Research and development expenditures continued their flat growth since 2011 according to the most recent data from the National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development Survey (HERD). Research expenditures increased 1.66% for all reporting institutions from 2013 to 2014 and have increased cumulatively only 4.76% since 2011.
The primary source of funding, federal expenditures, has declined nearly 6% since 2011. In addition, state and local and nonprofit funding have also remained flat during that same period. To make matters even worse for institutions, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) lapsed in fiscal 2014. Institutions received nearly $11 billion in stimulus dollars under this program since 2010. Institutions have made up the difference through self-funded initiatives. Institutional funding now represents 23.60% of all research spending compared to 19.26% in 2011.
We have summarized research expenditures by institution going back to 2003. Johns Hopkins remains the leader in research expenditures with over $21 billion dollars since 2003, nearly 69% higher than the nearest rival, The University of Michigan. The top 25 institutions represent 35% of all of the research expenditures since 2003.
National Science Foundation data is available for free by institution in Public Insight. You can also download the complete list of expenditures by institution by year and source by clicking HERE. We have also provided a treemap showing visually the breakdown of 2014 data by institution.
