Funding the Future Through R and D

Help for the Sciences.

In 1950 the National Science Foundation began an annual survey of funding available from various sources for use in research and development, with a special emphasis, as one might expect, on funds available for scientific R and D. The results of the first survey, which covered the year 1953, showed research at the country's colleges and universities was big business but not big enough. In 1953 $334 million was expended at American institutions of higher education for R and D; the total national expenditure was $5.2 billion, of which 53 percent came from federal sources. By 1960 R and D expenditures had jumped to $825 million at universities as compared to a total of $13.7 billion of which 63.7 percent came from federal sources. In short, only about 6 percent of the nation's research and development was on college campuses, and the percentage of expended money that came from industry shrunk over the decade.