Medical Schools Get Most Federal R&D

An analysis of federal R&D funds going to universities finds that 45% of those funds go to medical schools. The study, by the Rand Corporation, reports that 126 medical schools received $9.6 billion of the $21.4 billion provided to U.S. colleges and universities in fiscal 2002. It is no surprise then that the Department of Health & Human Services, which includes NIH, provided 67% of all R&D funds to universities. The other five agencies that
accounted for the vast majority of R&D funds and their percentages are NSF with 11%, the Defense Department with 7%, NASA with 5%, the Energy Department with 4%, and USDA with 3%. The study also found that much federal R&D is awarded in the form of contracts and not as grants, a fact that has an impact on intellectual property rights for universities. The Rand analysis was done using its Research & Development in the United States (RaDiUS) database, which was developed to provide the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy with detailed information on the federal government's support for R&D. The complete report is available online at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1824.