University research spending surges with increased funds from Ottawa and provinces

Widespread acceptance of higher education’s key facilitating role in fostering innovation is translating into substantial increases in R&D funding for Canada’s colleges, universities and affiliated research institutes. Statistics Canada reports that higher education expenditures for FY99-00 exceeded $5 billion for the first time with all levels of government, businesses, the non-profit sector and the institutions themselves boosting their levels of research funding.

Higher education in FY99-00 reached $5.154 billion, up 11.8% from FY98-99 and up nearly 40% since FY95-96. The data are finally beginning to show the substantial impact of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the matching investment vehicles created by the provinces to ensure their fair share of the research infrastructure funding.

But a closer look at the funding sources reveals substantial increases in money from the private non-profit sector and foreign sources. And as the largest single source of research support, universities themselves have opened the funding taps, injecting $2.73 billion in FY99-00, up 34.3% over two years from FY97-98 and 16.3% in the last year alone.

The natural sciences and engineering attracted the lion’s share (79%) of funds to post $4.1 billion in expenditures, of which $1.91 billion (47%) was directed towards the health sciences. The social sciences and humanities captured the remaining 21% with $1.1 billion in expenditures.

QUEBEC SHOWS GREATEST INCREASE

Provincially, Quebec appears to be the big winner on an annual basis. For FY99-00, R&D expenditures at its institutions rose $274.4 million to $1.5 billion, an increase of 22.5%. In contrast, Ontario received more total dollars ($2.0 billion), but that was up $263.5 million over the previous year, an increase of 15.1%.

In fact,. all provinces showed increases in FY99-00, with the largest percentage hike enjoyed by Nova Scotia. That province’s higher education institutions received $210.4 million in FY99-00, 28.1% more than the year before.

It was closely followed by Saskatchewan, which received $175.7 million, up 26.9%. Manitoba was next with a 20.4% increase to $157.5 million. Alberta received the third largest amount of R&D funding for FY99-00 with $484.2 million, up 18.2% from a year earlier. It was closely followed by British Columbia, whose institutions received $440.8 million for an annual 18.2% increase.

After universities, the largest single funding source is the federal government, which exceeded $1 billion for the first time with an annual increase of 25.7%. The provinces did even better on a collective basis, increasing R&D funding by 29.9% to 480.4 million. The non-profit sector and foreign sources showed more modest funding increases of 4.3% and 7.1% respectively.

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