(This analysis is a preview of the
NSF chapter in the forthcoming AAAS Report XXXIII: Research and Development
FY 2009, a comprehensive look at the President's budget for R&D in FY
2009. 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 2009 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 Administration’s American
Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) with a 13.6 percent boost for its total budget
to $6.9 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2009 (see Table II-7),
an especially large increase designed to keep NSF on track to double its budget
between 2006 and 2016 after appropriations setbacks in 2007 and 2008. NSF’s
R&D investments would total $5.2 billion, a 15.5 percent increase to an all-time
high in real terms.
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All of NSF’s research directorates would receive large increases in 2009
after flat funding in 2008, and all would recover from budget cuts after 2004
to reach all-time highs in inflation-adjusted dollars (see Figure 2). The 2009
NSF request clearly favors the physical sciences, with requested increases approaching
20 percent for the Mathematics and Physical Sciences (MPS; up 20 percent), Engineering
(ENG; up 19 percent), and Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE;
up 20 percent) directorates (see Table II-7). The
Biological Sciences (BIO; up 10 percent), Geosciences (GEO; up 13 percent), and
especially the Social, Beahvioral and Economic Sciences (SBE; up 9 percent) would
lag behind but would narrowly match past funding levels.
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NSF’s education and human resources programs would gain 9 percent to $790 million.
NSF R&D in the FY 2009 Budget
In his final budget proposal
for FY 2009, President Bush would follow through on his 2006 call to substantially
increase funding for key physical sciences research agencies over ten years as
part of an “American Competitiveness Initiative” (ACI) by keeping the National
Science Foundation (NSF) budget on track to double between 2006 and 2016, despite
appropriations setbacks in 2007 and 2008. NSF is one of three agencies (the others
are the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science,
and the National Institute of Standards and Technology
laboratories) favored with large requested increases as part of the ACI.
Although
NSF and the other ACI agencies received less than requested in the last two appropriations
seasons, the FY 2009 request presses ahead with the ACI vision. NSF would receive
a total budget of $6.9 billion in FY 2009, $822 million or 13.6 percent more than
2008 (see Table II-7). Although increases for
NSF’s physical sciences-related programs would lead the pack, there would be increases
across the entire NSF research portfolio, which spans the range of science and
engineering disciplines, and increases for NSF’s education and human resources
programs as well. 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 the 2009 budget could have a major impact on nearly all
science and engineering disciplines, especially at universities.
After
adjusting for inflation, the 2009 requested increase would bring the NSF budget
to an all-time high in inflation-adjusted terms (see Figure 1). After peaking
in 2004, NSF funding fell in 2005 and 2006 but rose in 2007 and 2008 after Congress
approved some though not all of the Bush Administration’s requested ACI increases.
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 $5.2 billion, a gain of 15.5 percent
or $696 million that would also be an all-time high (see Table
II-7 and Figure 1).
Figure 1. (click on the image for
PDF)
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 increase 16.4 percent to $5.6
billion (see Table II-7). All of NSF’s research
directorates would receive large increases in 2009 after flat funding in 2008,
and all would recover from budget cuts after 2004 to reach all-time highs in inflation-adjusted
dollars (see Figure 2). The 2009 NSF request clearly favors the physical sciences,
with requested increases approaching 20 percent for the largest Mathematics and
Physical Sciences (MPS) directorate (up 20 percent to $1.4 billion), the Engineering
(ENG) directorate (up 19 percent to $759 million), and the Computer and Information
Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate (up 20 percent to $639 million; see
Table II-7). The Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI) would also see a strong gain
with a 19 percent boost to $220 million. OCI supports the procurement, development,
and operation of state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure resources for the entire
research community. Funding for all of these physical sciences-oriented directorates
would hit all-time highs in real dollars.
The
increases would be smaller but still substantial for other NSF research directorates
away from the physical sciences. The Biological Sciences (BIO; up 10 percent to
$675 million), Geosciences (GEO; up 13 percent to $849 million), and especially
the Social, Beahvioral and Economic Sciences (SBE; up 9 percent to $233 million)
would lag behind in percentage terms, but all would narrowly manage to match past
funding levels in real dollars (see Figure 2), although funding for the SBE directorate
has just barely kept pace with inflation this decade.
Within
R&RA, the Integrative Activities (IA) account would climb 19 percent to $276
million to fund its cross-disciplinary suite of programs. There would be a large
23 percent increase to $115 million for 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 other large increase in IA would go to
the Science and Technology Centers program (from $1 million this year to $16 million
in 2009) to support a competition in 2009 to name five to seven new centers for
multidisciplinary centers integrating research, education, workforce development,
and technology transfer. The Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research
(EPSCoR) would receive $114 million, a small increase over the current 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;
collectively, the EPSCoR states received just 10.4 percent of NSF R&D funds
in FY 2004.
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 $491 million, up 11 percent from 2008 to
reach an all-time high in real terms (see Figure 2). The OPP funding would build
on a large increase in 2007 to fund research during the International Polar Year
(2007-2009) and to fund logistics costs to support that research. After the IPY
ends in March 2009, NSF hopes to sustain a vibrant polar research effort with
the 2009 increase.
Figure 2. (click on the image for
PDF)
NSF
R&D facilities funding would be one of the few areas in the 2009 NSF budget
to decline. The Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) budget
would fall $58 million or 28 percent to $148 million (see Table II-7). From funding
7 projects in 2008, the 2009 budget would fund only 3 construction projects and
one new design project, although 4 more projects would
inch along with previously appropriated funds. 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. In 2009, NSF would ramp up
construction of 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 $51 million allocation. The
Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) would receive $82 million for its eighth
year of funding out of a planned 11, and construction of the IceCube project in
Antarctica would begin winding down with $11 million in
2009 toward full operations in 2011. A small $2.5 million request would initiate
design work on the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope, which could become a full-fledged
MREFC project in future years.
NSF
education and human resources programs would increase $65 million or 8.9 percent
to $790 million, but would remain 16 percent below 2004 levels in real terms after
bottoming out in 2007 from steep cuts in 2005 and 2006 (see Figure 2). Graduate
Research Fellowships (GRF) funding would climb 33 percent to $117 million to make
up the bulk of the Graduate Education budget. The 2009 budget envisions supporting
up to 3,075 promising scientists and engineers in their graduate educations with
three-year fellowships through the GRF; the research directorates would support
additional fellowships. The Federal Cyber Service: Scholarships for
Service program to support students in critical information infrastructure disciplines
in exchange for federal service in cybersecurity fields after graduation would
receive $15 million, a 30 percent increase. The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship
Program to encourage undergraduates to become mathematics and science teachers
would receive $12 million, up 7 percent from 2008.
Through its research directorates, NSF would
expand its participation in several multi-agency initiatives in 2009. NSF’s contribution
as the lead agency in the National Nanotechnology Initiative would increase 2.1
percent to $397 million in 2009, 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 17 percent to $1.1 billion,
with the majority of support coming from CISE and OCI. NSF also participates in
the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) with a $221 million contribution (up
8 percent), mostly from GEO.
NSF Funding Mechanisms
The large proposed increases for the research
directorates would mean a year of gains to reverse recent declines in competitively
awarded research grants, if the 2009 request makes it intact through the 2009
appropriations season. Looking only at competitively awarded research grants, NSF’s core funding
mechanism, NSF expects to fund 8,880 research grants next year, an 18 percent
increase after several years stuck near 7,500, while at the same time NSF hopes
to increase the median award size to $123,575 (up 4.6 percent). After several
years of declining success rates, NSF projects that it will fund 23 percent of
research grant proposals, up from 21 percent in 2008. The broad-based increases
would allow every research directorate to increase the three key measures of the
number of research grants, the median 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 (see Figure 3). In most fields, NSF is the largest
or second-largest source of federal funding.
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 2009 NSF budget goes to the 110th
Congress, where ACI-inspired requested increases in 2007 and 2008 were chiseled
away to make room for other domestic priorities. The outlook for NSF winning its
full request in 2009 is highly uncertain. Congress will have reservations about
approving a 14 percent requested increase for any agency in a President’s budget
in which overall domestic spending would be flat and dozens of social programs
are proposed for dramatic cuts or even elimination. If Congress succeeds in boosting
domestic 2009 appropriations above the President’s request, then NSF may get all
or nearly all of its request; but if, as in 2007 and 2008, President Bush succeeds
in forcing congressional appropriators to stick to his domestic totals, then Congress
will no doubt follow the pattern of the past two years by diverting some of the
requested NSF increases to shore up funding for programs in dire straits. Unfortunately,
the final outcome may not be decided until well into FY 2009, and possibly not
until a new President takes office in January 2009.
Figure 3. (click on the image for
PDF)
(More
materials on R&D in the FY 2009 budget, historical data and charts, and more
information on AAAS Report XXXIII: Research and Development FY 2009, can
be found on the AAAS R&D Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
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February 12, 2008
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Avenue,
NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS R&D Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
