The Role of Politically Motivated Subsidies on University Research Activities

Since WWII, the federal government has played a significant role in funding basic and applied research at universities. During the initial growth of research funding, the issues surrounding which universities would be the recipients of federal funding were not addressed by the government. As such, by the late 1970s, a majority of research funding was concentrated in a few universities located within a few states. This article examines two politically motivated methods used since 1980 to affect the distribution of funding on research activities, namely, congressional earmarks and set-aside programs. The results suggest that there has been a modest change in the distribution of research funding across research and doctoral universities, especially since 1990. Funding from earmarked appropriations has increased the quantity of academic publications but decreased the quality of these publications as measured by citations per publication. At those universities that qualified for funding under the set-aside programs, however, the quality of publications has increased whereas the quantity of publications has decreased.