Institutional Collaboration Grows

Research involving multiple institutions in the U.S. has grown substantially over the past decade, according to a new analysis from NSF’s National Center for Science & Engineering Statistics. The analysis looks at how much money passed from one research institution or university to another for collaborative projects from fiscal 2000 to 2009. The amount of R&D dollars that universities sent to other research sites more than doubled in that period, from $1.4 billion in fiscal 2000 to $3.8 billion in fiscal 2009, when adjusted for inflation. At the same time, overall R&D expenditures rose by a smaller margin, 47%. This means funding for collaborative projects grew faster than that for overall research. Private research universities were more likely to pass along R&D funds to others, and money from other research centers also made up a larger proportion of private universities’ budgets, the report states.