Eliminate Federal R&D Grants to Colleges and Universities

An article by Carmen Drahl in the October 22 issue of Chemical and Engineering News covers 2010 academic research and development spending trends.

Research and development spending by colleges and universities in 2010 was $58.3 billion. Of that amount, US taxpayers contributed $36.5 billion or 63% of the total. That is in itself atrocious. How can the federal government justify dumping $36.5 billion of taxpayer funds into such a pie-in-the-sky operation as academic R&D? The answer is that it is a political expenditure primarily in an effort to obtain information to support government ideology, which would justify an increase in government control through higher taxes. An example is to try to connect carbon dioxide emissions to a fear of global warming, so that carbon dioxide emissions can be taxed.

However, it gets worse when we see that total academic R&D in 2010 increased 6.1% over the previous year, while the federal component increased 12.1%.

I call on Congress to do the right thing for the Republic and the taxpayers in general by eliminating government grants to colleges and universities for academic R&D. Any necessary R&D required by the federal government, such as improvement of military operations, should be done internally. However, control would also obviously be necessary on that process as well.

The primary function of colleges and universities is for education of students. In that process, students need to be educated in methods of conducting research, and research projects would be necessary. However such research projects should be decided on by the universities themselves, with their own money, rather than tainted political money from the federal government.