Nature.com, August 26, 2011, Friday

Nature.com

August 26, 2011, Friday

Nature.com (full article)

Thrift in store for US research

The result is that 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%, according to the US National Science Foundation. Public universities and all but the wealthiest private ones are increasingly taking that money from tuition fees. "The cost of research gets passed on to undergraduates," says Ronald Ehrenberg, an economist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and a member of the panel. This erodes public support for research universities — a trend that the panel hopes to reverse with its recommendations.