1 Data in this section are drawn from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) National Patterns of R&D Resources, the same source used in the Indicators 2022 report “Research and Development: U.S. Trends and International Comparisons.” Totals from this source may differ from those used in the rest of the report, which are from the Higher Education Research and Development Survey (2010 onward) and its predecessor, the Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges (1972–2009), for reasons outlined in more detail in note 4.

2 For examples of different types of research, see OECD (2015): 50–57.

3 U.S. basic research in 2018 totaled $101.1 billion. Businesses were the second-largest performer of basic research (29%). For more detail, see the forthcoming Indicators 2022 report “Research and Development: U.S. Trends and International Comparisons.”

4 In the rest of this report, financial data on academic R&D are drawn from the NCSES Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey (2010 onward) and its predecessor, the Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges (1972–2009). HERD data are in current-year dollars and are reported on an academic year basis. For example, FY 2019 covers July 2018–June 2019 for most institutions and is referred to in this report as 2019. Comparisons over more than one year are made in inflation-adjusted constant 2012 dollars using GDP-implicit price deflators based on calendar year. GDP deflators come from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and are available at https://www.bea.gov/national, accessed August 2020. The totals presented from HERD differ from similar totals reported in NCSES’s National Patterns of R&D Resources and Indicators 2022 report “Research and Development: U.S. Trends and International Comparisons.” These other sources remove approximately $7 billion in pass-through funds that are double counted in the HERD totals because such funds are counted by the universities initially receiving the money and by the universities to which the funds are passed. These other sources also present calendar year approximations based on fiscal year data.

5 Applied research has increased from 25% to 28%, and development has increased from 8% to 9%. Starting in 2010, the HERD survey asked institutions to categorize their R&D expenditures as either basic research, applied research, or development; prior surveys had asked how much total S&E R&D the institution performed and requested an estimate of the percentage of their R&D expenditures devoted to basic research. By only mentioning basic research, the survey question may have caused some respondents to classify a greater proportion of their activities in this category. The 2010 question provided definitions and examples of the three R&D categories to aid institutions in making more accurate assignments. In debriefing interviews, institutional representatives cited the changes in the survey question as the most important factor affecting their somewhat lower estimates of the amount of basic research institutions performed. The explicit inclusion of clinical trials and research training grants and the addition of non-S&E R&D may also have contributed.

6 The remainder, $3.3 billion (7%), is awarded by all other federal agencies.

7 The accounting systems or administrative practices of some universities, including some with very high research activity, do not enable the separation of the R&D component of multipurpose accounts. Because the HERD Survey measures only spending that is fully budgeted as R&D for these institutions, reported institutional funds are less than the full amount of academic R&D that the schools fund. More details on efforts to improve the measurement of institutionally financed R&D are in the HERD Technical Notes, available at https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf21314.

8 Unrecovered indirect costs are calculated as the difference between an institution’s negotiated indirect cost rate on a sponsored project and the amount that it recovers from the sponsor. Committed cost sharing is the sum of the institutional contributions required by the sponsor for specific projects (mandatory cost sharing) and the institutional resources made available to a specific project at the discretion of the grantee institution (voluntary cost sharing). For more on unrecovered indirect costs, see the section Cost Components of Academic R&D.

9 The 2019 HERD Survey included 916 institutions that had reported $150,000 or more in R&D expenditures during the previous fiscal year. For more detail on the survey population, see NCSES HERD 2019: Table A-4.

10 Whether an institution is operated by publicly elected or appointed officials, or by privately elected or appointed officials and derives its major source of funds from private sources, is referred to as its control.

11 The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (http://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/) is widely used to characterize differences in academic institutions. The Basic Classification categorizes academic institutions primarily based on highest degree conferred, level of degree production, and research activity. This report uses the 2018 Carnegie classification. This categorization does not include some academic institutions that are top R&D performers but whose training programs are exclusively focused on a small number of fields (i.e., exclusively biomedically focused institutions).

12 Of the 916 institutions included in the 2019 HERD Survey, 522 (57%) were public institutions and 394 (43%) were private institutions (NCSES HERD 2019: Table A-4). Among the 131 very high research activity doctoral universities, 94 (72%) are public. Among the 63 U.S. institutions that are members of the Association of American Universities, 36 (57%) are public (https://www.aau.edu/who-we-are/our-members). Additionally, public universities, although less numerous overall, tend to be larger, as they enroll more students and award more degrees (Indicators 2020 report “Higher Education in Science and Engineering”).

13 These summations are of top R&D performers overall and include some institutions not in the very high research activity category. Johns Hopkins University includes the Applied Physics Laboratory, with $1.7 billion in total R&D expenditures in FY 2019.

14 In 2019, public universities received $1.1 billion (92%) of USDA’s funding for academic R&D. Almost all of that funding ($990 million) went to the 75 public land-grant institutions reporting expenditures.

15 A total of 99 of these universities are public, and 60 are private.

16 There are currently 100 federally designated HBCUs, according to Department of Education data. Among research universities, the 2018 Carnegie classification includes 11 HBCUs designated as “high research activity.”

17 For information on numbers of graduate students, postdocs, and nonfaculty researchers at HBCUs, see NCSES GSS 2019: Table 5-2).

18 For more detail on HHEs, see the Indicators 2020 report “Higher Education in Science and Engineering.”

19 As shown in Figure URD-12, the percentage of total support for non-S&E fields provided by the federal government was lower, at around 25%.

20 An infographic displaying the difference between direct and indirect costs is available at https://www.aau.edu/sites/default/files/Costs-of-Research-Infographic.pdf. The history of indirect cost reimbursement in the context of the university–government research partnership is reviewed in Droegemeier (2017).

21 The academic R&D reported here includes separately accounted-for R&D and related recovered indirect costs. It also includes committed cost sharing and institutional estimates of unrecovered indirect costs associated with externally funded R&D projects. Some indirect costs are recovered as a result of indirect-cost proposals that universities submit based on their actual costs from the previous year.

22 Unrecovered indirect costs as a percentage of total institutional spending on R&D were about 27.5% for private universities and 27.0% for public universities.

23 An analysis of similar data is available in Atkinson and Foote (2019).

24 France did not report general university fund expenditures in 2017 but reported them in 2007 (and from 2008 through 2015). For Germany and South Korea, general university fund expenditures are included but not available separately.

25 More details on these and other research space trends are available on the NCSES website for the Survey of Science and Engineering Research Facilities at https://nsf.gov/statistics/srvyfacilities/.

26 Capitalized equipment spending is collected on the NCSES HERD Survey as payments for movable equipment exceeding an institution’s capitalization threshold, including ancillary costs such as delivery and setup. The totals and trends presented here do not include purchases of research equipment that were below institutional capitalization thresholds, which may have changed over the long term. Some research equipment purchased through nonresearch accounts, such as equipment-only grants, is also excluded from the HERD survey and therefore not included in these totals. HERD respondents are directed to include R&D as defined by OMB Circular A21, 2 CFR Part 200 Appendix III, which also defines equipment and other capital expenditures.

27 For example, in 2019 two-thirds of S&E graduate students, including 55% of master’s students and 82% of doctoral students, were at Carnegie very high research doctoral universities.

28 This report discusses sources and mechanisms of graduate student funding. Funding sources include federal, institutional, and personal or self-support, among others. Funding mechanisms include assistantships, fellowships, and traineeships, among others.

29 Starting with 2017, the Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (GSS) collects data separately for master’s and doctoral students. Analyses using GSS data in this report include health fields unless otherwise specified.

30 Personal sources include loans (including federal loans) or personal or family financial contributions.

31 In 2019, these were the most common funding mechanisms for S&E doctoral students (38% received RAs, 26% TAs, and 15% fellowships) (NCSES GSS 2019: Table 3-5).

32 These calculations exclude appointments in natural resources and conservation and in multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary studies.

33 The data tables from 2009 do not separate out nonfederal sources of support for postdocs.

34 Data on this variation are produced by IRIS for its member universities.

35 For GSS, “institutional” support includes from academic institutions and from state and local government.