(This analysis is a preview of the NSF chapter
in the forthcoming AAAS Report XXX: Research and Development FY
2006, a comprehensive look at the President’s budget for R&D in
FY 2006. This analysis contains revised AAAS estimates of NSF R&D,
different from figures presented in the AAAS Preliminary
Analysis of February 10. More tables and continually updated supplemental
materials on R&D in the FY 2006 budget can be found on the AAAS R&D
Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
Highlights
- The National Science Foundation
(NSF) budget, after declining in 2005, would receive a modest increase of 2.4
percent to $5.6 billion, far short of the $8.5 billion authorized by law.
- NSF R&D
would increase 2.8 percent to $4.2 billion (see Table
II-7), but most of the increase would go to R&D facilities construction,
leaving just a 1.2 percent increase for NSF support of research.
- Most NSF research directorates would receive increases of about 1 percent
in 2006, but the increases would still leave most research programs
at or below 2004 funding levels (see Table
II-7).
- NSF’s education
and training programs would suffer steep cuts for the second year in
a row, especially pre-college education programs.
- The Major Research
Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) account would enjoy a
sizeable increase, going from $174 million to $250 million despite the
lack of new starts.
- The small increases for the research directorates would squeeze NSF funding
of competitively awarded research grants. The total number of research
grants would increase to 6,310 in FY 2006, but would remain below 2004
numbers. Competition for grants would remain difficult: NSF expects
to make awards to just one in five applications this year. Even successful
applicants may be disappointed: the average size of an NSF research
grant would fall in FY 2006 for the second year in a row.
Overview of the NSF Budget: Tough Times Continue
The FY 2006 budget request of $5.6 billion for NSF would be a $132 million
(or 2.4 percent) increase over this year’s budget (see Table
II-7). But the FY 2005 budget signed into law in December contained
a similarly-sized cut, leaving NSF with roughly the same budget in 2004
as in 2006.
An authorization
bill calling for a doubling of the NSF budget between FY 2002 and FY
2007 was signed into law in December 2002, but the FY 2005 appropriation
continued a recent trend of falling far short of the authorized level
(see Figure 1). The gap widens even further in the FY 2006 budget to $2.9 billion, the
distance between the $5.6 billion request and the $8.5 billion authorization,
effectively killing the goal of a $9.8 billion NSF budget by FY 2007.
NSF’s R&D funding, which excludes education and training activities
and overhead costs, would total $4.2 billion, an increase of 2.8 percent
or $113 million after a cut in 2005 (see Table
II-7). Most of the increase would go to R&D facilities construction,
leaving NSF support of research at $3.7 billion, up just 1.2 percent
and below the $3.8 billion 2004 investment.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
The Research and Related Activities (R&RA) account, which funds most
of NSF’s R&D, would receive $4.3 billion, 2.7 percent or $113 million
more than FY 2005. Much of the increase would be due to a proposed transfer
of $48 million in Coast Guard costs for icebreakers to the Office of
Polar Programs. Subtracting this transfer, most
of the research directorates
would receive increases of about 1 percent, with only the Engineering
(ENG) directorate proposed for an increase greater than inflation at
3.5 percent. Coming after budget cuts in 2005, the
2006 budget would leave most NSF research programs at or below 2004
funding levels.
The Integrative
Activities (IA) account within R&RA would increase by $5 million
to $135 million. Within the IA account, funding for the Major Research
Instrumentation (MRI) program would stay at $90 million in FY 2006 after
falling from $110 million in 2004. The MRI program awards competitive
grants to universities and colleges to purchase laboratory equipment
and instrumentation; in response to congressional concerns, at least
$20 million of the funding would go toward minority-serving institutions.
Also in IA, Science of Learning Centers is a relatively new program
for learning research across disciplines, with $23 million next year
compared to $20 million this year.
NSF participation in the National Nanotechnology Initiative would increase
modestly by 1.8 percent to $344 million across the directorates,
with major funding for this initiative split between Engineering (ENG)
and Mathematics and Physical Sciences (MPS). Overall NSF participation
in another multi-agency initiative, Networking and Information Technology
R&D (NITRD), would barely increase to $803 million, up 1.0 percent.
Most of NSF’s contribution to the seven-agency NITRD investment would
take place in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)
directorate, proposed for only a 1.1 percent gain to $621 million.
NSF’s Education and Human Resources (EHR) programs would receive $737 million,
down a dramatic $104 million from this year after an identical cut in
the 2005 budget. Hardest hit in FY 2006 would be Elementary, Secondary
and Information Education programs at a proposed $141 million, down
23 percent from this year after a similar cut in the 2005 budget. NSF’s
Undergraduate Education programs would also fall, by 12 percent to $132
million after another cut in 2005. There would also be a proposed cut
of $19 million from NSF’s contribution to the Math
and Science Partnerships (MSP) program. The MSP program, run jointly
by NSF and the Department of Education, encourages academic institutions
and schools to work together to improve math and science education.
The FY 2006 budget requests $269 million for the $150 million fthe Department
of Education’s (ED) share of the program, up dramatically from $179
million this year. Combined, the MSP programs would receive $329 million
in FY 2006, up 27.5 percent from $258 million this year, and would reflect
the Bush Administration’s desire to shift the emphasis of the program
toward ED. The FY 2006 budget contains $94 million for the Experimental
Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR),
the same as this 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 24 states,
Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
NSF Funding Mechanisms
The small increases for the research directorates would squeeze NSF funding
of competitively awarded research grants. The success rate for NSF research grant applications
would be 21 percent in FY 2006, essentially unchanged from 2005
and 2004. Among some directorates, the odds of success would be even
lower. ENG expects to fund only 18 percent of its research grant applications,
while CISE would fund 16 percent; both directorates’ success rates would
be up from just 15 percent last year and this year.
For successful
applicants, the good news is that NSF has made it a high priority to
increase the average duration of a research grant. The average grant
would stay at 3.0 years in 2006, with similar trends in all the research
directorates.
The bad news
for successful applicants, however, is that many research grant awards
would fail to keep pace with inflation. The
0.2 percent average cut for NSF research grants between FY 2005 and
FY 2006 to $136,800 would follow a similar cut in 2005, and would leave
nearly all NSF research directorates with the same average research
grant size from 2004 through 2006 with no allowance for inflation.
NSF would expand its support of R&D facilities to $429 million in
FY 2006, an increase of 18.5 percent. There would be $250 million
for the Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction
(MREFC) account, up a dramatic 44 percent from $174 million this year.
Although there are no proposed new starts in FY 2006, there would be
dramatic increases for two FY 2005 starts. The Scientific Ocean Drilling
Vessel project would receive $58 million, up from $15 million; the Rare
Symmetry Violating Processes (RSVP) project would receive $42 million,
up from $15 million. The other three projects in MREFC (the Atacama
Large Millimeter Array, EarthScope, and the
IceCube Neutrino Observatory) would continue at this year’s
levels in FY 2006. Two more projects (Ocean Observatories Initiative
and the Alaska Region Research Vessel) were proposed for FY 2006 starts
in last year’s budget plan, but are now queued up for FY 2007 starts.
The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) has been in past
requests but has yet to be funded by Congress; in this request, NSF
has pushed NEON funding back to FY 2007. The MREFC appropriation only
pays for the construction of major R&D facilities; the $429 million
total facilities investment takes in design and development of future
facilities and operational costs of existing user facilities, which
are open to the general scientific and engineering community for research.
Outside the MREFC, the largest part of the facilities investment would
be $114 million for the Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure
(PACI) to create and operate a national cyberinfrastructure
of state-of-the-art computing, communications, and information resources
for research and education.
NSF Research Portfolio and Performers
NSF is the only federal agency with responsibility for
research in all major science and engineering fields. As shown in Figure
2, NSF has 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.
Figure 2. (click
on the image for PDF)
The evenly distributed
FY 2006 increase, however small, should benefit NSF support for most
science and engineering disciplines after evenly distributed cuts in
FY 2005. In the past, NSF has distributed its increases unevenly depending
on then-current research priorities. 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 because of the growth in IT and nanotechnology research.
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 and 2006 budgets, falling short of inflation,
would lead to an erosion of NSF support for most research disciplines
back down to levels last seen in the last decade.
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 81
percent of its R&D support 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 NIH, and dominates federal
support in most non-biomedical fields.
Outlook and Historical Trends
NSF has enjoyed mostly steady budget growth over the past
several decades, as shown in Figure 3. 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 budget over five years, culminating
in the NSF authorization bill of December 2002. But budget growth slowed
down to just ahead of the inflation rate in FY 2004, and reverses with
the FY 2005 budget’s cuts. The FY 2006 request would keep NSF R&D
just ahead of inflation, but only because of R&D facilities investments.
As noted earlier, these smaller increases or cuts in recent years have
put the NSF budget further and further behind the authorized doubling
path and have created downward pressures on NSF grant sizes and success
rates. While there is strong political pressure for Congress to approve
a budget more consistent with the authorized funding track, lawmakers
have been stymied by tight restraints on overall domestic discretionary
spending. In FY 2006, with overall domestic spending proposed to decline,
the restraints will be even tighter. In 2005, tight competition for
scarce resources led Congress to go below the agency’s request (see
Figure 3), a scenario that already seems likely
in the FY 2006 appropriations process.
Figure 3. (click
on the image for PDF)
- February 28, 2005
(More materials on R&D in the FY 2006 budget, historical data and
charts, and more information on AAAS Report XXX: R&D FY 2006,
can be found on the AAAS R&D web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
AAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
www.aaas.org/spp/rd
