Dive Brief:
- Pennsylvania State University spent $180,000 on federal lobbying in the first six months of 2014—one of dozens of universities vying for big defense program funding in the last quarter, Politco reported.
- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology spent $89,919 on lobbying during the six-month period, although the school says that it registered its representatives for transparency reasons and that they don’t lobby for specific grants or awards.
- Other universities pursuing the Department of Defense programs (and the reputational benefits that come with them) included Princeton University, New York University, and Indiana University.
Dive Insight:
There's big money in these defense projects. According to The Washington Post, as of 2013, the nation's base defense budget was $530 billion, defense took up 20% of the federal budget in 2011, and the U.S. spends more on defense than the next 13 countries combined. Penn State alone scored $187 million from Department of Defense spending last year, which was 22% of the total research funding for the university.