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Universities With the Highest Spending on Research and Development in All Fields, FY 2016

Almanac 2018 August 19, 2018

Of the 12 institutions that spent more than $1 billion on research and development in the 2016 fiscal year, four were in California. Among the top 40 institutions for such spending, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University had the greatest spending increases from the 2015 to 2016 fiscal years.

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Of the 12 institutions that spent more than $1 billion on research and development in the 2016 fiscal year, four were in California. Among the top 40 institutions for such spending, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University had the greatest spending increases from the 2015 to 2016 fiscal years.


Return to the Almanac home page, or go to the Profession, Students, Finance, or States section. To purchase a copy of the Almanac in print or as a downloadable interactive PDF, visit the Chronicle Store. Help guide us to give you the data you need by taking our 10-minute online Almanac survey.


Rank for FY 2016 spendingInstitutionFY 2016 (in thousands)FY 2015 (in thousands)One-year change
1. Johns Hopkins U.* $2,431,180 $2,305,679 5.4%
2. U. of Michigan at Ann Arbor $1,436,448 $1,369,278 4.9%
3. U. of Pennsylvania $1,296,429 $864,068 50.0%
4. U. of California at San Francisco $1,294,261 $1,126,620 14.9%
5. U. of Washington $1,277,679 $1,180,563 8.2%
6. U. of Wisconsin at Madison $1,157,680 $1,069,077 8.3%
7. U. of California at San Diego $1,087,117 $1,101,466 -1.3%
8. Harvard U. $1,077,253 $1,013,753 6.3%
9. Stanford U. $1,066,269 $1,022,551 4.3%
10. Duke U. $1,055,778 $1,036,698 1.8%
11. U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill $1,045,338 $966,781 8.1%
12. U. of California at Los Angeles $1,037,528 $1,021,227 1.6%
13. Cornell U. $974,199 $954,412 2.1%
14. Massachusetts Institute of Technology $946,159 $930,719 1.7%
15. U. of Minnesota-Twin Cities $910,181 $880,618 3.4%
16. Texas A&M U. at College Station and Health Science Center $892,718 $866,678 3.0%
17. U. of Pittsburgh main campus $889,793 $861,205 3.3%
18. Yale U. $881,765 $803,004 9.8%
19. U. of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center $852,095 $833,406 2.2%
20. Columbia U. $837,312 $868,159 -3.6%
21. Pennsylvania State U. at University Park and Hershey Medical Center $825,561 $791,031 4.4%
22. Ohio State U. $818,464 $817,881 0.1%
23. New York U. $809,739 $602,041 34.5%
24. U. of Florida $791,294 $739,522 7.0%
25. Georgia Institute of Technology $790,706 $765,370 3.3%
26. U. of California at Berkeley $774,255 $788,505 -1.8%
27. U. of California at Davis $741,892 $721,077 2.9%
28. Washington U. in St. Louis $741,115 $694,069 6.8%
29. Northwestern U. $713,491 $656,167 8.7%
30. U. of Southern California $702,866 $691,031 1.7%
31. Vanderbilt U. $640,842 $647,816 -1.1%
32. Rutgers U. at New Brunswick $630,212 $628,613 0.3%
33. U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign $625,180 $639,817 -2.3%
34. U. of Texas at Austin $621,692 $604,376 2.9%
35. Emory U. $614,527 $585,210 5.0%
36. Michigan State U. $613,369 $558,248 9.9%
37. Purdue U. at West Lafayette $606,302 $558,611 8.5%
38. U. of Arizona $604,464 $606,219 -0.3%
39. Baylor College of Medicine $572,527 $520,220 10.1%
40. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai $540,296 $508,353 6.3%
40 leading institutions $36,225,976 $34,200,139 5.9%
All institutions $71,833,308 $68,566,890 4.8%

* The Johns Hopkins University includes the Applied Physics Laboratory, which had $1,403,733,000 in total research-and-development expenditures in the 2016 fiscal year. The laboratory is an independent nonprofit research center that is affiliated with Johns Hopkins.

Note: Figures include research-and-development spending supported by federal, state, and local governments; institutional resources; business; nonprofit organizations; and all other sources. Figures are in current dollars. Data are based on a survey of 902 institutions in the United States and outlying territories that granted bachelor’s degrees or higher in any field and that did at least $150,000 of separately budgeted research and development in the 2016 fiscal year. More data can be found here. Questions or comments on the Almanac should be sent to the Almanac editor.

Source: National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, Higher Education Research and Development Survey; Chronicle analysis</small></p>

A version of this article appeared in the August 24, 2018, issue.
Read other items in Finance: Almanac 2018.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
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