(This
analysis is a preview of the NSF chapter in the forthcoming AAAS Report XXXI:
Research and Development FY 2007, a comprehensive look at the President's
budget for R&D in FY 2007. This analysis contains revised AAAS estimates of
NSF R&D, different from figures originally presented in the President's budget.
More tables and continually updated supplemental materials on R&D in the FY
2007 budget can be found on the AAAS R&D Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
Highlights
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) benefits from the Bush Administration’s
American Competitiveness Initiative to boost physical sciences research with a
7.9 percent boost for its budget to $6.0 billion in FY 2007 (see Table
II-7). The requested increase would benefit all disciplines in NSF’s research
portfolio.
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NSF R&D funding (excluding education, training, and overhead costs) would
surge 8.3 percent to $4.5 billion after several years of flat funding to reach
an all-time high in real terms.
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Most research directorates would receive increases between 5 and 9 percent after
several years of flat or declining funding. All the research directorates would
increase average award sizes, numbers of research grants, and success rates for
research grant applications.
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Although the large 2007 boost is intended to be the first year of a 10-year NSF
doubling effort, it is worth remembering that Congress and President Bush agreed
on an NSF authorization in 2002 promising a 5-year doubling effort by 2007; the
2007 request falls nearly $4 billion short of that previous doubling target.
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NSF’s Education and Human Resources (E.H.R.) budget would increase just 2.5 percent
to $816 million in 2007, and would remain 20 percent below the 2004 funding level
in real terms.
NSF R&D in the FY 2007 Budget
President
Bush’s proposed FY 2007 budget proposes substantial increases for key physical
sciences research agencies as part of an “American Competitiveness Initiative”
(ACI) that was first previewed in his State of the Union address in response to
a growing wave of concern about the state of U.S.
innovation. The ACI proposes to double funding for three key physical sciences
agencies over the next decade, and the 2007 budget requests the first installment
of this ambitious plan. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is one of the three
favored agencies (the others are the DOE Office of Science, and the National Institute
of Standards and Technology laboratories), and would receive a substantial increase
in the 2007 budget after years of flat or declining funding.
The
increases would go not only to NSF’s investment in the physical sciences but across
the entire NSF research portfolio, which spans the entire range of science and
engineering disciplines. NSF is the third-largest federal sponsor of physical
sciences research, after DOE and NASA, but is among the top 3 federal funding
agencies for nearly every science and engineering discipline. NSF is the second
largest funding source for R&D at colleges and universities behind only the
NIH, and provides the majority of federal support for basic research at colleges
and universities in the social sciences, environmental sciences, non-medical biology,
mathematics, and computer sciences. For the physical sciences and engineering,
NSF funds more than 40 percent of all federally supported academic basic research.
Most of its funding is in the form of competitively awarded research grants or
competitively awarded research centers.
The
total NSF budget would climb 7.9 percent or $439 million to $6.0 billion (see
Table II-7 and Figure 1) after only a small increase
in 2006 and a cut in 2005. The American Competitiveness Initiative envisions sustained
increases in 2008 and later years leading to a doubling of the NSF budget by 2016,
but as with all budgets the FY 2007 budget request is only for one year of that
vision.
Figure 1.
(click on the image for PDF)
But
on a cautionary note, the ACI doubling vision recalls failed NSF doubling plans
in the past. The most recent one was an NSF authorization law calling for a doubling
of the NSF budget between FY 2002 and FY 2007, which was signed into law in December
2002. Authorizations are only plans and not actual dollars, but unlike the ACI
so far the authorization was written into federal law after agreement from both
Congress and President Bush. But with the return of budget deficits and the subsequent
tightening of domestic budgets, neither the President nor the Congress has provided
anything resembling the authorized amounts in subsequent budgets (see Figure 1).
The authorization envisioned a 2007 NSF budget of $9.8 billion, double the 2002
level, but the FY 2007 request would fall nearly $4 billion short as it resets
the clock to a new doubling plan.
NSF’s R&D funding, which excludes NSF’s education and training activities
and overhead costs (such as polar logistics and administrative salaries), would
total $4.5 billion, a gain of $348 million or 8.3 percent that would bring the
R&D total slightly above 2004 levels in inflation-adjusted terms (see Figure
1), after cuts in 2005 and 2006.
NSF’s
main Research and Related Activities (R&RA) account, which funds nearly
all of NSF’s basic and applied research and contains NSF’s discipline-based research
directorates, would climb 7.7 percent to $4.7 billion (see Table
II-7). Most research directorates would receive increases between 5 and 9
percent after several years of flat or declining funding (see Figure 2). There
would be larger increases for some key programs: the new Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI), a recent spin-off from the Computer
and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate, would see its funding
climb 44 percent to $182 million. OCI supports the procurement, development, and
operation of state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure resources
for the entire research community. The increase would go toward making a petascale
high-performance computing system available, and toward new software and collaborative
tools needed for researchers to take advantage of high-performance computing.
The Office of Polar Programs (OPP), which funds polar research but also provides
logistical support for research activities at both poles and maintains the South
Pole Station, would receive $438 million, a boost of 12.5 percent. The OPP increase
would go to ramp up research during the International Polar Year (2007-2008) and
for increased logistics costs to support that research. OPP would also continue
to fund icebreaker ships necessary for research access to the Arctic and Antarctic;
these had traditionally been funded by the Coast Guard, but in 2006 NSF takes
over funding and would pay the Coast Guard $57 million (down $1 million) in 2007
while the National Academy of Sciences completes a study on how NSF can meet its
future icebreaking needs.
Figure 2.
(click on the image for PDF)
Even
after the substantial 2007 increases, funding for several research directorates
would remain below 2004 levels in real terms because of budget cuts in 2005
and 2006 (see Figure 2). In real terms, funding for the Mathematical and Physical
Sciences (MPS), Geosciences (GEO), Biological Sciences (BIO), and the Social,
Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) directorates would remain below 2004 funding
levels even if the 2007 increases are approved, while the CISE, Polar, and Engineering
(ENG) directorates would reach new highs. Overall, NSF R&D would narrowly
surpass the inflation-adjusted 2004 budget in 2007.
The
Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) account would receive
a 26.0 percent or $50 million boost to $240 million in the 2007 budget (see Table
II-7). MREFC funds only the construction of large scientific facilities; smaller
facilities construction projects, planning and design for future facilities, research
instrumentation grants, and facilities operations are funded in R&RA by the
research directorates. From funding just 4 projects in 2006, the MREFC increase
would allow funding for 8 projects, two of them new starts. Construction of the
Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA; an astronomy project),
EarthScope (earth sciences), IceCube (a neutrino observatory at the South Pole), and the
Scientific Ocean Drilling Vessel (SODV, for ocean research) would continue in
FY 2007, while the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), a long-delayed
ecological research project, may finally receive construction funding in FY 2007
and the South Pole Station Modernization (SPSM) project would resume in 2007 after
a funding pause. The two new starts would be the Alaska Region Research Vessel,
a $56 million request to replace an aging arctic research vessel, and the Ocean
Observatories Initiative, a $14 million request to build an integrated ocean observing
network.
The
total NSF investment in R&D facilities and major equipment would be $473 million
in 2007, an $80 million increase. Outside MREFC, the largest other source of funding
would be the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program in the R&RA Integrative
Activities account. MRI would receive $90 million in 2007, up $1.6 million from
the current year, to distribute competitively awarded instrumentation grants to
institutions for state-of-the-art research instrumentation that would be too costly
to be funded through regular NSF research awards.
NSF
education and human resources programs would increase modestly, but would remain
20 percent below 2004 levels in real terms. NSF proposes an Education and Human Resources (EHR) budget of $816 million, up a relatively
modest 2.5 percent. But since the EHR budget was $945 million as recently as 2004,
the 2007 increase would do little to reverse steep cuts in the past two years
(see Figure 2). Much of the fall is due to a shift in the Math and Science Partnerships
(MSP) program from a joint Department of Education (ED)-NSF program to an Education-only
one. The NSF contribution was $139 million in 2004 but has declined steadily since
then and would decline further to just $46 million in 2007, while the ED program
is now $182 million and would remain at that level in 2007. The EHR budget would
be restructured in 2007 and most program areas would receive increases. The Experimental
Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) would
receive $100 million, up slightly. EPSCOR assists research institutions and states
that have traditionally been underrepresented in federal R&D funding to build
research capacity. The program is currently open to 24 states, Puerto
Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Through its research directorates, NSF would expand its participation in
several multi-agency initiatives in 2007. NSF’s contribution as the lead agency
in the National Nanotechnology Initiative would climb 8.4 percent to $373 million
in 2007, with major funding split between Engineering (ENG) and Mathematics and
Physical Sciences (MPS). NSF is also the lead agency in the Networking and Information
Technology R&D (NITRD) initiative; NSF’s contribution would jump 11.6 percent
to $904 million, with the majority of support coming from CISE and OCI. NSF also
participates in the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) with a $205 million
contribution (up 4.1 percent), mostly from the Geosciences (GEO) directorate.
NSF Funding Mechanisms
The large proposed increases for the research directorates would begin
to reverse recent declines in competitively awarded research grants. Looking only at competitively awarded research
grants, NSF’s core funding mechanism, NSF expects to fund 6,760 research grants
next year, a 9 percent increase over 2006, while at the same time increasing the
average award size to $148,300 (up 3.7 percent) after several years of flat funding.
After several years of declining success rates, NSF projects that it will fund
21 percent of research grant proposals, up slightly from 20 percent the last two
years. The broad-based increases would allow every research directorate to increase
the three key measures of the number of research grants, the average grant size,
and the projected success rate. For grant numbers, CISE, ENG, and the new Office
of Cyberinfrastructure would all see increases greater
than 10 percent.
Outlook for the NSF Budget
Because
the American Competitiveness Initiative is a high priority in the FY 2007 budget,
NSF would receive an increase even as most other domestic agencies face cuts within
a declining domestic budget. Looking to the future, the Bush Administration’s
outyear budget projections show that in the push to reduce
the budget deficit in half over the next few years, funding for most domestic
programs would decline each year to 2011, but funding for NSF and the other two
ACI programs would continue to increase in the outyears.
The projections show the NSF budget increasing steadily from $6.0 billion in 2007
up to $7.9 billion by 2011. After adjusting for inflation, NSF would gain 31 percent
over the next five years. Although budgets are always determined one year at a
time, and Congress has not even acted on the first installment for 2007, Congress
has so far been supportive of the Administration’s proposed 2007 increase for
NSF, and key appropriators have promised to sustain most if not all of the increase
in 2007 appropriations. Thus, the outlook for the NSF budget is brighter than
it has been for several years.
(More
materials on R&D in the FY 2007 budget, historical data and charts, and more
information on AAAS Report XXXI: Research and Development FY 2007, can
be found on the AAAS R&D Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
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February 23, 2006
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Avenue,
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Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS R&D Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
