Research is a high priority at Arizona’s colleges and universities. R&D expenditures at the state’s academic institutions totaled $380 million in FY 1995. The federal government was the source of about 55 percent of these funds, which is five percent lower than the national average. In contrast, the share of R&D in Arizona colleges and universities funded by the institutions’ own funds, 33 percent, is well above the national average of 18 percent (see Table 5).

S&E versus R&D Federal academic science and engineering (S&E) includes a broad range of activities.  S&E includes the narrower category of R&D and also encompasses funding for science and engineering education, training, fellowships, facilities support, and all other federally sponsored academic S&E activities.

In terms of total federal support for S&E (see accompanying text box), Arizona’s top three universities received $200 million in FY 1995, 1.4 percent of the national total (see Table 3). 

The University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson is the state’s leading research university. UA received $152 million from the federal government for S&E in FY 1995, placing it 25^th among the nation’s universities (see Table 3). Most of this, $137 million, was for R&D. UA accounts for 77 percent of all the federal R&D funding to Arizona colleges and universities. NIH funds a large part of UA’s research ($58 million in FY 1995). NASA is second with $35 million, NSF is third with $18 million, and DOD follows with $11 million. 

The University of Arizona Health Sciences Center (AHSC) is the recipient of most of the state’s federal funding for health research. AHSC includes colleges of nursing and pharmacy, as well as the University Medical Center. It also includes Arizona’s only university medical school. AHSC is home to eleven "Centers of Excellence," designated by the Arizona Board of Regents, devoted to research, clinical care, and teaching. 

UA’s research is particularly strong in the fields of astronomy and optics. NSF funds many programs in these fields, such as the Arizona Mirror Laboratory, the Steward Observatory, and other activities in the optical sciences. NSF also provides funding for a broad range of other disciplines, from climatology and ecology to environmentally friendly semiconductor manufacturing processes. NSF’s obligations for R&D to UA totaled $18 million in FY 1995. 

In 1988, NASA and UA began operating the university’s Space Engineering Research Center. The Center’s mission is to figure out how to use resources existing in space, like those available on Mars, the Moon, or asteroids. Such In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) could make human space exploration and development easier, cheaper, and faster. 

Receiving $41 million in FY 1995, Arizona State University (ASU) is the state’s second-largest university recipient of federal S&E obligations, placing it at 96^th among U.S. universities (see Table 3). ASU’s main campus is in Tempe, a suburb of Phoenix. ASU focuses more on disciplines such as engineering and computer science than UA, and also conducts research in a broad range of disciplines, including planetary science and health. 

ASU received $33 million in federal R&D funding in FY 1995 (see Table 4). These funds are more evenly distributed at ASU than at many major research universities. NSF provides the largest share of ASU’s federal R&D dollars, accounting for $10 million in FY 1995. NSF funding has created ASU’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, the Central Arizona-Phoenix Urban Long-Term Ecological Research Site and has funded studies of early events in photosynthesis. 

DOD provided $9 million for R&D at ASU in FY 1995; HHS provided $7 million, and NASA $3 million. ASU does not have a medical school, but it conducts research in health and biotechnology through facilities such as the Cancer Research Center and the W. M. Keck Bioimaging Laboratory. 

Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff accounts for the remaining portion of Arizona’s university R&D. NAU spent about $11 million on research in FY 1995 (see Table 5), and received $6 million in federal S&E support in FY 1995. NAU performs federally sponsored activities aimed at improving science and math education and resource conservation and management. 

NAU is home to the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station Flagstaff laboratory and to the U.S. Geological Survey Biological Research Division’s Colorado Plateau Research Station. 

In 1995, Arizona universities awarded over 18,000 bachelors degrees, over one-third of which were in science and engineering (see Table 6). The most popular discipline was the life sciences. Arizona life science graduates accounted for 1.3 percent of all the life science baccalaureate degrees in the United States. 

However, graduates in math and the computer sciences, while smaller in number, account for a much larger portion of the national total. There were 869 math and computer science baccalaureate degrees awarded to Arizona students in 1995, 2.3 percent of the national total. This relative strength remains the same when masters and doctoral degrees are considered as well. 

In 1995, Arizona awarded 445 doctorates in science and engineering, placing it 20^th in the nation. In 1994, Arizona ranked 25^th in the nation in the number of post-doctorates (400 total) and 15^th for graduate students in S&E within doctorate granting institutions (7,661). However, Arizona has only 2 doctoral scientists or engineers employed per 1000 employed persons, placing it 45^th in the nation.