By Bianca Licitra
“The typical U.S. academic researcher spends more than 40 percent of their federally funded research time on administrative and regulatory matters,” according to a recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM).
That startling figure comes from a survey of more than 11,000 researchers conducted by the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP), an organization that facilitates partnerships between federal agencies and academic research institutions.
The FDP, which conducts this survey routinely, has found that administrative burden on researchers “does not stem from one or a few exceptionally onerous tasks,” but instead from fulfilling requirements imposed on them by many different funding agencies and offices.
FDP’s estimate shows that faculty are devoting precious time complying with burdensome regulation – time that could otherwise be spent in labs working on projects that could deliver the next economic, medical, or technological breakthrough.
As a NASEM press release notes, “There is increasing concern that scientific and technological progress are being hampered by policies and regulations that are outdated, inconsistent, duplicative, or contradictory.”
To offer solutions to this problem, NASEM put together a committee on Improving the Regulatory Efficiency and Reducing Administrative Workload to Strengthen Competitiveness and Productivity of U.S. Research. The committee’s new report offers a “roadmap” for policymakers to create a “more efficient research regulatory framework.”
The report emphasizes the need for immediate, system-wide change because of the prevailing threat to American scientific leadership. “Our nation has never needed the science enterprise to operate at full steam as much as it does now for our health, security, and prosperity,” the committee argues.
It also says that “the time is right for streamlining … rules, policies, and requirements.” There is significant interest in the current administration to pursue deregulation. As the committee notes, “Shortly after taking office in 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order requiring federal agencies to repeal at least 10 existing rules, regulations, or guidance documents for every new rule, regulation, or guidance they propose.”
The White House Office of Management and Budget also issued a request for information recently seeking ideas “for rules and regulations that could be rescinded to reduce administrative and regulatory burdens.”
The NASEM committee writes that improving efficiency will help reduce budgetary pressures at the federal and institutional levels. “With federal research agencies facing billions of dollars in budget cuts and reductions in staffing, there is not only the opportunity but the necessity to optimize the nation’s investment in academic research,” it argues.
The report offers 53 total “options” – across seven research areas, including grant proposals and management, research misconduct, and protecting research assets – for policy makers to consider for improving current regulations. It outlines the pros and cons of each approach, along with any special considerations that should be made.
Reducing the regulatory burden on researchers and institutions is one of AAU’s top priorities. In May, AAU joined the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities in responding to OMB’s request for information and sending recommendations to the White House for simplifying federal regulations “to increase efficiency of the U.S. scientific enterprise and reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens on university researchers.”
AAU’s recommendations focused on eliminating regulatory inconsistencies and duplicative reporting requirements and fine-tuning research security requirements based on specific threats.
As the NASEM committee notes, “regulations are undoubtedly necessary for the “safety, accountability, security, and ethical conduct of publicly funded research,” but, as it further stresses, they must be implemented “without unnecessarily burdening the U.S. research ecosystem and inhibiting its contributions to national well-being, prosperity, and security.”
Bianca Licitra is editorial and communications assistant at AAU.