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Speaking Out

Research and the Bottom Line

Because of growing reliance on grant funds, a cost accounting/revenue generating approach has become pervasive in the day-to-day decision making in our universities. When it comes to program development and resource allocations, decisions are increasingly being made on the basis of a “what’s the return on the investment?” mentality. Returns are measured in dollars and cents rather than good teaching, scholarly achievements, national prominence, and academic excellence.

Predictably, this mindset affects how faculty members are evaluated: Success is determined by a professor’s ability to secure external funding. Although lip service is still paid to traditional academic values, decisions at many universities about hiring, term renewal, promotion, tenure, post-tenure review, salary increases, and performance-based salary adjustments have come to emphasize the ability to attract external funding. Grant getting has eclipsed the old refrain of “publish or perish.”

In an effort to improve the bottom line, some administrators have decided that if the research is not funded then it probably is not worth doing. One vice president for research at a major university maintained that if you were working on research where it was difficult to get grants, then you ought to seriously consider changing your research interests.

This is tantamount to saying that your work is only important to the extent that it brings in extramural support, and the purpose of doing research is to secure funding. This is equivalent to letting bureaucrats who hold the purse strings in Washington dictate research priorities and define what is important.

Don’t get me wrong, there are good reasons for research grants. They can be used to pay summer salaries, support students, and impress administrators, and some research requires considerable funds for equipment, supplies, and personnel. Researchers who require funding should be encouraged to secure extramural support. But, if you can do good research without external funding, should you be relegated to second class citizenship? Academic freedom ought to allow one to pursue research questions because they are intrinsically interesting or theoretically important, not because they are fundable.

Let’s hope we don’t reach the point where obituaries will read, “Professor X didn’t leave much of an intellectual legacy, but she sure brought in a lot of grant money.”

Gordon G. Gallup, Jr. is a professor of psychology at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He is an evolutionary psychologist and former editor of the Journal of Comparative Psychology and has published over 250 scientific articles.