University spending on R&D in all fields increased 6.9 percent between FY2009 and FY 2010 to US$61.2 billion, according to FY 2010 data released in March from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey.
The increase was due in large part to the $2.7 billion in reported expenditures funded by the one-time American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), said the NSF. As a result of ARRA, the percentage of academic R&D funded by the federal government rose to 61 percent in FY 2010, constituting $37.5 billion of the $61.2 billion total.
Among the 10 broad fields for which data were collected, life sciences account for the largest share by far ($34.9 billion of the $61.2 billion total). Engineering was the next largest broad field with $9.3 billion in reported R&D expenditures. Among subfields, medical sciences continued to hold the largest share of the total (31 percent or $19.2 billion in FY 2010).
Fields seeing the most dramatic percentage-point increases in R&D funding from FY2009 were led by communications, journalism and library science (46.7 percent, to $157 million), followed by
metallurgical/materials engineering (32 percent, to $908 million), social work (26 percent, to $175 million), physical sciences (18.3 percent, to $298 million) and mechanical engineering (15.3 percent, to more than $1.4 billion).
Of the 742 institutions surveyed, the top 25 in terms of R&D expenditures in all fields accounted for 35 percent of total academic R&D spending. Yale University and Georgia Institute of Technology were new additions to the top 25 in 2010, ranked 24 and 25, respectively.
Twelve of the top 20 institutions overall were also in the top 20 in business-funded R&D.
Of the approximately $3.2 billion in university R&D funded by business, 40 percent (or $1.28 billion) was in the medical sciences field. The next most-funded fields by the business community were engineering ($821 million), biological sciences ($326 million), agricultural sciences ($136 million) and environmental sciences ($128 million).
