Dive Summary:
- According to the U.S. National Science Foundation, the University of Michigan topped all of the nation's public colleges with $1.28 billion devoted to research spending during the 2010-11 fiscal year.
- The school reports a slightly lower number ($1.24 billion) due to its accounting standards differing from those used by the NSF, but the school, which announced in September that it had spent a record $1.27 billion on research in fiscal 2012, is still second only to Johns Hopkins University in Maryland for research spending among all universities.
- The majority of U-M's research budget comes from federal funding, which accounted for 64.1% during fiscal 2011, and the school first broke the $1 billion mark in fiscal 2009.
From the article:
"One (factor) obviously is just scale," U-M Vice President for Research Stephen Forrest told AnnArbor.com in October, speaking of why U-M continues to outperform its peers in research spending. "But in some cases, like NIH, we're really hitting above our weight class. We're unusually good at interdisciplinary research where something like a system has to emerge from the research," Forrest continued. ...