Highly Concentrated Research Funding Is a Problem

“Most federal research dollars go to relatively few institutions,” write Anna Quider, Ph.D. ?and Gerald (Jerry) C Blazey . By one analysis, 90% of federal research funding goes to 139 institutions—just 22% of research-active institutions. These schools enroll fewer than half of students in this group, and an even smaller proportion of underrepresented minority students and Pell Grant recipients. According to Quider and Blazey, this disproportionate funding “perpetuates a lack of diversity and fails to build capacity across the spectrum of institutions.”

To address the skewed distribution of research funding, Quider and Blazey helped codify a category of colleges and universities called “emerging research institutions,” or #ERIs. These institutions are featured in the landmark CHIPS and Science Act, which aims to help ERIs perform more research and integrate them into federal science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs.

Read more about how support for ERIs can help form a more diverse, more equitable, and stronger research enterprise.