Useful Stats: Environmental Science Spending at U.S. Universities, FY2003-12

With Earth Day just around the corner, SSTI is taking a closer look at environmental science research spending in the states.  Even as climate change emerged as a key political topic during the first decade of the millennium, spending on environmental research at American colleges and universities declined as a percentage of all R&D, according to data from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey. Between 2003-12, environmental science expenditures fell from 5.3 percent of all R&D expenditures to 4.8 percent. California universities spent the most in FY12, but Wyoming and Nevada devoted the highest percentage of their R&D spending on environmental science.  The District of Columbia and Maryland spent the most per capita.

During the FY2003-12 period, environmental science academic R&D expenditures grew about 45 percent, but did not keep pace with overall growth in expenditures. Total R&D expenditures grew by about 59 percent in those years. All of the subfields of environmental science increased their spending levels, but only the earth sciences increased their share of all academic research. Earth sciences overtook oceanographic studies as the leading area of study for the first time in FY2012, representing 1.8 percent of all spending. At the same time, oceanography fell from 1.9 percent of expenditures to 1.6 percent.

Because of its overall lead in academic R&D spending, California also leads in environmental science expenditures, which totaled $396 million in FY12. National expenditures totaled $3.2 billion. The second tier of states for environmental research includes Massachusetts, Colorado and Texas, which each invested $240 million to $260 million in FY12. Of these states, Colorado placed the greatest focus on environmental studies, investing 18.4 percent of its total R&D expenditures on research in the field.  Strong programs at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, and University of Colorado, Boulder, led the state’s environmental research efforts.

Among the country’s top twenty states for R&D, Maryland and Massachusetts spent the most by far on environmental science per capita.  Maryland’s research was led by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and Johns Hopkins University.  Massachusetts’ strongest environmental studies center, by a large margin, was the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The second tier for per capita spending on environmental studies in research-focused states includes North Carolina, New York, Colorado and Wisconsin.

SSTI has prepared two tables: the first showing academic R&D expenditures for environmental science and its related subfields from FY2003-12, and the second showing environmental science R&D expenditures by state for FY2012. Download the tables in Excel (xlsx) format…

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Stats Env Sci by State.xlsx