NASHVILLE, Tenn. ñ An increase in funding of nearly 100 percent in four years has put Vanderbilt among the top 25 U.S. universities for the first time in recent history in terms of the amount of federally supported research and development projects that it conducts.
The national rankings of the federal research and development dollars that institutions receive are compiled annually by the National Science Foundation (NSF). These statistics do more than allow the nation’s universities to compare their success in obtaining federal funding; they are also considered one of the more objective measures of research quality.
"It’s a landmark accomplishment," Dennis Hall, associate provost for research and graduate education, said of Vanderbilt’s rise to 25th from 31st in the latest ranking. "It reflects an institutional desire to make more of an impact on the world by means of research."
According to the NSF, the amount of federal support for research projects at Vanderbilt nearly doubled to $215,451,000 from $108,281,000 between fiscal years 1998 and 2002 (the latest year for which national statistics are available). Among the top 40 ranked institutions, Vanderbilt’s 99 percent increase was second only to the 131 percent gain by the Baylor College of Medicine. Other universities that showed major growth in the same four years were University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (76 percent), University of Pittsburgh (75 percent) and Ohio State University (71 percent).
During this period, 77 percent of the total increase in federal R&D funding occurred in Health and Human Services, driven by a doubling in funding at the National Institutes of Health mandated by Congress. This created a national wave of increased research funding that Vanderbilt was able to catch and ride effectively and explains why the other institutions that improved their rankings the most also have high-powered medical centers, while many of those who dropped substantially were campuses without medical research facilities.
Having a medical center, however, is not sufficient to account for the growth that Vanderbilt achieved. Hall pointed to the University of Arizona, a large public university with a major medical center. Although UA’s funding increased by nearly 30 percent, it dropped eight places from 29th to 37th from 1998 to 2002. "It’s amazing that a small, private university like Vanderbilt can attract more grant funding than a large public institution like Arizona," Hall commented.
The Medical Center’s Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, Jeff Balser, attributes Vanderbilt’s extraordinary growth in part to the decision by university leaders to invest resources in recruiting science superstars. "We now have a substantial number of faculty capable of pulling in large-scale extramural research programs, such as NIH-funded centers, that dramatically impact our rankings," he said.
"The faculty are the ones who deserve the credit for this achievement," Hall added. "Administrators can help create favorable conditions, but the faculty are the ones who develop the proposals and actually do the research."
The yardstick that the Medical Center generally uses to gauge its national standing is its ranking as a recipient of National Institutes of Health funding. From 1999 to 2003, Vanderbilt’s NIH ranking has risen to 17th from 21st. This rise was powered by a 22.4 percent annual increase in funding, the highest growth rate of any university medical center in the country.
Although the Medical Center accounted for the lion’s share of the increase in funding levels, Vanderbilt could not have reached its new rank without a substantial increase in research activity on the part of the central campus, Hall said. "This year the funding level on the central campus is approaching the same level as that of the entire university, including the Medical Center, just five or six years ago!" he pointed out.
The national ranking of federal R&D dollars is considered a measure of research quality because of the manner in which the funds are distributed. Other than a small percentage of money that is given directly to individual campuses by congressional "earmarks" ñ direct appropriations written into various pieces of legislation ñ federal research dollars are distributed by a peer review process designed to allocate resources on the basis of scientific merit. The process is highly competitive: About one-third of the proposals submitted nationally receive funding.
"This particular national ranking is one of the most reliable," said John Childress, director of Vanderbilt’s Division of Sponsored Research. "NSF gathers the data on which it is based from the federal agencies that make the awards. This helps minimize the confusion and errors that can result from the often-used approach of surveying the recipients."
The higher a university rises in the national rankings, the stronger the competition for federal R&D funding becomes, making it more difficult to continue advancing. As a result, Vanderbilt officials expect the university to continue to push upward, but at a slower rate. "We know that we did extremely well in 2003, and we’re doing even better this year," said Balser, "so I expect that we will continue to rise in the national rankings. We’ll just have to wait to see by how much."
Media contact: David F. Salisbury, (615) 343-6803
David.salisbury@vanderbilt.edu