[Salon] How universities use government funding

[Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>]

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How universities use government funding 

Universities rely on billions in federal funding each year, much of which goes toward research and development (R&D). In fiscal year 2023, government dollars supported $59.6 billion of R&D expenses. The Trump administration has cut university grants, including millions to Harvard this month. But how do universities use this money?  

• In 2023, life sciences and engineering received more federal funding than any other field. About 56.9% of all grant and contract funding ($33.9 billion) went to life sciences R&D. Engineering received $10.9 billion (18.3%). 

• At $3.32 billion, Johns Hopkins had the most federally funded R&D expenses — 2.8 times higher than the next university. Forty-three percent of that money went to engineering, and 27.0% to life sciences.
    
• Twenty universities spent more than a third of all federal R&D money. For 17 of these schools, the biggest share of funding went to life sciences. The University of California, San Francisco, allocated 95.2% of its federal funding to life sciences, the highest share of any school.
   
• In FY 2024, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Energy (DOE) were the only federal agencies to provide more than $100 billion to universities in grants and contracts.
   
• In 2025, the DOE announced it would shift funding toward innovation and research projects and away from facility upgrades. The HHS published a list of grants it had terminated, some of which had previously been awarded to universities. 

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