Phillip D. Levy, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Wayne State University, has often treated black patients from the Detroit area who didn’t even know they had heart disease.
His concerns led him to team up with experts outside his field, including behavioral scientists, since a disease like high blood pressure can make it tougher for some people to remember to take their medicine.
Dr. Levy’s recent accomplishments include a study confirming unexpectedly high rates of cardiac damage among blacks with high blood pressure, and a $1.9-million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the role of vitamin D in reducing the problem. The multidisciplinary approach, Dr. Levy says, is helping to improve overall patient health.
The strategy is also helping Wayne State. Research universities nationwide have been coping with a decade of little or no increases in federal support for their scientific work, according to figures compiled by the National Science Foundation. Wayne State is one of the hardest hit, with its federal research allocation falling 3 percent from 2004 to 2013. When adjusted for inflation, that’s a decline of nearly 20 percent.
Besides emphasizing interdisciplinary work by its own faculty, Wayne State is making a concerted effort to find research partners at other institutions, says Stephen M. Lanier, vice president for research. Teamed with other universities, he says, Wayne State can compete for large-dollar programmatic grants offered by federal agencies.
Thanks to such approaches, the slide in federal research support at Wayne State “looks like it may be flattening out,” Mr. Lanier says.
Wayne State’s worries are hardly unique. Universities nationwide are looking to a future that could bring permanently reduced federal support for their research enterprise. And they’re responding in ways that could change the face of research universities, for better or worse, for years or decades to come.
TAKEAWAY
The Crisis in Federal Funding for Scientific Research
- Universities are creating new systems and structures to help their faculty members be more competitive when seeking grant money.
- Scientists and their universities are seeking out more collaborative partnerships, both across departments and across institutions.
- Bigger universities are better equipped to survive lean periods, while research operations may wither at smaller research institutions.
- The country as a whole will suffer economically if the federal government does not eventually restore robust levels of federal support for science, academic leaders say.
Total federal support for university research grew 39 percent from 2004 to 2013, according to NSF data. Much of that increase, however, consisted of a bump from the 2009 economic stimulus package that has since been flattening back out, under pressure from the budget sequestration of 2013. And the National Institutes of Health, the top supplier of scientific research money to universities, has seen its budget drop by about 25 percent in inflation-adjusted value since 2003.
Even with that slowdown, the chase for government money will remain a chief focus of most research universities for one simple reason: It’s still their largest source by far, accounting for three-fifths of total university spending in science and engineering.
Along with an emphasis on faculty collaborations like Dr. Levy’s, universities are countering tight budgets by putting more attention on less-traditional federal sources, such as the Pentagon. One example is the University of Kansas, which began seeking more military contracts after a review showed that its faculty had far more expertise in defense-related fields than its research portfolio reflected.
Outside of federal financing, the main alternative is the corporate sector. Industry money accounted for a little more than 5.4 percent of total university research spending in science and engineering in the 2013 fiscal year, up from 4.9 percent in 2004, according to NSF data. The federal share slid during that period from 64 percent to 60 percent. The next-biggest category, state and local support, dropped from 6.7 percent to just below 5.4 percent, according to the NSF’s latest figures.
Various strategies lie behind the industry growth. Several university research leaders describe arranging meetings between their faculty and local business leaders, hoping to show companies the likely benefits of academic research. The process typically involves identifying which faculty members might be most able to help, and what overtures might be most fruitful, given the needs of local companies.
And while some universities put an emphasis on winning royalties and licensing fees, the University of Utah, whose receipt of corporate money is among the fastest-growing, has found a more valuable role for companies that buy its intellectual property: The university repeatedly asks if they would be interested in future research partnerships. That leads to more money than royalties or licenses alone, says Thomas N. Parks, vice president for research.
Universities are also pushing harder for donations and philanthropic support, from foundations as well as from alumni and other donors. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai just finished a five-year campaign that raised $1.5-billion to staff a new medical-research building, with about half the money coming from among the 70 members of its Board of Trustees. For most universities, however, that’s more than they can hope for—Mount Sinai has “a very well-to-do trustee population,” says Mark Kostegan, the school’s senior vice president of development.
And even if it were more widely available, corporate and foundation money is not without its own problems. Companies typically haggle before paying overhead costs—the money needed to cover facilities costs and other basic expenses—and others don’t pay overhead at all. Private partnerships can also mean limits on study topics and restrictions on sharing data.
One overriding strategy described by many universities coping with tough economics: Concentrate on areas of true expertise and let go of others. And still, larger universities will almost always do better, says Juan M. Sanchez, vice president for research at the University of Texas at Austin. “The big will get bigger,” he says. Smaller universities “will have a tougher time, with whatever consequences that entails.”
At least one midsized institution has found a way. Cleveland State University, shown by the NSF data to have had the largest research-spending growth among any major research university over the past decade, put a priority on developing local expertise, says a spokesman, Kevin Ziegler. That growth includes federal grants to teach science to Cleveland-area grade-school and college students; a partnership with the Cleveland-based engineering giant Parker Hannifin that led to expanded research involving human motion, including prosthetic limbs; and increased biomedical partnerships with the Cleveland Clinic, Mr. Ziegler says.
And campuses throughout Texas’ state-university system have seen large increases in research spending over the past decade. Much of that growth reflects offers by the state government of matching and supplemental money for universities that raised their own research funds or met other benchmarks for improving research, says David W. Gardner, deputy commissioner for academic planning and policy and chief academic officer at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
It’s hard to find many university researchers who see advantages to a tougher federal budget environment. Dr. Levy, of Wayne State, may be among the exceptions, in that he can at least acknowledge some benefit to his patients from continuing pressure on departments and universities to cooperate. “I think it’s driving people together,” he says.
Many others, though, remain worried as they look toward a future when the United States may start to fall behind other nations in scientific research. “Talking about how we can make do,” says Mary Lee Hummert, interim vice chancellor for research at the University of Kansas, “is perhaps taking attention away from what the really dangerous outcome could be.”
