal funding ($3.5 billion), with most (84 percent) of those funds going toward R&D in engineering and in the biological, computer, environmental and physical sciences.

The medical sciences ($14.9 billion) and biological sciences ($8.8 billion) accounted for roughly half of all research and development money at colleges.

State and local government funding grew by 2.2 percent. The largest percentage increase in funding came from nongovernmental sources (nonprofit organizations and other entities), which gave $3.1 billion, an 8.4 percent spike from the year before.

All Academic R&D Expenditures, 2005 and 2004

Rank	Institution	2005 total (millions)	2004 total (millions)
1	Johns Hopkins U.	1,444	1,375
2	U. of Michigan (all campuses)	809	769
3	U. of Wisconsin at Madison	798	764
4	U. of California at Los Angeles	786	773
5	U. of California at San Francisco	754	728
6	U. of California at San Diego	721	709
7	Stanford U.	715	671
8	U. of Washington	708	714
9	U. of Pennsylvania	655	597
10	Duke U.	631	521
11	Pennsylvania State U. (all campuses)	626	600
12	Ohio State U. (all campuses)	609	518
13	Cornell U. (all campuses)	607	576
14	Massachusetts Inst of Technology	581	543
15	U. of California at Berkeley	555	526
16	U. of Minnesota (all campuses)	549	526
17	U. of California at Davis	547	512
18	Columbia U.	535	468
19	Washington U. in St. Louis	532	490
20	U. of Florida	531	447

— Elia Powers

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