Techno Savvy Club

The National Science Foundation funds a lot of the general science research in the US, much of which takes place at the US' educational institutions, like universities and medical schools. Other federal grants come from organizations like NASA, NOAA, and the National Institutes of Health. But in recent years, federal funding has been stagnant at best and often declining once inflation is taken into account.

Since the early 1970s, the NSF has been tracking the flow of research dollars at universities. Over that entire time period, research funding was on a gentle upward trajectory. But, as the NSF's figures show, that gentle curve was replaced by volatility in 2000, which has now led to the first three-year decline since records started.

Starting in 2000, federal funding of science saw a huge boost from the decision to double the budget of the National Institutes of Health, a process that was completed later in that decade. From there, however, tightening of the federal budget led to a short decline in federal research dollars. This was reversed by the fiscal stimulus, ,which led to a sudden reversal around 2010. But, since the stimulus petered out, things headed back to where they were before it.

In constant dollars, funding has fallen by over 10 percent since its 2011 peak, which represents the longest drop since the NSF started tracking things. It's not entirely grim for the research community, however. Other sources of funding—state, foundations, and individual benefactors—have picked up a lot of the slack. As a result, the total dollars being spent on university-based research has only declined slightly.

The NSF has made its data available if you'd like to make your own graph.