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INTRODUCTION 31 Introduction During the past three decades, U.S. universities and colleges have assumed a major role in the nation's over-all research system. The academic research enterprise has grown dramaticallyâboth in number of academic research personnel and in financial resources allocated to academic research. During the 1950s and 1960s, the growth of the enterprise was generally uniform in all its aspects: financial support, employment of academic personnel, university enrollments, and production of new scientists and engineers. During the past two decades, however, these trends have diverged, presenting policy-makers with a unique set of challenges. Part Two of this discussion paper provides quantitative descriptions of the dynamic long-term trends which now affect the academic research enterprise. The Working Group hopes that this information will provide a necessary historical perspective to many of the current challenges facing the enterprise and add additional insights into many of the underlying influences which now shape its future. The quantitative information presented in this discussion paper primarily describes inputs to the academic research enterprise, such as financial and human resources. While some output measures have been developedâusing publication and citation rates, patents, or departmental rankingsâthey require further methodological refinement before they can be meaningfully incorporated into analyses of academic research. Reliable data on long-term trends in academic research quality, productivity, or efficiency do not exist. The charts in Part Two are derived from a database maintained by the National Science Foundation. Most of the data were produced from periodic national surveys of academic institutions conducted by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. In some instances, estimates have been incorporated within the database; this has been necessary for two reasons: first, not all of the survey instruments have consistently requested the same information in the same format; second, survey frequencies have changed, creating gaps in information for specific years. Additional information on the enterprise has been collected for specific years by federal agencies, philanthropic foundations, study commissions, professional associations, as well as individual investigators; the data from many of these studies have been used to supplement the survey data and to develop estimates where necessary. The graphic information included here covers a three-decade time span, from 1958 through 1988. The data have been standardized to provide comparability among all the graphs; all financial data are expressed in 1988-constant dollars. It should be noted that descriptions of academic institutions are based on aggregated data for the entire enterprise or large sectors of it. Inferences for individual academic institutions should not be drawn from these data, as each university and college varies for all the characteristics described here.
INTRODUCTION 32 During 1990, the Working Group will hold a series of conferences for university, congressional, federal, state, and industry officials, as well as academic scientists and engineers, to explore options and alternative scenarios for sustaining the quality of academic research during the 1990s and into the next century. The material in Part Two will be used as an information resource base for those conferences. Part Two is divided into the following sections: ⢠Summary of major trends affecting the academic research enterprise. ⢠National research and development expenditures. ⢠National expenditures for academic research and development. ⢠Total academic expenditures and revenues. ⢠Academic personnel. ⢠Higher education enrollments. ⢠Science and engineering degrees.
