R&D: Tax Dollars at Work
Beyond recruiting and rearing the next celebrity engineers (see “Dream Jobs,” p. 58), universities are heavily vested in post-graduate programs as well. Competitions like DARPA’s Urban Challenge and others are only the beginning. According to Gibbons, the combined contributions from federal and state funding as well as corporations pump around $6 billion into the R&D ventures of U.S. colleges.
According to the survey, 41.4% of the companies represented in the poll feed revenue into collegiate R&D. But the elements of terrorism and war have contaminated many elements of U.S. livelihood—including technological R&D. Even with help from corporations, the government’s increased concentration on homeland security leaves collegiate institutions with the short end of the stick, even if they have government contracts, Gibbons reports.
Pulling revenue from university agenda to develop technology to help protect our borders is a welcomed idea for some of you, though. According the survey, nearly 40% of you feel that the government should be increasing R&D in homeland sSecurity. In fact, some of you believe that the government should only back student research programs and national security. “Other than university research grants and fulfilling their job protecting the country (military), I do not believe they should be spending our taxes on other things,” one respondent said.
Out of 10 choices, homeland security polled as the third highest priority for government funding. Alternative power is appealing for a large majority of EEs, pulling in 85.6%. Nanotechnology, the second largest supported area. was supported by over 46% of the sample. Over a quarter of the respondents want funding to go to broadband infrastructure. Robotics received 27.2% backing, and biocomputing and supercomputing received 18.7% and 15.9%, respectively.
Another popular avenue for R&D is space exploration. There also is a voice pulling for less government involvement and in effect less taxes on companies and workers. Less than a third of the companies represented, 30.1%, receive funds and contracts from the government.
“I prefer to see industry take the initiative and make these investments,” said Pete Soper, engineering manager at Meyer Sound Laboratories. “I do not feel that it is the government’s role to direct or fund R&D apart from those programs needed for essential defense, and even that I feel would be better handled by private investment.”
Fuel for the Fire
Whether you mark it down to global competition, the sake of creation, or any other reason, R&D is an enabling function of engineering. On a corporate level, only 28.3% reported that their company is investing more of its internal revenue for R&D than in previous years. More than half the poll-takers, 52.8%, claim that their company invests the same amount.
Even though the combined percentage of companies investing more or the same amount of funds represents over 80% of the EEs surveyed, only 54.3% of the populace believes that their company is investing enough. Notwithstanding the companies that are too small for R&D, are primarily consulting businesses, or are in industries that don’t require much development, a significant portion of EEs feels management needs to step up to the plate.
“R&D is key to the future of any company,” said systems architect Jonathan Gallmeier. “We have restricted our R&D efforts based upon a financial model where the key decision makers may not understand what they are giving up by limiting R&D in terms of future products, time to market and so on.”