Science Funding: United States

Abstract

Since World War II, the federal government has become the major funding source for fundamental research carried out in universities in the United States. ‘Science policy’ is the set of decisions that set the level, distribution, and conditions for federal funding of research. Over the past decades, a tension has characterized this policy area, between practical applications and freedom for creative inquiry. Policymakers have experimented with several ways to achieve both goals, and the different eras of US science policy are set apart by the nature of their experiments. From one-way knowledge mandating through two-way dialogs and knowledge sharing, US science policy has sought innovation steeped in societal problem solving. As the need for society-wide creativity grows, debates over the shape and direction of research can be expected to be even more pluralistic in participation and content in the early twenty-first century.