Forces Driving More
lab coats peering over their experiments and lost in thought while trying
to break the code that would lead to the next discovery.
Rising through the university ranks came through publishing and
securing research grants. He eventually earned his own laboratory
and hired others to work with him. But along the way, he also began
to realize how the platform for science was changing. Securing grants
was becoming harder—particularly federal funding, which university
administrators prized above all other support because it paid more
university overhead, and any discoveries could be turned into future
royalties.
“I’m a subcontractor,” he stated bluntly. The university provided him
with a title and floor space. His job was to find money. On the other
side of that door, he said as he motioned toward the laboratory, were
individuals who relied on him for employment. Pursuing the fron-
tiers of science was no longer the first priority. Competition for federal
funding was fierce. The time required to prepare a single proposal was
substantial. The odds of receiving funding were low. To meet his payroll,
his laboratory carried out an array of diagnostics and small studies that
businesses were willing to pay for. It was not what he planned on when
he became a scientist, but it paid the bills.
His experience is far from unique. In public research institutions
today, following the money is the norm not the exception. The number-
one challenge for university investigators is securing funding, and each
year is harder than the last. In 3 , $ billion was spent on research
and development by all sectors of the United States economy. Of that
amount, .6 percent ($.8 billion) was spent by the federal government
directly on food and agriculture. As a stark indication of how govern-
ment priorities have changed, each week the same government spends
$.9 billion for programs created by the Farm Bill.
The decline in funding food and agricultural research is part of soci-
ety’s larger withdrawal from public universities. From the nineteenth
century until the mid- 97 s, state expenditures on higher education
trended upward. Though college graduates reaped benefits from pub-
lic investments, states also recognized the benefits accrued through
new businesses, added innovation, more taxes, less criminal conduct,
strengthened public service, renewed civic participation, greater engage-
ment, etc.