Research funding scene is desperate

Researchers at the University and across the nation say they are facing an increasingly desperate situation as the amount of federal funding for research seems to be swiftly slipping away. Although the federal government continues to increase the research budget for the National Institutes of Health, the federal agency which doles out the most money to universities, these increases have not kept up with demand. Experts say fewer research grants are available, forcing researchers to spend less time on science and more time finding money. "Scientists are excited about projects, but frustrated about the amount of money available for research," said Vice Provost for Research Barry Cooperman. The researchers are "intellectually alive" but can't act on it because "there is not enough money to go around." University scientists this month agreed with Leon Lederman, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, who recently published a report in Science magazine entitled "Science: The End of The Frontier?" stating that U.S. researchers face a desperate funding situation. "For the individual researcher it is hard," University Executive Director of Sponsored Programs Anthony Merrit said this week. "They have to run fast just to stay in place." Officials said that as much as half of some researchers' time is dedicated to writing proposals to receive funding instead of actually working on the research. And several experts said the best graduate students are turning away from what they see as a grim future in research, and experienced researchers are ready to throw in the towel. Last year, the NIH funded the least amount of new grants in a decade. Only 4,848 new grants of 20,281 proposals received sponsorship. In 1975, the NIH funded 61 percent of all grant proposals that passed a screening process. By 1980, this percentage had fallen to 42. By 1985, NIH was only able to fund 37 percent and last year, this fell to 24 percent. Even though NIH's budget has grown from $3.4 billion to $8.3 billion in the last decade, the cost of completing a typical research project has grown just as fast, from $97,800 to $193,900. This rise is due to an increase in the number of people in research writing proposals and in the costs of equipment and facilities. "A lot of good research proposals out there are not being funded," said David Morse, the University's head of federal relations. Morse said he feels the quality of the research has grown, but there has not been a significant increase in money. Researchers are watching their competitors in Germany and Japan receive the funding they need to challenge themselves with research based on American ideas. "The easy research is done," said Sponsored Programs head Merrit. "More demanding and interesting research is needed." According to Economics Professor Edwin Mansfield, the government should spend more money for research since it is important to society in general and not just a university. "I think that there are studies that show that there are societal benefits from academic research," Mansfield. The economics professor added that he found in a study for the National Science Foundation that the introduction of a large percentage of new products and procedures to the market today "would have been delayed considerably in the current research situation." Another contributing factor to the decreasing funds available for new grants is the amount of money already guaranteed to long term projects. In 1989 NIH spent 75 percent of its available funds on continuing research grants. This figure is up from 69 percent in the early 1980's. In addition, the length of the grants has increased from 3.4 years in 1985 to a present length of 4.3 years. The money is therefore tied up for a longer period of time. Still, Congress seems to be paying a great deal of attention to research funding. In its budget for the Fiscal Year 1991, Congress gave NIH nearly $1 billion more than the administration had requested, and put the pressure on NIH to re-organize its budget. Recently, NIH has implemented a new plan to increase the number of research grants that it awards per year. NIH's goal is to award 5,788 new grants this year, and to eventually increase the number of new grants given each year to 6000. Last year, NIH sponsored 4,777 new grants. NIH is also planning to reduce the length of the average grant to 4 years. But without a guaranteed budget increase, NIH could soon bury itself in debt. The Institutes need a seven to nine percent budget increase next year to fund 6000 new grants. Under the new budget, the total amount of NIH grants would grow to 23,400 in 1995 consuming $6.1 billion, instead of the present $4.5 billion. The total budget for the NIH would climb to $10.6 billion. Many researchers are worried about the new plan and claim that scientific quality is at stake if costs must be cut to fund 6000 new grants. If grants were to be rewarded to the lowest bidder, not the researcher with the best scientific merit, the research at private universities where overhead is high will be threatened. But the Chronicle of Higher Education reported last month that NIH officials are reassuring that grant awards will be based only on cost when the quality of two researchers and their proposals are equal. He insists that cuts will be made through case-by-case studies instead of across the board.

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