(This analysis is a preview of the
NSF chapter in the forthcoming AAAS Report XXXII: Research and Development
FY 2008, a comprehensive look at the President's budget for R&D in FY
2008. 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 2008 budget can be found on
the AAAS R&D Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
Highlights
-
The National Science Foundation (NSF) benefits from the second year of the
Bush Administration’s American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) with an 8.7 percent
boost in its total budget to $6.4 billion in 2008, after a recently finalized
similar boost in 2007 (see Table II-7).
Most research directorates would receive increases between 4 and 9
percent for the second year in a row.
-
NSF R&D investments (excluding education, training, and overhead costs) would
total $4.9 billion, an 8.3 percent increase to an all-time high in real terms.
- All the
research directorates would increase average award sizes, numbers of research
grants, and success rates for research grant applications in 2008.
-
NSF’s Education and Human Resources (E.H.R.) budget would increase 7.5 percent
to $751 million in 2008 after remaining flat in 2007, but would remain 19 percent
below the 2004 funding level in real terms.
NSF R&D in the FY 2008 Budget
Over a year ago, President Bush announced in his
FY 2007 budget a proposal to substantially increase funding for key physical sciences
research agencies over ten years as part of an “American Competitiveness Initiative”
(ACI), designed in part to address a growing wave of concern about the state of
U.S. innovation.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) was one of three ACI agencies (the others
are the DOE Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology
laboratories) favored with a requested increase of 8 percent for its budget, but
because of congressional delays in wrapping up 2007 appropriations NSF only received
its final 2007 budget last week on February 15, 4 ½ months into the fiscal year.
NSF received most of what it asked for, the requested increases for its research
programs but flat funding for its facilities construction and education and human
resources programs.
The
FY 2008 NSF budget, already released earlier this month, builds on the first year
of the ACI with a second year of increases for most programs. The total NSF
budget of $6.4 billion in 2008 would be $513 million or 8.7 percent more than
the final 2007 funding level. (All figures in this analysis reflect final
2007 appropriations as signed into law on February 15.) 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 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (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 National Institutes of Health (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.
Thus, the broad-based increases in 2007 and 2008 would have a major impact on
nearly all science and engineering disciplines, especially at universities.
After
adjusting for inflation, the 2008 increase would enable NSF funding to narrowly
reach an all-time high (see Figure 1). After peaking in 2004, NSF funding fell
in 2005 and 2006 but would rise for the second year in a row in 2008.
Figure
1. (click on the image for PDF)
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 $4.9 billion, a gain of $374 million or 8.3 percent over the final 2007
appropriation that would bring the R&D total slightly above 2004 in inflation-adjusted
terms (see Figure 1), after cuts in 2005 and 2006 and a rebound in 2007.
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 $5.1 billion (see Table
II-7). Most research directorates would receive increases between 4 and 9
percent for the second year in a row 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 9.6 percent to $200 million. OCI supports the procurement,
development, and operation of state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure
resources for the entire research community. Its sister CISE directorate would
gain 9.0 percent. OCI and CISE would take the lead in a new Cyber-enabled Discovery
and Innovation (CDI) initiative to develop computationally based concepts and
tools to deal with complex systems. The Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS)
and Engineering (ENG), strong supporters along with CISE and OCI of the physical
sciences broadly defined that are the ACI’s focus, would
gain 8.9 percent and 8.7 percent, respectively. Moving away from the physical
sciences, the gains become smaller, dropping to 6.3 percent for the Geosciences
(GEO) directorate (to $792 million) down to modest increases for the Biological
Sciences (BIO) directorate (up 4.1 percent) and Social, Behavioral, and Economic
Sciences (SBE; up 3.9 percent).
Within
R&RA, the Integrative Activities (IA) account would climb 14.6 percent to
$263 million, primarily from a $24 million or 27.2 percent increase in Major Research
Instrumentation (MRI), a program 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. The Experimental
Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) would
move to IA and receive $107 million, up $7 million. 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; collectively, the EPSCoR
states received just 10.4 percent of NSF R&D funds in FY 2004.
Figure
2. (click on the image for PDF)
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 $465 million, a boost of 6.1 percent. The OPP increase would build
on a larger increase in 2007 to ramp up research during the International Polar
Year (2007-2008) and for increased logistics costs to support that research. Away
from the poles, NSF would invest a new $17 million in oceans research in GEO to
address important issues in ocean research identified recently by a multi-agency
Ocean Research Priorities Plan.
Even
after the substantial 2007 and 2008 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 Geosciences (GEO) and
Biological Sciences (BIO) would remain below 2004 levels, while the computer sciences,
social sciences, mathematics and physical sciences, polar, and engineering directorates
would reach new highs, though just narrowly.
The
Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) account would receive
a $54 million boost to $245 million in 2008 to fund 7 projects (see Table II-7).
A similar proposed boost in 2007 became flat funding in the final 2007 appropriation.
MREFC funds only the construction of large scientific facilities; smaller facilities
projects, planning and design for future facilities, research instrumentation
grants, and facilities operations are funded in R&RA by the research directorates.
Although final plans for 2007 have not been announced, NSF will try to initiate
three projects in 2007 (the Ocean Observatories Initiative, the National Ecological
Observatory Network, and the Alaska Region Research Vessel) if sufficient funds
are available. In 2008, NSF would start the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational
Wave Observatory (AdvLIGO), an upgrade to the existing
LIGO in Washington and West
Virginia of the world’s most sophisticated optical interferometers,
with a $33 million allocation.
NSF
education and human resources programs would increase $52 million or 7.5 percent
to $751 million, but would remain 19 percent below 2004 levels in real terms after
steep cuts in 2005 and 2006 and flat funding in 2007 (see Figure 2). In a
reversal of past budgets, NSF would sustain the Math and Science Partnerships
(MSP) program as a joint Department of Education (ED)-NSF program after seeking
to transition the program to an Education-only one in previous years. The NSF
contribution was $139 million in 2004 but has declined steadily since then and
declined further to just $46 million in 2007; the 2008 request would stay at $46
million, but would allow $30 million for new grants. The ED portion of the program
remains at $182 million in 2008.
Through its research directorates, NSF would expand its participation in
several multi-agency initiatives in 2008. NSF’s contribution as the lead agency
in the National Nanotechnology Initiative would climb 4.6 percent to $390 million
in 2008, with major funding split between ENG and MPS. NSF is also the lead agency
in the Networking and Information Technology R&D (NITRD) initiative; NSF’s
contribution would jump 10.0 percent to $994 million, with the majority of support
coming from CISE and OCI. NSF also participates in the Climate Change Science
Program (CCSP) with a $208 million contribution (up 1.5 percent), mostly from
GEO.
NSF Funding Mechanisms
The large proposed increases for the research directorates would mean
a second year of gains 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 7,435
research grants next year, an 8 percent increase, while at the same time increasing
the average award size to $147,200 (up 3.0 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
in 2007. The broad-based increases would allow every research directorate (excluding
the new OCI) to increase the three key measures of the number of research grants,
the average grant size, and the projected success rate.
NSF Research Portfolio and Performers
NSF is the only federal agency with responsibility for
research in all major science and engineering fields. NSF has a balanced
research portfolio covering the breadth of science and engineering, with
roughly equal shares for the broad disciplinary groupings of physical sciences,
environmental sciences, engineering, and mathematics/computer sciences, followed
closely by biological sciences. In most fields, NSF is the largest or second-largest
source of federal funding.
Figure
3. (click on the image for PDF)
The
FY 2007 and proposed FY 2008 increases should benefit NSF support for most science
and engineering disciplines after cuts in 2005 and 2006 (see Figure 3, with data
through 2006 only). 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. The 2007 and 2008 budgets, with their relatively evenly distributed
increases, should bring funding for most disciplines in Figure 3 above or near
their 2004 peak funding levels.
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 79 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 the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and dominates
federal support in most non-biomedical fields.
Outlook for the NSF Budget
The
2008 NSF budget now goes to the 110th Congress, which just this month
endorsed a large increase for the agency in the joint funding resolution that
wrapped up 2007 appropriations. The delayed but ultimately positive 2007 appropriations
cycle for NSF portends well for another substantial increase for NSF in 2008.
Now that both the Bush Administration and the Congress have expressed support
for the ACI, the outlook for sustained increases for NSF next year and in future
years is the brightest it has been in a decade.
(More
materials on R&D in the FY 2008 budget, historical data and charts, and more
information on AAAS Report XXXII: Research and Development FY 2008, can
be found on the AAAS R&D Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
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February 21, 2007
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
