Research Expenditures for Engineering Colleges and Disciplines - Including Expenditures per Faculty Member

Introduction

Research programs associated with the education of master’s and doctoral students under the guidance of faculty members requires financial support. In large part, such support results from the funding of research proposals written by faculty members and submitted to governmental agencies, industry, foundations, etc. Universities also contribute support to graduate student research.

This report presents data for sponsored engineering research in US universities over the past two decades. These data include expenditures for individual disciplines as well as engineering as a whole. In addition, data for research expenditures per faculty member for individual engineering disciplines are presented. (Expenditures reported that appeared to be unrelated to graduate student research in engineering were excluded wherever possible.)

Research Expenditures in Engineering Colleges

Research expenditures have increased steadily for over two decades as shown in the graph below. Two distinct periods of growth are seen. In the 1980s, the annual growth rate was about 11%. In the 1990s, the annual growth rate declined to about 6%. (The data are not corrected for inflation.)

Expenditure Trends for Engineering Disciplines

Research expenditures for individual engineering disciplines for the last two decades are shown in the graph below.

Data for almost all disciplines indicate different trends for the 1980s and 1990s. For example, civil and chemical increased at about 10% per year in the 1980s and declined to about 8 and 7%, respectively, in the 1990s. Electrical, mechanical and materials increased at annual rates of about 11 to 12% in the 1980s; electrical and mechanical declined to about 5% and materials declined to about 2% in the 1990s.

Over the past decade, research expenditures in computer (engineering plus science in engineering colleges), biomedical and bioengineering have had annual fractional increases substantially larger than those of other disciplines. There has been limited growth in aerospace, environmental and petroleum research expenditures. After a sustained period of growth, research expenditures in nuclear now are declining.

Research Expenditures per Faculty Member

Research expenditures per faculty member in thirteen engineering disciplines are compared in the graph below. Data are from universities that reported both faculty and expenditure data for individual disciplines. The ratios in the graphs are the total expenditures divided by total faculty in the disciplines (not the average of the ratios of the disciplines in the various universities reporting data).

Electrical and chemical show research expenditures per faculty member ratios similar to engineering as a whole. Civil is slightly lower. Materials has had larger ratios for decades. More recently, biomedical, nuclear, petroleum and aerospace show ratios substantially higher than engineering. Mechanical, industrial, environmental and bioengineering (except for AY2001-02) have had relatively low ratios,

Variations in the ratios shown in the graph above are sensitive to trends in expenditures and faculty numbers. For disciplines with smaller numbers of faculty, annual ratio fluctuations can be large. Readers should compare these ratio data to the research expenditures shown in the prior graph. Data for faculty numbers may be found in another report on the Engineering Trends Web site.

Acknowledgment

The data for this study came from the annual surveys of the American Society for Engineering Education. Engineering Trends acknowledges their efforts in providing credible data and expresses its gratitude for their services to the engineering profession.

Footnotes

American Society for Engineering Education survey data for the period AY1993-94 through AY1998-99 were handicapped since the number of universities providing information was somewhat lower than in other years. Thus, the totals for research expenditures and faculty numbers were lowered. Data for this period were not used in one graph. However, it was found that this under-reporting situation had, in most instances, little effect on research expenditures per faculty member ratios that are presented in this report.

Engineering Trends data are compiled from information submitted by universities to the annual surveys of EWC and ASEE. On the very rare occasions where errors in data appear, Engineering Trends corrects the error, if possible, or deletes the data if the error is large enough to alter significantly the trend of the university or the US total.