Useful Stats: Federal S&E Obligations to Academia, FY 2002-2006

Useful stats columns in recent issues of the Digest have characterized academic R&D expenditures from two different angles: those expenditures made from industrial sources of funding (April 1) and total academic R&D expenditures (Mar 25). The primary source for the data was the National Science Foundation's Academic R&D Expenditures series, the compilation of an annual survey NSF conducts of the 680 largest academic institutions in the country.

NSF also surveys the 19 federal agencies that account for 99 percent of all federal R&D expenditures each year. The results are compiled in an annual statistical report on federal science and engineering obligations that presents tables characterizing the data a variety of ways: by agency, field of science and engineering, performer, geography, etc. NSF released the most recent online edition of the Federal S&E obligations series within the past two weeks. In the U.S., federal S&E obligations to universities and colleges were $28.5 billion in FY06, an increase of 17.4 percent from FY06.

SSTI has prepared a table tracking for each state the amount of obligations from FY02 to FY06, the percent change over this period, and the rank of this change. The eight states with the largest increases in federal obligations over the five years were all EPSCoR states, with South Dakota, Nevada, North Dakota, Delaware, and Hawaii leading the pack. For the 18 states with more than $500 million in obligations in FY06, all of them experienced an increase of at least 10 percent over the five years with the exception of Colorado and Florida, with increases of 7.7 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively. Two states, Maine and Alaska, witnessed a decrease over these five years.

Obligations v. Expenditures
NSF defines obligations as "the amounts for orders placed, contracts awarded, services received, and similar transactions during a given period, regardless of when the funds were appropriated and when future payment of money is required." The information presented in this week's table is based on obligations.

Expenditures, on the other hand, are actual outlays of money spent. That money may have been obligated to the institution during the same fiscal year, the previous year or several years earlier in the case of some three- and five-year grants. The expenditure may be a portion of a larger obligation or the entire obligation. It cannot be discerned from the aggregated data. Data presented in the March 25 and April 1 editions of the Digest were based on expenditures.

Federal Science and Engineering Support to Universities, Colleges, and Nonprofit Institutions: FY 2006 is available at: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf09310/?govDel=USNSF_178

SSTI's table presenting Federal S&E Obligations to Academia, by State FY2002-2006 is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/041509t.htm