Escalating Costs of Doing Science

Rapid increases in the costs of doing science have been accompanied, especially over the last decade, by a dramatic shift in the distribution of the burden of paying for science -- away from governmental sources and toward private sources, including internal university funds. This combination of trends constitutes one of the most serious problems facing research universities today. ...

The costs of the infrastructure of science are real, they are high, they are increasing, and no one wants to pay for them -- all major reasons why indirect-cost controversies are always so heated. Whatever else may be said, it seems clear that universities are not collecting anything approaching full indirect costs on the contract research which they perform; and it seems equally clear that a major objective of government agencies is to shift as many of these costs as possible to the universities. ...

I suspect strongly that a non-trivial share of responsibility for increases in tuition over the last decade can be attributed to large increases in expenditures for science from unrestricted university funds.

At the same time, all of us recognize that rapid increases in tuition are probably more responsible than any other single factor for the public disaffection with higher education -- and thereby threaten public support for all of higher education, including science. ...

William G. Bowen, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, at the Sixth Kenan Convocation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill