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Certainly. I haven't reserached this issue much, and while certainly other factors come into play, I suspect that Act does have an impact. I used the word "ve

by atg2taa 13y ago

Certainly. I haven't reserached this issue much, and while certainly other factors come into play, I suspect that Act does have an impact. I used the word "venture capital" loosely. I do not refer to the traditional sense of VCs on sand hill road, but venture capital in the sense of money that can pay for extremely specialized and expensive research equipment and labor. In general, the Harvardization ("we must be the best at all areas of research") has infected even second-tier research institutions; for places like Harvard, MIT, etc. the financial gains from patents probably outweighs the outlay. However, for second-tier research institutions, they may be simply caught up in a ratings arms race. Here is a report that has some interesting facts. http://www.ed.psu.edu/educ/cshe/working-papers/WP%236 http://www.ed.psu.edu/educ/cshe/working-papers/WP%236 'Over the current era, this has produced a pronounced intensification of research. For 99 research universities, enrollments grew by 15 percent from 1980 to 2000, but real research expenditures grew by 128 percent (Geiger, 2004, p. 147).'

ahomescu1 13y ago
From the link you shared, I assume the relevant chart is the one on page 14, showing the growth of university research expenditures. What I couldn't find in the text (maybe I missed it) is the source of those funds; I think that most of it is paid not by universities, but by the federal government through various agencies. Like another commenter said, the university also receives money from research grants (as overhead), they don't have to pay anything except maybe the professors' salaries. A growth in "Research Expenditures" doesn't necessarily mean that universities are spending more money on research. As an anecdote, here's my personal example. As a PhD student in CS at a public US university, my experience has been this: all our equipment (mostly computers, CS is relatively cheap) has been paid from grants, and I have been funded from 3 sources: a 1-year federal fellowship (FAFSA), 1 year as a TA (that one was funded by the university, but in exchange for teaching) and the rest on a federal research project. Now, it is possible that richer private universities do pay for their own equipment and researchers. I don't have any numbers for that, though.

by atg2taa 13y ago

ahomescu1 13y ago

From the link you shared, I assume the relevant chart is the one on page 14, showing the growth of university research expenditures. What I couldn't find in the text (maybe I missed it) is the source of those funds; I think that most of it is paid not by universities, but by the federal government through various agencies. Like another commenter said, the university also receives money from research grants (as overhead), they don't have to pay anything except maybe the professors' salaries. A growth in "Research Expenditures" doesn't necessarily mean that universities are spending more money on research. As an anecdote, here's my personal example. As a PhD student in CS at a public US university, my experience has been this: all our equipment (mostly computers, CS is relatively cheap) has been paid from grants, and I have been funded from 3 sources: a 1-year federal fellowship (FAFSA), 1 year as a TA (that one was funded by the university, but in exchange for teaching) and the rest on a federal research project. Now, it is possible that richer private universities do pay for their own equipment and researchers. I don't have any numbers for that, though.