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Stimulus creates application avalanche
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TEXT OF INTERVIEW
Kai Ryssdal: President Obama spent some time yesterday talking about his economic stimulus package. How many jobs it's already created or saved, and how many more are coming. Almost every part of the economy, it seems, got money in the bill. Including the National Institutes of Health. They'll get that money out into the economy in the form of research grants, which sounds pretty good. But might not actually add jobs. Paul Basken's with the Chronicle of Higher Education. He wrote about it today. Good to have you with us.
PAUL BASKEN: Thank you.
Ryssdal: All of this stimulus money that's out there, is it doing the expected and attracting just a whole bunch of scientists who need grant money?
BASKEN: Well, it's doing that. The question whether it's doing what's expected in terms of getting job created is one thing. But it certainly at this point attracting a lot of interest among scientists.
Ryssdal: Can you quantify it for me? How much money is at stake here, and how many applications above and beyond the normal?
BASKEN: The stimulus bill was $787 billion and of that there was $10.4 billion that was given to the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, which is the agency that hands out money largely to universities to do scientific research. But the NIH is the largest in the Federal government that does it. And last year, the NIH had about 77,000 grant applications from scientists. This year the number is up from 77,000 to 115,000, and that's due largely to the money that was given to the NIH through the stimulus money.
Ryssdal: What about those universities though? Are they kinda banking on this money to help them fund to help obviously scientific research but other avenues of science and academic pursuits?
BASKEN: They are. And in fact there was a long period during the Bush administration when the NIH funding, and again, that's the main source of scientific research funding going into universities, that was pretty level during the last five or so years of the Bush administration. So the universities have been really looking forward to this bump up. So partly what was talked about at the NIH meeting yesterday, when they went over some of these numbers, was the fact that they're seeing some evidence that some universities were kinda treating it, one described it as a lottery, where they were just saying, OK, put in any application you can, there's all this money out there and go get it. And the NIH reviewers, or actually the officials at the NIH, were a little concerned by that. They certainly do want to see a lot more interest, and a lot more good projects being funded. But they're a little concerned that the increase was so large it was reflecting more cases than really has a reasonable prospect for being funded.
Ryssdal: Does it necessarily hold as the Obama administration was banking on that more money for scientific research will get better science out there? I mean certainly there are more grant applications being made. Are we going to see better science out of that?
BASKEN: We'll have to see. But there's certainly good reason to expect that. The question I think also is whether we're going to see a large number of jobs from this. Because remember the whole point of the economic stimulus bill was to create jobs. And in this kind of funding it's a little questionable as to how many jobs you're really creating, because what you're doing is giving money to university researchers who already have jobs at their universities. They buy some scientific equipment, but a lot of times that scientific equipment may have been made in another country. There's been some criticism, or at least questioning, as to whether this kind of spending is a jobs creating mechanism. But then again, people also point out, when you spend this kind of money what you do is you get spinoffs, and you get companies that are formed. You hit the next Google or whatever, maybe that alone will create thousands of jobs.
Ryssdal: Paul Basken. He covers science for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Paul, thanks a lot.
BASKEN: Thank you.
Like the other commenters, I believe that this segment missed so many key points that it was downright misleading. My colleague Todd Palmer and I have addressed some of these oversights here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/todd-palmer-and-rob-pringle/why-its-good-t....
I encourage you and Mr. Basken to revisit this story. $1billion of the funds directed to NIH are for construction projects, being distributed to institutions around the country. This represents jobs in the construction industry. Also, while research funding may not create new faculty positions at colleges and universities, those funds are used to employ research assistants, technicians, post docs and graduate students to work on the research projects. I think Mr. Basken's evaluation is a gross oversight and unfair to NIH and your listeners and shoukd be corrected.
In answer to the question if the stimulus money given to research will create jobs or not, I donot know why Mr.Paul Basken neglected to say that a lot of the money from research grants supports the hiring of research associates, postdocs, graduate assistants- a plethora of jobs in fact, in universities AND research institutions. Admittedly most of these are positions considered to be 'traineeships' but hey, if you are getting paid for the work you do and you pay taxes on that income, then I think you can call it a 'job'.
There is always the need to have effective review to make sure that grant money goes to proposals most likely to succeed. It will be up to the American people to value biomedical research or not. However, stating that stimulus money or any other rise in NIH funding does not mostly lead to new jobs is just plain wrong! As a lab manager in a major research institution with 30+ years on the job, I can say that when a group gets a federal grant, It is largely going to postdoctoral fellowships, young academics working toward getting that university position someday as well as technicians who are laid off when the grants get lean and rehired (if lucky) when grants return. Overhead costs included in these grants pay the salaries of the employees that run the institutions' infrastructure. There are included budget lines for equipment and supplies, even some special equipment grants but to imply that equipment is where the bulk NIH's money goes is incorrect.
Much of the stimulus money will go toward salaries, not only for new hires but also for personnel already on the job. That is, it will pay a part of the salary of the principal investigator who applied for the research grant as well as salaries for technicians and postdocs working on the project. Moreover, an additional 50 cents or more on each dollar of direct cost allocated to the research project will be paid in indirect cost to the hosting institution to recover overhead for infrastructure and operations.
The number of applications increased 1.5-fold because of the immense crunch in funding over the past eight years. The drastic increase suggests that the stimulus will hardly be enough to cover the backlog. No doubt, this money will help maintain and create jobs. Let us hope that new discoveries may ensue from this investment.
I have written more about federal funding of research at academic institutions here:
http://brainmindinst.blogspot.com/2008/10/departure-of-cranes.html
As one of the people who will be hiring based on the $10.4 billion NIH stimulus funding, I can tell you that this will definately create jobs. Up to 8 people in my group alone. I run a "core" which provides specialized computing and data analysis services to researchers in human genetics and we are in the process of hiring 4 new people to cover the load from new grant money. I have also been told that we may need to hire 4 more people to cover expected grant awards. These are highly technical, high paying positions which will certainly stimulate the economy. The problem that I see, is that this money is only for 2 years after which the NIH will be back to old funding levels and I may have to layoff all of my new hires. I would love to see the administration commit to this level of funding for at least 5 years so that people can be assured of a job for longer than 24 months.
I think this story fails to acknowledge one of the biggest benefits of increased funding for the NIH. With more grants funded to higher levels, scientists are able to take on more graduate students and post-docs. After all, somebody has to run all that foreign manufactured equipment the interview alluded to. Whether or not you classify such positions as jobs is your business, but they represent both pay in the short term and a larger pool of scientists in the future. These men and women will be a boon to both public research and private companies as they enter the work force in a few years.
