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News & Views item - August 2011 |
US National Academy of Sciences Finalising Plan to Advise Universities on Increase R&D Efficiency. (August 25, 2011)
In 2009 the state of California reduced its funding of the ten University of California campuses by over US$630 million. Members of staff got reductions of their salaries and student tuition fees rose significantly.
In 2010 many state legislatures followed suit and even America's private universities were suffering from the financial squeeze. As a consequence, the US Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences for advice on means for effectively stabilising the resourcing of the nation's research universities. Currently the Academies' report is in draft form and is expected to be completed by the end of the year, but Nature in speaking with various of the 21-committee members which consists of researchers, business people and university administrators got a feeling for the broad consensus that will make up the recommendations.
They suggested that their call for
belt-tightening will not spare universities' most prized assets: researchers
and laboratories. "There is a concern about costs," says study chairman Chad
Holliday, former chief executive of chemical company DuPont and now chairman
of the board of Bank of America, based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Academic researchers might be asked to
save money by sharing equipment, facilities and supervision duties — not
only between research groups, but even between institutions in the same
city.
[T]he panel is likely to urge state and
federal governments to simplify some of the regulations that apply to
research grants. "My private view is that federal oversight is well
intentioned, but it can be piled on from all directions," says panel member
Peter Agre, a Nobel-prizewinning molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins
University.
[The report is expected to] call to grant funders to pay the full indirect costs of research, or overheads. These include administration costs and building maintenance and depreciation, and generally amount to about 30 cents on the dollar. [Currently] universities are increasingly subsidizing grants from their own funds (see 'Footing the US research bill'). Between 1969 and 2009, the proportion of research funding supported by institutional money rose from 10% to 20%.
Finally, Nature reports that the report: will urge the government to target funding strategically, concentrating on research areas with the greatest potential to produce innovation and jobs, says Holliday. "We are trying to be the first in the world to leading-edge technology, because that brings the most prosperity to the American people."
Once again the devil will be in the detail, for example just how narrowly or liberally will the report define concentrating on research areas with the greatest potential to produce innovation and jobs, i.e. will the 21-"influential group of researchers, business people and university administrators" look beyond the fringe of the carpet in their recommendations.