Johns Hopkins University is once again the top U.S. university in research and development ... [+]
Total research and development (R and D) expenditures at American colleges and universities topped $89 billion in Fiscal Year 2021, according to the most recent Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey, released by the National Science Foundation (NSF) this week.
The Fy 21 total of $89,872,007 represents an increase of more than $3.4 billion (4%) over FY 2020. Funding from federal sources accounted for $3.0 billion of the total increase, the largest increase in federally funded R&D expenditures since FY 2011.
The HERD Survey is sponsored by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) within the National Science Foundation. The R&D expenditure data were collected from 910 universities and colleges that grant a bachelor’s degree or higher and expended at least $150,000 in R&D in the prior fiscal year. For most of the surveyed institutions, FY 2021 covered the period of July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021.
According to NSF, the reported amounts include all funds spent on activities specifically organized to produce research outcomes that are sponsored by an outside organization or supported with institution funds. The major souces of funding are:
- the federal government, which includes agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services (under which the National Institutes of Health funding is counted), the Department of Defense, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation. and the Department of Agriculture. Federal funding accounted for 54.8% of FY 2020’s total R and D expenditures.
- state and local governments, 5.3% of all expenditures
- institution funds, 25% of all expenditures
- business, 6.5% of all expenditures
- nonprofit organizations, 6.2% of all expenditures
- all other sources, 3%.
Research expenditures are one way to measure an institution’s research activity. Along with other indicators like refereed publications, citation counts, commercialization of research discoveries, and scholarly awards, they provide a quantification of the impact from a university’s collective scholarship.
Last fiscal year, 21 universities surpassed the one billion dollar R and D mark. This year, 24 did so. As it has for decades, Johns Hopkins University headed the list of academic institutions, with $3.18 billion in total R and D. The rest of the top 5 were:
University of California, San Francisco - $1.71 billion
University of Michigan - $1.64 billion
University of Pennsylvania - $1.63 billion
University of Washington - $1.49 billion.
Rounding out the top ten were:
University of California, Los Angeles - $1.45 billion
University of California, San Diego - $1.43 billion
University of Wisconsin - $1.38 billion
Stanford University - $1.27 billion
Harvard University - $1.25 billion
Heading ranks 11 through 25 was Duke University at $1.24 billion, followed, in order, by:
Ohio State University - $1.24 billion
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill - $1.21 billion
Cornell University - $1.18 billion
Yale University - $1.17 billion
Texas A & M University - $1.15 billion
University of Maryland - $1.14 billion
University of Pittsburgh - $1.14 billion
U. Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center - $1.12 billion
Georgia Tech University - $1.11 billion
Columbia University - $1.10 billion
University of Minnesota - $1.07 billion
New York University - $1.06 billion
Vanderbilt University - $1.02 billion
Washington University, St. Louis - $989 million
Among the leading academic fields receiving R&D funds:
- The Health Sciences topped the list with a total of $29.88 billion in expenditures.
- They were followed by Biological and Biomedical Sciences at $16.56 billion.
- Engineering (and all its subfields) was third with $14.29 billion.
- Rounding out the top five research fields were the Agricultural Sciences with $3.55 billion and Geosciences, Atmospheric Sciences and Ocean Sciences with $3.30 billion.
- Other fields with R&D expenditures exceeding the one billion dollar threshold in FY 2020 were Computer and Information Sciences with $2.95 billion, Physics ($2.46 billion), Chemistry ($2 billion), Education ($1.62 billion), and Psychology($1.33 billion).
