Group items tagged

systemic problems that arise from the R&D funding system and incentive structure that the federal government put in place after World War II

Researchers across the country encounter increasingly fierce competition for money.

unding rates in many National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) programs are now at historical lows, declining from more than 30% before 2001 to 20% or even less in 2011

even the most prominent scientists will find it difficult to maintain funding for their laboratories, and young scientists seeking their first grant may become so overwhelmed that individuals of great promise will be driven from the field

anxiety and frustration

The growth of the scientific enterprise on university campuses during the past 60 years is not sustainable and has now reached a tipping point at which old models no longer work

Origins of the crisis

ederal funding agencies must work with universities to ensure that new models of funding do not stymie the progress of science in the United States

The demand for research money greatly exceeds the supply

the demand for research funding has gone up

The deeper sources of the problem lie in the incentive structure of the modern research university, the aspirations of scientists trained by those universities, and the aspirations of less research-intensive universities and colleges across the nation

competitive grants system

if a university wants to attract a significant amount of sponsored research money, it needs doctoral programs in the relevant fields and faculty members who are dedicated to both winning grants and training students

The production of science and engineering doctorates has grown apace

Even though not all doctorate recipients become university faculty, the size of the science and engineering faculty at U.S. universities has grown substantially

proposal pressure goes up

These strategies make sense for any individual university, but will fail collectively unless federal funding for R&D grows robustly enough to keep up with demand.

At the very time that universities were enjoying rapidly growing budgets, and creating modes of operation that assumed such largess was the new normal, Price warned that it would all soon come to a halt

the human and financial resources invested in science had been increasing much faster than the populations and economies of those regions

growth in the scientific enterprise would have to slow down at some point, growing no more than the population or the economy.

Dead-end solutions

studies sounded an alarm about the potential decline in U.S. global leadership in science and technology and the grave implications of that decline for economic growth and national security

Although we are not opposed to increasing federal funding for research, we are not optimistic that it will happen at anywhere near the rate the Academies seek, nor do we think it will have a large impact on funding rates

universities should not expect any radical increases in domestic R&D budgets, and most likely not in defense R&D budgets either, unless the discretionary budgets themselves grow rapidly. Those budgets are under pressure from political groups that want to shrink government spending and from the growth of spending in mandatory programs

The basic point is that the growth of the economy will drive increases in federal R&D spending, and any attempt to provide rapid or sustained increases beyond that growth will require taking money from other programs.

The demand for research money cannot grow faster than the economy forever and the growth curve for research money flattened out long ago.

Path out of crisis

The goal cannot be to convince the government to invest a higher proportion of its discretionary spending in research

Getting more is not in the cards, and some observers think the scientific community will be lucky to keep what it has

The potential to take advantage of the infrastructure and talent on university campuses may be a win-win situation for businesses and institutions of higher education.

Why should universities and colleges continue to support scientific research, knowing that the financial benefits are diminishing?

esearch culture

attract good students and faculty as well as raise their prestige

mission to expand the boundaries of human knowledge

faculty members are committed to their scholarship and will press on with their research programs even when external dollars are scarce

training

take place in

research laboratories

it is critical to have active research laboratories, not only in elite public and private research institutions, but in non-flagship public universities, a diverse set of private universities, and four-year colleges

How then do increasingly beleaguered institutions of higher education support the research efforts of the faculty, given the reality that federal grants are going to be few and far between for the majority of faculty members? What are the practical steps institutions can take?

change the current model of providing large startup packages when a faculty member is hired and then leaving it up to the faculty member to obtain funding for the remainder of his or her career

universities invest less in new faculty members and spread their internal research dollars across faculty members at all stages of their careers, from early to late.

national conversation about changes in startup packages and by careful consultations with prospective faculty hires about long-term support of their research efforts

Many prospective hires may find smaller startup packages palatable, if they can be convinced that the smaller packages are coupled with an institutional commitment to ongoing research support and more reasonable expectations about winning grants.

Smaller startup packages mean that in many situations, new faculty members will not be able to establish a functioning stand-alone laboratory. Thus, space and equipment will need to be shared to a greater extent than has been true in the past.

construction of open laboratory spaces and the strategic development of well-equipped research centers capable of efficiently servicing the needs of an array of researchers

phaseout of the individual laboratory

enhanced opportunities for communication and networking among faculty members and their students

Collaborative proposals and the assembly of research teams that focus on more complex problems can arise relatively naturally as interactions among researchers are facilitated by proximity and the absence of walls between laboratories.

An increased emphasis on team research

investments in the research enterprise

can be directed at projects that have good buy-in from the faculty

learn how to work both as part of a team and independently

Involvement in multiple projects should be encouraged

The more likely trajectory of a junior faculty member will evolve from contributing team member to increasing leadership responsibilities to team leader

nternal evaluations of contributions and potential will become more important in tenure and promotion decisions.

relationships with foundations, donors, state agencies, and private business will become increasingly important in the funding game

The opportunities to form partnerships with business are especially intriguing

Further complicating university collaborations with business is that past examples of such partnerships have not always been easy or free of controversy.

some faculty members worried about firms dictating the research priorities of the university, pulling graduate students into proprietary research (which could limit what they could publish), and generally tugging the relevant faculty in multiple directions.

developed rules and guidelines to control them

University faculty and businesspeople often do not understand each other’s cultures, needs, and constraints, and such gaps can lead to more mundane problems in university/industry relations, not least of which are organizational demands and institutional cultures

n addition to funding for research, universities can receive indirect benefits from such relationships. High-profile partnerships with businesses will underline the important role that universities can play in the economic development of a region.

Universities have to see firms as more than just deep pockets, and firms need to see universities as more than sources of cheap skilled labor.

foundations or other philanthropy

We do not believe that research proposed and supervised by individual principal investigators will disappear anytime soon. It is a research model that has proven to be remarkably successful and enduring

However, we believe that the most vibrant scientific communities on university and college campuses, and the ones most likely to thrive in the new reality of funding for the sciences, will be those that encourage the formation of research teams and are nimble with regard to funding sources, even as they leave room for traditional avenues of funding and research.