Grants and Academia

Stephen Quake, a professor of bioengineering at Stanford, wrote a guest column about the academic life in a New York Times blog (Letting Scientists Off the Leash, February 10, 2009), and more specifically about the importance of getting grants. As scientists progress in their career, their main task becomes to secure funding for their research programs; they typically do little hands-on research by themselves, training students to perform these tasks instead.

Quake wonders how much of a researcher's salary should be provided by the university in order to help scientists think outside the box, as opposed to running after the latest buzzword to get money. In many experiments-heavy fields, one cannot perform research at all without grant money, which is necessary to buy equipment. Quake was lucky to get some very innovative ideas of his funded through atypical programs, but he worries that the conservatism of review panels impedes cutting-edge science.

This is of course a complicated issue - I was surprised to read that 75% of some faculty members' salaries come from research funding, because I always thought this only affects summer salaries, which represents at most 25% of yearly pay. (Note that nine-month salaries, guaranteed by the university, are paid over twelve months unless the faculty requests otherwise, so professors do get paid over the summer even if they don't have research grants.) I also felt that Quake's view that, "without a grant there might not be food on the family dinner table" was overly dramatic, and a very distorted take on reality.

Quake also drops hints of faculty members being worried about their mortgages, but what about the people who lose their job (all of it, not 25%)? Does he think they aren't worried about their mortgages too? In this economy, guest columnists might want to choose their words a little more carefully. (The deli employee at the Giant supermarket, who works there as a second job to make ends meet and keep his son at a top liberal-arts college, mentioned the other day that store customers have been drastically cutting back on the amount of meat they buy, and have been shunning the top names in favor of cheaper store brands. His wife's commissions [she works as a travel agent] have plummeted and he worries he's going to lose his main job, which he already lost a few months back before finding a similar position elsewhere. And then Quake writes about academics worried about food on the dinner table - what kind of bubble does he live in? There's always plenty of food on my dinner table, and organic one to boot. At least tenured faculty members like Quake have job security, and if academics don't like the size of the mortgages in Northern California, they can move elsewhere.)

Quake's post doesn't enhance the image of academics, unless whiny is the new cool. Yes, transformative ideas are difficult to secure funding for, and anyone who has been reading my blog for a while knows I'd love to see basic research get more money from the government. I wish that Quake had emphasized the sense of lost opportunities instead - who knows whether the ideas that didn't get funded will be implemented one day? what if their inventor loses hope and decides to leave academia? what about the lives of the people such ideas would have helped? This staggering sense of lost opportunities is what motivates taxpayers and their Congressmen to put more money into science and engineering. It is truly sad to go into scientific research to help change the world, and be prevented from making a contribution because no one agrees to give you money.

A recent article in Nature emphasizes this point (Research funding: closing arguments, February 5, 2009, p.650-655). (Sorry, I can't post a link. You have to be a subscriber to view it, or at least your university has to.) It describes the case of two academics with stellar track records who were recently denied funding and are considering leaving science as a result. The message I took away from the article is that there are many scientists with good ideas and good grant proposals out there, and, although highly deserving, they are not getting funded because of the agencies' limited budget. This is not exactly breaking news, but it helps putting faces on the problem and makes the issues of closing down an experimental lab much more real.

In an update at the bottom of the article, one of the researchers did secure last-minute funding for the one grant that kept her lab running, and the other doesn't seem to be seriously considering quitting academia; however, this does vividly illustrate scientists' predicament. Another excellent website advocating an increase in the NIH [National Institutes of Health] budget is brokenpipeline.org, which asserts that "An unprecedented five consecutive years of stagnant funding for the National Institutes of Health is putting America at risk—slowing the pace of medical advances, risking the future health of Americans, discouraging our best and brightest researchers, and threatening America's global leadership in biomedical research. Unfortunately, President Bush's budget proposal recommends a sixth year of flat funding for the NIH in 2009." I particularly recommend the "A Broken Pipeline?" report.

The need to improve the funding situation in academia has nothing to do with faculty members worrying about their mortgages. It has to do with discoveries within grasp and yet not being made because agencies don't have enough money.

Comments

[Panos Ipeirotis]

To be fair to all scientists, there are indeed positions in which the professor brings 50%-75% of the salary in terms of grants. (In life sciences this is the norm.) So, if such scientists cannot get grants, they receive essentially a 50%-75% salary cut. This is in terms of the 9-month salary, not in terms of summer funding. This also includes tenured faculty as well.

And in contrast to many other professions, an academic does not typically have the luxury of looking for a job in the same area they live. So indeed mortgage payments can become and issue. You may also consider the fact that the hiring cycle is significantly longer in academia than in any other industry.

[Aurelie]

I'm shocked. How can a university pay less than 75% of a faculty member's salary (assuming the professor doesn't do consulting) if that person is busy with academic duties, such as teaching and sitting on committees, during the academic year? No wonder undergraduates at some research universities complain about the quality of teaching. That kind of pay scale sends a powerful message that teaching doesn't matter, since professors do it almost for free (or send their graduate students into the classroom.)

I agree with the fact that it's not easy to find academic employment near one's current university. At the same time, people knew what they were getting into when they signed up. I work at a RU/H [Research University with High Research Activity] institution (formerly known as Research-II) and I'm very happy with the balance I have between teaching and research, and the related salary matters. I haven't heard of any colleague worrying about not paying his mortgage because a grant proposal was rejected. I suspect the San Francisco Bay Area is atypical in that respect, in the sense that Silicon Valley techies might price the professors out of the market. I live in a college town and we're certainly not priced out.

[Enthusiastic Professor]

It is rather common in some research universities (even in Ivy League schools), that tenure professors only received 25% of the salary (corresponds to 3-months) from the universities. I heard this directly from a professor there (Chair Professor in Ivy League school), who is comparing the salary compensation there with salary in other universities. It is unfortunate...I am very glad that my university pays 9 month salary in one of the first-rate research universities.

[Panos Ipeirotis]

Just to get the full picture: When the guaranteed salary is below 9 months, the professors not only have to bring money for themselves but also to sustain a lab (students, postdocs, technicians...) that can easily have 10-12 people. So, the professor typically needs to bring $500K to $2M **per year** in order to pay salaries for the lab members, get equipment, and pay the professor's salary.

As a balance, it is often the case that the teaching load is rather light and the work is very research-oriented.

In other words, the university pays a nominal salary for the teaching duties (if there are any), and gives to the professor the professorial title and the space for the lab.

Then, the professor has to sustain his research program, essentially relying on his own means. The home-run is when the lab generates some profitable patent, licensed by the industry, which then generates a flow of funding over a long period of time.

Since generating profitable patents is rather rare, there is a widespread need for funding. Therefore, the funding agencies used to give "medium size" grants relatively easily and professors kind of expected that they will be able to get funding. So, many professors relied on continuation of (easy) funding and built their lifestyle around this assumption (you cannot always plan for the worst-case scenario, right?).

Unfortunately, when this assumption stopped being true, then the outcome is pretty bad. (Does it remind you anything?)