In March, 2009, shortly after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (popularly known as the stimulus) was signed into law, we wondered what the resulting huge 2-year windfall would mean for science and scientists. More than $21 billion of the largesse, all of which had to be obligated (but not necessarily spent) by the end September 2010, was slated for science. The National Institutes of Health came in for $8.2 billion of the special funding, much of it going, ultimately, to some 21,500 short-term research grants to university-based principal investigators.
On December 12, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) provided a partial answer to our question with a report entitled Employment and Other Impacts Reported by NIH Recovery Act Grantees.
On December 12, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) provided a partial answer to our question with a report entitled Employment and Other Impacts Reported by NIH Recovery Act Grantees.
The main impact: apparently the money did indeed pay for scientific jobs on campuses. NIH stimulus money supported 12,000 full-time equivalents (FTE) at universities in the last quarter of 2009, the report says. That number rose to about 22,000 in the quarter ending in September 2010 and dropped a bit in the next quarter, remaining pretty level at about 22,000 FTEs through the end of June 2011, the end of the period that the study covers. The number of individual people that these numbers represent is likely larger, as some of the jobs are part-time. The number of NIH-related jobs supported over the life of the stimulus program is not clear at this time.
To get a more specific picture of what the NIH stimulus money paid for, GAO chose 10 grantees at each of five institutions -- Johns Hopkins and Duke universities, and the universities of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Washington -- and looked at their expenditures in greater detail. Together, the five institutions reported that stimulus funds supported about 1,000 FTEs in the last quarter of 2009. The number rose quickly, reaching 2,500 in the quarter ending September 2010 and remaining at about 2,000 through the quarter ending in June 2011. The 50 selected PIs reported that 58% of the workers they paid out of Recovery Act funds were "research scientists and other faculty," 10% did "IT/data information" work, 9% were in the category of "temporary/part-time worker," 8% were "pre- and postdoctoral/student," and 15% were "other."
These remarkably uninformative categories do not give a clear picture of who the workers were, what they were doing, or what they were paid. Interestingly, however, half the selected PIs said that they used stimulus money to prevent layoffs or reductions in hours for existing workers and a third used it to create new positions. Thirty-three of the fifty PIs also used stimulus funds to buy equipment and fourteen used it to buy services from vendors. Twenty-four of the PIs submitted peer-reviewed articles for publication based on work done on stimulus funds; seventeen had peer-reviewed articles accepted for publication. One applied for a patent.
Fragmentary though these data are, they do indicate that the stimulus helped some scientists keep or find jobs in university research labs. What those jobs were, and what they paid, are not clear. Nor does the GAO tell anything about happens to these people when the special money runs out. Based on sad experience with other large, short-term infusions of cash into academic research, however, we can certainly guess.
To get a more specific picture of what the NIH stimulus money paid for, GAO chose 10 grantees at each of five institutions -- Johns Hopkins and Duke universities, and the universities of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Washington -- and looked at their expenditures in greater detail. Together, the five institutions reported that stimulus funds supported about 1,000 FTEs in the last quarter of 2009. The number rose quickly, reaching 2,500 in the quarter ending September 2010 and remaining at about 2,000 through the quarter ending in June 2011. The 50 selected PIs reported that 58% of the workers they paid out of Recovery Act funds were "research scientists and other faculty," 10% did "IT/data information" work, 9% were in the category of "temporary/part-time worker," 8% were "pre- and postdoctoral/student," and 15% were "other."
These remarkably uninformative categories do not give a clear picture of who the workers were, what they were doing, or what they were paid. Interestingly, however, half the selected PIs said that they used stimulus money to prevent layoffs or reductions in hours for existing workers and a third used it to create new positions. Thirty-three of the fifty PIs also used stimulus funds to buy equipment and fourteen used it to buy services from vendors. Twenty-four of the PIs submitted peer-reviewed articles for publication based on work done on stimulus funds; seventeen had peer-reviewed articles accepted for publication. One applied for a patent.
Fragmentary though these data are, they do indicate that the stimulus helped some scientists keep or find jobs in university research labs. What those jobs were, and what they paid, are not clear. Nor does the GAO tell anything about happens to these people when the special money runs out. Based on sad experience with other large, short-term infusions of cash into academic research, however, we can certainly guess.
