Useful Stats: Higher Education Research Expenditures by State and Funding Source, FY12

North Carolina universities receive a larger share of research dollars from businesses than higher education institutions in any other state, according to the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) survey. The most recent survey provides data on research expenditures by source for each state and territory for FY12. Wisconsin and the District of Columbia received the greatest share of R&D funding from nonprofits, while Wyoming, Maryland Guam and the Virgin Island receive the largest share of funding from the federal government.

North Carolina’s advantage in corporate funding stems from the large amount of private dollars received by Duke University. In FY12, Duke received $226.2 million from private sources, about triple the amount received by any other institution in the state and more than any other university in the country. Businesses funded about $316.8 million in North Carolina academic R&D in FY12, about 11.8 percent of the state total.

Wisconsin and the District of Columbia both received about 12.8 percent of their academic R&D funding from nonprofit sources that year.  In Wisconsin, most of that research was conducted at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which received nearly all of the state’s $159.8 million in nonprofit support. George Washington University and Georgetown University both received significant nonprofit support in the District of Columbia.

While Wyoming, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands each received a greater share of their R&D support from the federal government than Maryland, in each case this is more reflective of a lack of diversity among funding sources. Each relies on federal funds to support more than 80 percent of their R&D. In Maryland, the high percentage of federal funds is more closely linked to the extremely large amounts of federal support for research at Johns Hopkins University.  Johns Hopkins receives more federal R&D support, both by share and total dollars, than any other institution in the U.S..

View the full NSF HERD data…

SSTI has prepared a table, based on the NSF HERD data, showing R&D expenditures by source in FY12. Download the table in Excel (xlsx) format…

Higher education R&D expenditures, by state and source of funds: FY 2012 (Dollars in thousands)