Highlights
- The National Science Foundation (NSF) budget falls in FY 2005 down to
$5.5 billion, $105 million or 1.9 percent less than last year and $272
million less than the request (see Table).
Most research directorates see
their budgets fall between 1.5 and 2.0 percent.
- The NSF budget
of $5.5 billion would be far short of the $7.4 billion FY 2005 authorization
signed into law 19 months ago as part of a plan to double the NSF budget
in the five years to FY 2007, and could permanently end any hopes of
achieving the doubling.
- NSF’s R&D funding totals $4.1 billion in FY 2005, a cut of 0.3 percent
(see Table).
- Major Research
Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) is the only account to
enjoy a sizeable increase, going from $155 million to $174 million for
five large projects.
- Congress moved funding for the Math and Science Partnerships back to its traditional home in Education
and Human Resources (E.H.R) instead of the NSF proposal to move it to
the Research and Related Activities (R&RA) account, but cut its
funding from $140 million down to $80 million.
- The cuts to the research directorates would cut deeply into NSF funding
of competitively awarded research grants. The total number of NSF
research grants would fall, and the competition for them would get more
difficult. In its budget request, NSF already expected to make awards
to less than one in four applications this year, and the final appropriation
would result in even tougher odds.
NSF R&D in FY 2005 Final Appropriations
On November
20, Congress came to an agreement on an FY 2005 omnibus appropriations
bill (HR 4818), which incorporates the final version of the FY 2005
VA-HUD appropriations bill. The House is expected to give final approval
on December 6, and President Bush is expected to sign the bill into
law on December 8. The omnibus bill keeps funding for domestic programs
flat in FY 2005; the National Science Foundation (NSF) budget is caught
in the squeeze, especially after factoring in a 0.80 percent across-the-board
cut for most domestic programs. (All figures in this analysis reflect
the across-the-board cut.) The omnibus provides NSF with a total budget
of $5.5 billion in FY 2005, $105 million or 1.9 percent below FY 2004.
An NSF authorization bill calling for a doubling of the NSF budget between
FY 2002 and FY 2007 was signed into law in December 2003, but the final
FY 2005 budget falls almost $2 billion short of the $7.4 billion authorized
funding level for FY 2005, putting the NSF doubling goal well out of
reach in these tough budgetary times. (For
details of R&D in the FY 2005 request, please see Chapter
7 of AAAS Report XXIX: R&D
FY 2005 or the February 26 AAAS R&D
Funding Update.)
NSF’s R&D funding, which excludes NSF’s education and training activities
and overhead costs, totals $4.1 billion in FY 2005, a cut of 0.3 percent
or $14 million (see Table). It is the
first cut to NSF’s R&D programs since FY 1996.
Congress decided
to cut the Research and Related Activities (R&RA)
account, which funds most of NSF’s R&D. R&RA funding falls $31
million or 0.7 percent down to $4.2 billion, $152 million short of the
modest requested increase. The
budgets of the research directorates fall between 1.5 and 2.0 percent,
except for Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) Sciences with a 6.2
percent increase and Polar Programs, which Congress directs to receive
$347 million, an increase of 1.4 percent (see Table).
Congress rejects the Administration proposal to transfer the Math and Science Partnerships (MSP) from Education
and Human Resources (E.H.R) to the Integrative Activities (IA) account.
Congress keeps the Partnerships in E.H.R. at a level of $80 million,
down substantially from $139 million this year but the same as the request.
The MSP program, run jointly by NSF and the Department of Education
(ED), encourages academic institutions and schools to work together
to improve math and science education. In the omnibus bill, Congress
agrees with the Bush Administration’s desire to shift the emphasis of
the program toward ED, even as it keeps the NSF share in E.H.R. The
FY 2005 omnibus provides $180 million for the $150 million fthe Department
of Education’s share of the program, up from $149 million this year.
Combined, the MSP programs receive $260 million in FY 2005, down from
$288 million last year.
NSF’s Education and Human Resources (EHR) programs receive $841 million,
down more than 10 percent from last year. Most of the decline is due
to the shift in MSP funding to the Department of Education. The final
FY 2005 appropriation contains $94 million for the Experimental Program
to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR),
the same level as last year. 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
25 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The one increase in the final FY 2005 NSF budget goes to NSF’s support
of R&D facilities. NSF receives $174 million for the Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) account,
up from $155 million this year though well short of the $213 million
request. Congress agreed to two of the three proposed starts (the Scientific
Ocean Drilling Vessel and Rare Symmetry Violating Processes (RSVP)), with the other proposed start (the National Ecological Observatory
Network (NEON)) a casualty of tight budget constraints. Congress keeps
planning and design for NEON alive in the R&RA account at $6 million
in anticipation of future MREFC funding. Congress boosts funding for
the IceCube Neutrino Detector Observatory from $42 million this
year to $48 million in FY 2005 in order to accelerate the timetable
for this project at the South Pole. EarthScope
($47 million) and the Atacama Large Millimeter
Array ($49 million) are the other two projects to receive MREFC funds
in FY 2005.
NSF Funding Mechanisms
The approved cuts to most of the research directorates would seriously
squeeze NSF funding of competitively awarded research grants. Even with the requested increase for NSF proposed
by the Bush Administration in February, NSF estimated that the success
rate for research grant applications would dip to 23 percent in
FY 2005, down one percentage point from the past few years. Among some
directorates, the odds of success would be even lower. The Engineering
directorate (ENG) expected to fund only 15 percent of its research grant
applications, while Biological Sciences (BIO) would fund less than one
in five (19 percent), both down one percentage point from this year.
The final FY 2005 appropriation would almost certainly lead to far lower
success rates in FY 2005 grant competitions.
Although the
number of research grants awarded has been on a steady upward trend
in recent years, NSF expected in its request to fund only 6,145
research grants in FY 2005, down by 72 from this year’s expected total;
NSF research grants could dip below 6,000 in the final FY 2005 budget.
Even with the requested increase, BIO and ENG expected large declines,
and Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) a small decline. The congressional
appropriation would also jeopardize NSF plans to increase the average
duration of a research grant from 2.9 years to 3.0 years.
Outlook and Historical Trends
NSF has enjoyed
mostly steady budget growth over the past 15 years, as shown in Figure
1. After declines in the mid-1990s in the push toward a balanced budget,
growth resumed after FY 1998 and momentum began to build to double the
NSF budget over five years, culminating in the NSF authorization bill
of December 2002. But NSF budget growth slowed down to just ahead of
the inflation rate in FY 2004, and reverses in the final FY 2005 budget.
Recent budgets have put NSF further and further behind the authorized
doubling path and have created downward pressures on NSF grant sizes
and success rates.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
Impacts of the NSF R&D Portfolio
Figure 2. (click
on the image for PDF)
NSF is
the only federal agency with responsibility for research in all major
science and engineering fields. As shown in Figure 2, NSF has historically
had a balanced research portfolio covering the breadth of science and engineering.
In most fields, NSF is the largest or second-largest source of federal
funding. In the past, NSF has distributed its increases unevenly depending
on then-current research priorities, as shown in Figure 2. In particular,
NSF support for computer sciences research has increased dramatically
over the past decade, as fundamental IT research has grown as a national
priority. NSF support of engineering research has also grown substantially
over the last decade, boosted even more in recent years with growth
in nanotechnology support. But in many disciplines, NSF support is only
now recovering from the lean years of the mid-1990s when NSF support
for the physical sciences, environmental sciences, the non-medical life
sciences, and mathematics actually fell. The FY 2005 budget could see
support fall for all disciplines except the social sciences.
NSF’s longstanding
leadership role in federal support of basic research continues to have
a big impact on the nation’s colleges
and universities. NSF sends 80 percent of its R&D money to colleges
and universities, by far the highest ratio of any R&D funding agency.
NSF is the second-largest federal supporter of academic R&D, behind
the NIH, and dominates federal support in most non-biomedical fields.
NSF operates no laboratories of its own, but spends 8 percent of its
R&D budget at federally funded R&D centers (FFRDCs),
government-owned but contractor-operated laboratories including the
National Corporation for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the National
Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).
Figure 3. (click
on the image for PDF)
Because of the concentration
of research-intensive universities that win large numbers of competitive
research grants in only a few states, NSF spending is highly concentrated
(see Figure 3). Seven states collectively win a majority of NSF’s R&D
funds. The NSF EPSCoR program aims to help states that have traditionally
received fewer NSF funds to become more competitive in grant and center
competitions. Collectively, the 25 NSF EPSCoR
states (and Puerto Rico) received 11.5 percent
of NSF’s R&D portfolio in FY 2002, far less than California
alone.
Outlook
The omnibus bill’s
cuts to the NSF budget are likely to be signed into law the week of
December 6, bringing to a close a disappointing budget season for NSF.
(This analysis is one of a series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on the FY 2005 congressional appropriations
process. The complete series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including
continually updated analyses of R&D by agency in FY 2005 appropriations,
is available on the AAAS R&D Web Site
(http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the “FY 2005
R&D” or the “What’s New” sections.)
- December 2, 2004
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
www.aaas.org/spp/rd
