U.S. Universities Report Highest-ever R&D Spending in Fiscal Year 2011

Life sciences represents one of the most rapidly-growing areas of R&D spending.

Credit: Thinkstock

Permission Granted

The National Science Foundation released a report today showing that university spending on research and development in all fields continued to increase between fiscal years (FY) 2010 and 2011, reaching $65 billion in FY 2011. This figure represents a 6.3 percent increase from the previous year and includes $4.2 billion in expenditures associated with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The majority of university R&D was concentrated in the life sciences, which grew 6.6 percent to $37.2 billion. Engineering was the next largest broad field and showed a 7.7 percent increase to $10 billion in fiscal 2011.

For more information on this report, please contact Ronda Britt.

Please visit the NSF's National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics for more reports and other products.

-NSF-

Media Contacts
Deborah Wing, NSF (703) 292-5344 dwing@nsf.gov

Program Contacts
Ronda Britt, NSF (703) 292-7765 rbritt@nsf.gov