NSF Funding and Budget Allocation

Looking at the blue points, the NSF budget generally been increasing over the years with a few slight stagnations here and there. On the other hand, when adjusted for inflation rates according to 2014 is shown by the red points (this is generally how I think, which is apparently wrong). The proper adjustment should be adjusted to the rate of 1998, which is depicted by the green points.

In which more obvious behaviors are presented, in particular where the stagnations generally correlate to declines in the US economy. From 1998 to 2004 we see a steady increase in allocated funds, where starting after 2004 there starts an oscillation behavior in funding regardless of how you interpret inflation.

To be honest, while this image is rather stark on the state of funding, it was surprisingly less bad than I thought. Of course, I'm only looking at one scientific funding department, and I'm sure the NIH has a much more depressing outlook. We've been talking about government sequestrations, how funding has been cut back, and so forth, but in general, the overall trend is increase, albeit far slower than I would like to see.

I'm sure if we look at how funds are allocated as a percentage of government spending, it would produce a very different image however. That I have not looked into yet...

So why do I bring this up? More recently a friend of mine went on a Congressional Visit Day as representative of CMU for Materials Advantage. Just yesterday I attended a talk given by Kevin Finneran on whether the National Academy of Science is still relevant or not. I've been reading a number of articles on the Post-Doc population and lack of jobs for PhD degree holders after graduation.

And I've started realize these problems cannot be solved with science alone. It simply won't happen, because research isn't free (although PostDocs do provide an awesome bang-for-the-buck is what I've been reading), and we also only have a limited amount of funds. Those funds are currently dictated by policy makers and the government, which we as a scientific community apparently choose to ignore and not partake in. In that sense, that's why I do decide to write here though. Because I am openly providing information (albeit pointless) on my work, in which maybe someone in the general public may happen to be attracted to. I believe science funding can only be significantly increased if the public genuinely desires, and hence as scientist, we need to better communicate with them.