US research funding increasingly reliant on corporate agendas

The US business sector is getting close to overtaking the federal government in funding the nation’s basic research, part of an alarming set of developments in which the country keeps losing ground both domestically and globally in the hunt for scientific talent, a major government report concludes.

The corporate sector now funds 36 per cent of basic research in the US, close to the 40 per cent share covered by the federal spending, according to the detailed biennial assessment by the National Science Foundation.

That is a danger for the US, said analysts working with the NSF’s governing body, the National Science Board, because companies had only a limited scope of scientific interest.

“The investments of the private sector in basic research are very subject-specific,” said Maureen Condic, an associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Utah and chair of the NSB’s science and engineering policy committee.

“They are driven by a small number of industries that invest in areas that are relevant to their industry, and not across the board in all things that could benefit the American public and drive innovations in the future.”

The NSF is required by Congress to issue the analyses every two years and the reports have become exercises in counting the ways that the US – while still the global leader on many key measures of scientific research – keeps slipping relative to other countries, especially China.

The NSB’s assessment devotes significant attention to the US-China rivalry, with each side leading on different measures of scientific strength. Overall, the US spent $806 billion (£630 billion) on research and development in 2021, the NSB said, compared with $668 billion by China, with other countries at fractions of those amounts. The US also has the greatest share of its publications among the most highly cited research in science and engineering.

China’s superlatives, meanwhile, include it being the top overall producer of publications in science and engineering research, and the world’s biggest manufacturer in knowledge-intensive fields.

More fundamentally, though, the NSB report warns of persistent trouble for the US because its federal investment in research remains flat and its public schools struggle under the nation’s highly variable, locally based funding system.

The NSB report came just days after back-to-back blows at the federal level. Congress passed current-year budget bills that will sharply reduce spending at the NSF and other federal science funding agencies, and the Biden administration then showed little pushback by issuing a fiscal 2025 budget recommendation that would raise federal research spending by just 1 per cent from last year’s level.

The NSB does, however, note encouraging signs that US higher education is rebounding – at least numerically – from the loss of foreign scientific talent during the Trump administration and the Covid pandemic. US enrolment of international graduate students in science and engineering hit nearly 310,000 in 2022, up from the pandemic-era low of 200,000 in 2020, it says. International students accounted for about a third of the science and engineering master’s and doctoral degrees awarded by US institutions in 2021, after a decade of increases.

Much of that is being accomplished despite steady declines in the number of Chinese students, with arrivals from India becoming an especially prominent presence on US campuses. Chinese nationals remain a critical part of the US academic research enterprise, but the long-term trend is becoming evident and the need to cultivate other talent sources – both at home and abroad – is clear, said Tobin Smith, the vice-president for policy at the Association of American Universities, the main grouping of top US research institutions.

Regardless of the surrounding political tensions, China simply did not need US universities like it did in the past, because its own institutions were now fully capable of producing large numbers of quality doctoral graduates, Mr Smith said. India was perhaps 15 or 20 years behind on such measures, but the speed at which it was catching up “will be tremendously fast”, he said.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com