When There's Not Enough Money To Go Around, States Urge Expansion Of NSF Program To Share Funds More Evenly

WASHINGTON -- The South shall rise again - along with states from the Midwest, Southwest, Rocky Mountains, Pacific Northwest, and Great Plains. At least, that's the hope of supporters of a National Science Foundation program to help states whose scientists receive dispropor-tionately little federal support. They are trying to use that program as a model for a government-wide effort at geographic self-help. "We have a common problem - poverty and bad politics," says biochemist Kenneth Pruitt, associate vice president for research at the University of Alabama in Birmingham and chairman of a 16-state coalition that hopes to increase the per capita level of research funding in these "have-not" states. "In many ways we're treated as Third World states." The program, begun in 1978, is called EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research). It doles out small amounts of money to 17 have-not states to use as a magnet to help their universities and local industries excel in one or more areas of science and engineering. (One state, Vermont, receives EPSCoR funds but is not a member of the coalition.) Such teamwork is supposed to help scientists in those states fare better in subsequent applications for grants from federal research agencies. Success, in turn, is expected to breed further cooperation, until the state's overall research enterprise meets or exceeds the national average. NSF began the program after an Arkansas congressman asked former NSF Director Richard Atkinson at a budget hearing how much money his state was getting in NSF grants. Chagrined by the answer, the congressman invited NSF to look at the issue of geographic distribution of its research dollars. The result was a program that would try to spread that wealth around more evenly. The numbers tell a striking tale. Five states - California, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Virginia - received 52 percent of the federal research dollar in 1987, although they contain only a quarter of the U.S. population. Those numbers have led Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.), the committee chairman with considerable influence over the direction of federal research, to suggest a system in which no region of the country can receive more than twice the amount of federal research dollars going to any other region. "I have minimal high regard for the peer review system," Johnston says. "If you accept the idea that peer review has resulted in the selection of the best possible research, then you don't need another way to distribute the dollars. But I don't think that's true." Donald Langenberg, president of the University of Illinois, Chicago, and NSF deputy director when the EPSCoR program got under way, says that the argument for geographic distribution is an old one, and that the typical response has been that the dollars go where the quality is. But he says that political pressure from several have-not states forced NSF to change its tune. "We decided that it was time to invest some resources in trying to change that situation," he recalls. "But it was more than a question of throwing money at a state. In many cases, there was no research culture in that state - no good mechanism for researchers at state universities to purchase a particular piece of scientific equipment when they needed it, for example. So EPSCoR required states to design a coordinated framework involving government, universities, and the business community, to make sure that everybody was committed to improving the situation." The program began in 1980 with $600,000 annual grants to five states. In 1986 eight more states, many of which had lost out in the initial competition, were added, and in 1988 a third class of four states joined EPSCoR. The program, as intended, has had a multiplier effect - NSF's $49 million investment over 10 years has been combined with $156 million in nonfederal contributions - and NSF officials believe that it has succeeded in helping those states do a better job of attracting federal research dollars. "Remember, EPSCoR wasn't designed to create economically competitive states," says NSF's Joseph Danek, whose long involvement has earned him recognition as father of the EPSCoR program. "The goal has always been to enhance basic university research in selected states. However, in doing that, we hope to have an impact in other areas as well." Of course, it's the opportunity to play a role in those other areas - the ones that create jobs and bring money into a state - that draws the attention of politicians such as Johnston. "I don't know much about EPSCoR because, frankly, it's so small that it's no big deal," Johnston told an audience at February's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "But why not use it as a model for all NSF spending? What if Congress were to say [that] no region can get more than twice the amount of funding as any other region of the country? There's a lot of sentiment in Congress to go beyond EPSCoR because the type of jobs that it creates attracts the most desirable quality of people." Johnston's proposal for a geographic cap on research awards is roundly condemned by scientists. "It would be the death of peer review," said one NSF official after the meeting. But Johnston's suggestion that other agencies jump into the geographic distribution pool is the idea behind the formation in February 1989 of the Coalition of EPSCoR states. "It's certainly made a difference in getting the attention of our legislators," says Alabama's Pruitt. "It's one thing to go in as an individual, but quite another to go in as a representative of 16 states. After all, we represent 13 percent of the population of this country." Armed with $10,000 from each state, the group lobbied successfully last year to protect the program's $9.8 million budget within NSF. It also won language asking for reports on the subject of geographic distribution from three other agencies that fund basic research - the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Defense. The reports, overdue since January, are supposed to spell out what each agency is now doing. Stewart vanScoyoc, a lawyer hired to run the coalition's Washington office, says that the group is pushing for reports next year from the National Institutes of Health and from the Environmental Protection Agency and that it plans to use this year's reports to "see where the opportunities lie." Some of those agencies are already taking action. NASA is preparing to launch a program of "capability enhancement grants" for states now receiving little or no NASA money. Modeled after EPS-CoR, the program is aimed not only at helping academic researchers compete for NASA funds, but also at improving scientific literacy within the overall population of that state. "It's seed money," says Julius Dasch of NASA's division of educational affairs. "It won't be a lot, but it's definitely modeled after EPS-CoR." The program would be an offshoot of the agency's newly formed network of 21 Space Grant colleges and universities, in which up to $325,000 annually is being funneled to institutions in states that already receive significant NASA funding. Within the Department of Agriculture, officials say that a proposed doubling of the agency's $50 million competitive grants program could incorporate some of the elements of EPSCoR. "We're thinking about providing seed grants to those scientists who haven't gotten competitive grants from us for at least five years," says William Carlson of the department's Cooperative State Research Services (CSRS) program. "And those who aren't successful would have the chance to join with scientists who are funded." But USDA officials say that their hands are also tied by financial ropes. "The strengthening portion of the total program would amount to only $10 million of the total $100 million," says Carlson about the funds requested for fiscal year 1991, which begins October 1. "And it's going to be hard to make much of an impact at that level." But the biggest supporter of basic research to universities, the National Institutes of Health, doesn't sponsor anything like EPSCoR. There is an $11 million program, called Academic Research Enhancement Awards (AREA), that is aimed at researchers in four-year colleges that do not receive significant amounts of NIH funds. But the program lacks any statewide focus, and its goal is not so much scientific bootstrapping in a particular discipline as it is a generic exposure to research. "It's not a realistic goal to expect AREA recipients to be able to compete for RO1 grants [awards given to individual investigators]," says NIH's Lilly Engstrom, who coordinates the program. "At our symposium last month, participants agreed that the real purpose of the program is to expose students to research opportunities that would not normally be available to them at a nonresearch-intensive university. Hopefully, some of those students would then decide to pursue careers in research." VanScoyoc says that NIH has been "a tough nut to crack." Acting NIH Director William Raub explains why. "We've looked at the issue, and we believe that NIH funding already tracks very well with the density of scientists in the country," Raub says. "That's true not only in terms of grants, but also in the distribution of scientists on our peer review panels. There's no explicit criteria for geographic distribution in our awards, but when you get to the margins [of funding], geography is one of many factors that we look at." Raub and others point to NSF's special mission - to foster basic research at the nation's colleges and universities - as another reason the program has not spread to other agencies. But observers disagree about its value in those areas. "I don't see any reason why NIH should not have such a program," says Langenberg. "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. And DOD, if it took seriously its responsibility to build up the nation's research infrastructure, should do it, too." Raub, however, sees things differently. "I don't know whether a similar program in the area of health could work," he says. "When you start to look at it, you find that all many [poorly funded] colleges have to offer is a biology and a chemistry department; there's no clinical program, no animal facilities, no real research infrastructure. I think that it's the case that there is a broader range of possibilities [for EPSCoR] connected to NSF's mission than to the missions of most other federal research agencies." Even NSF's Danek says that he would be wary of expanding the program unless other agencies - and the politicians that are urging them to do so - promise to do the program right. "I would hate to see it used just as a way to get people off their backs," says Danek. "They have to be committed to running a quality, peer-reviewed program that is aimed at achieving long-term change in the state through basic research. Otherwise, they shouldn't start one."

When There's Not Enough Money To Go Around, States Urge Expansion Of NSF Program To Share Funds More Evenly

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