Higher Ed’s Research Footprint Is Growing

Higher education’s hunger for conducting research is typically measured in terms of grant dollars. Another way to look at the sector’s deep investment in the research enterprise is by looking at how much space it develops and dedicates to this purpose. Recently released data from the National Science Foundation show that research space at colleges and universities increased by more than 30 million square feet over a decade.

According to the NSF’s biennial survey, academic institutions had 236.1 million square feet of science and engineering research space in the 2021 fiscal year, the most recent data available, up from 202.2 million square feet in the 2011 fiscal year. Biological and biomedical sciences largely fueled that growth.

From the 2019 fiscal year, the amount of research space rose 4.1 percent by 2021 — the same fiscal year in which colleges conducted almost $85 billion in science and engineering research. Five fields accounted for nearly 84 percent of research space in the 2021 fiscal year: biological and biomedical sciences, engineering, health sciences, agricultural sciences, and physical sciences.

According to the survey, which reflected 584 institutions, even more research space is set to be built in the future. Colleges reported that they planned to start 10.6 million square feet of new construction on research space in the 2022 or 2023 fiscal years, at a projected cost of $12.8 billion. The planned total is the highest since the 2009 fiscal year, when construction projects reported by colleges totaled 13.4 million square feet.

Here’s more data on higher education’s research space: