State-government agencies commissioned just over $500-million in 2006 for specific research and development projects at universities, the National Science Foundation reported in its first such survey in more than a decade.
The NSF contacted 423 state agencies nationwide, of which 209 reported any such expenditures for academic research. The result is a finer-grain analysis than the NSF’s annual survey of universities about their research spending from various financing sources, including state governments. The annual survey covers a wide range of state support, including nonspecific appropriations for the operations of university laboratories and agricultural research stations. The spending totaled $3-billion in the 2006 fiscal year, the most recent reported by the NSF.
The specifically commissioned research described in the new report is a subset of that total, and so the new survey offers “a more complete and consistent accounting of states’ role in supporting R&D” than the annual survey alone, said John E. Jankowski, director of the NSF’s program on R&D statistics and the author of the new report.
Of the 209 agencies reporting any commissioned expenditures for academic R&D, the most common were responsible for natural resources (52 agencies), transportation (48), agriculture (37), health (22), and the environment (19). The leading states were Pennsylvania ($68.7-million), New York ($57.4-million), California ($57.2-million), Michigan ($37.9-million), and Ohio ($34-million). Spending by those states accounted for about half the total.
At the bottom of the list were New Mexico ($65,000), Rhode Island ($150,000), Mississippi ($454,000), Vermont ($610,000), and Alaska ($621,000). The NSF plans to repeat the survey for the 2007 fiscal year, Mr. Jankowski said. —Jeffrey Brainard