The latest release of the Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey shows that institutions of higher education are spending more on research and development (R&D) and that those investments in science are making a difference. In FY23, universities used funds from the federal government, their own resources, and funds from other sources to spend $108.8 billion on R&D – an 11.2% increase from 2022. This marks the largest annual increase in more than 20 years.
The federal government funded the majority of spending on R&D activity at universities (55% of the total or $60 billion) through agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, and NASA. The federal government’s investments in research are essential to maintaining America’s status as a leader in science and technology and have, over the years, led to many of the technologies we take for granted today, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), GPS navigation, and even Google search.
Universities also used their own resources to support research; institutions of higher education spent $27.7 billion of their own funds (25% of the total) on R&D in 2023. This marks a 12.9% increase from FY22. The rest of the funding for R&D at universities came from state and local governments (5%), businesses (6%), and other nonprofit organizations (6%).
The HERD survey data also show that AAU’s 69 member universities in the United States lead the nation in conducting research and development; AAU institutions accounted for 61% ($65.9 billion) of all spending on R&D by universities in the country. Furthermore, 42 of the top 50 U.S. universities in R&D spending are AAU members.
America’s leading research universities use federal dollars and their own resources to conduct research in a number of areas. AAU members are developing cutting-edge medical diagnostic tools, boosting U.S. manufacturing, finding cures, discovering new drugs that save and lengthen lives, advancing American agriculture, and helping to protect our warfighters on the battlefield. Learn more about how America’s leading research universities are taking on our nation’s biggest challenges and breaking through for the benefit of all Americans.
Graham Andrews is a research analyst at AAU.