U.S. Investment in University Research is Slipping behind the World

From 2000 to 2008, the U.S. ranked 18th out of 30 countries in the growth of government-funded university research, according to a new report by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF). In University Research Funding: the United States is Behind and Falling, Robert Atkinson and Luke Stewart compared the U.S. government and business funding for public university research against 29 other developed countries. The results indicate that both government-funded and business-funded have fallen dramatically behind and will continue to slip further behind several nations including China, Korea, Taiwan and the United Kingdom.

U.S. public universities, once the "envy of the world," have become woefully underfunded due to severe budget cuts aimed at higher education. In 2008, the U.S. only committed 0.24 percent of total GDP to university research. This only constituted a 17 percent change in government-funded research since 2000. In contrast, six countries, including Sweden (0.61 percent), Switzerland (0.58 percent), the Netherlands (0.53 percent), Iceland (0.52 percent), Finland (0.52 percent) and Austria (0.51 percent) committed over a half a percent of their GDP to support government-funded research at universities.

Business-funded research in the U.S. also has performed poorly over the same period, according to the report. Between 2000 and 2008, the U.S. saw a 7 percent decrease in business-funded research as share of GDP (23th out of the 30 countries). U.S. businesses only contributed 0.02 percent as share of GDP to fund research performed at domestic universities. In comparison, Iceland (0.091 percent), Germany (0.068 percent), Turkey (0.055 percent), the Netherlands (0.05 percent) and Switzerland (0.05 percent) businesses contributed over a half-percent as share of GDP to fund research performed at domestic universities.

The authors recommend that Congress should establish an R&D tax credit of 20 percent for all collaborative research conducted at universities, federal laboratories and research consortia. The report provides several examples including Canada, Hungary, Spain, and the Netherlands that have established some form of collaborative R&D tax credit to spur R&D funding to universities. Read the report...