American universities are falling short of their mission to push the limits of scientific discovery and prepare students for the workforce, often while raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year in federal research and development grants.
Numerous reports have described a crisis in research reproducibility.
At the same time, recent grads are struggling to gain a foothold in the American economy. A recent report by ed tech company Cengage found a wide “gulf on workplace skills and priorities.” According to the report, employers believe graduates should be equipped with “practical competencies” while educators emphasized soft skills like “critical thinking” and “problem solving.” Such gaps compound issues grads are facing in a constrained economy with fewer employment opportunities.
Despite these concerns, federal funding to universities or scientific research has trended ever upwards since records began in 1963. In FY 2023 funding reached close to $50 billion.
But all of that funding hasn’t just gone to scientific inquiry. American universities have been enjoying overhead spending bonuses worth 50-60% of their research grants for decades. That means that for every dollar in research spending, an additional 50-60 cents is given to the university for overhead.
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