Academic Research

Greg Jones

Ever since the end of World War II, academic research has been a fixture of all major universities. Universities are a logical place to conduct research because they offer a nexus of higher level thinkers, centralized facilities, and hundreds of students more than willing to work ungodly hours if professors need help. Ever since research began in major universities across America, most of the funding has come from the federal government. In the article Federal Spending on Academic Research Rose Slightly in 2008, Charles Huckabee (the author) explains that while the amount of federal funding for academic research indeed increased, the overall amount spent on academic research increased much more. The data for this article was collected by the National Science Foundation. The foundation breaks the funding down into which department of the federal government is doing the funding and what is being researched with their funds as well as which institutions receive the most funding (Georgia Tech is number 19 out of the public institutions in federal funding).

What does this mean to administrators and students of these research institutions? It means that the administrators must look to other sources for the funding they require for research. In a time of economic turmoil, funding from industry been surprisingly forthcoming, increasing at a faster rate than funding from the federal government. Other sources of funding for academic research include state and local governments and universities themselves. For students, this decrease in the percentage of funding by the federal government means that unless other sources of funding are found there will be less academic research opportunities for undergraduates at universities across America. Academic research is vital to the furtherance of science and technology and administrators need to begin searching for new ways of funding it if the increased spending trend is to continue.