Category: Federal Agency Developments

On Thursday, the National Academies of Science will officially release a report entitled “Research Universities and the Future of America: Ten Breakthrough Actions Vital to Our Nation’s Prosperity and Security.” This report is being billed as a follow-up report to the National Academies report Rising Above the Gathering Storm, which in 2007 issued a clarion cry for increased national commitment to federal support of research and education. This new report was requested by Congress to identify “the top ten actions that Congress, the federal government, state governments, research universities, and others could take to assure the ability of the American research university to maintain the excellence in research and doctoral education needed to help the United States compete, prosper, and achieve national goals for health, energy, the environment, and security in the global community of the 21st century.” Read more here.

The National Science Foundation released an Info brief entitled Graduate Enrollment in Science and Engineering Grew Substantially in the Past Decade but Slowed in 2010.  As the title suggest, the report finds that graduate student enrollment in the U.S. has grown by 30 percent over the last decade, but tapered off a bit most recently.  Read more here.

The National Science Foundation also released its annual FY 2011 merit review report to the National Science Board. This report provides an annual look at the number of grant proposals received by the NSFNational Science Foundation, along with the success rates (number of proposals that are awarded), broken down by several categories. While the report finds that NSFNational Science Foundation received 7 percent fewer grant applications than last year, it also demonstrated that the number of proposals received by the agency has increased dramatically (60 percent) since 2001. Read more here.