Science and Engineering Research Space at Academic Institutions Totaled 240 Million Square Feet in FY 2023

1For details on academic research and development (R&D) expenditures see the Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey data tables and InfoBriefs at https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/higher-education-research-development. The HERD Survey collects data for S&E and non-S&E R&D fields.

2During each cycle, some universities improve their space accounting systems through new software systems, better coding, or advanced space surveys. This occasionally results in substantial changes, both higher and lower, of research space totals at individual universities. This occurred in FY 2023, most notably with the University of Florida, which reported a decrease of 1 million total NASF from FY 2021. Around 1 million NASF of the decrease was in agricultural sciences and 300 thousand NASF in health sciences research space. The University of Florida also purchased Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter Florida on 1 April 2022, which contributed to almost 500 thousand more NASF of research space in the field of biological and biomedical sciences at the university.

3Data on costs for new construction of S&E research space are available in data tables 12 through 17 in the full set of data tables.

4Academic institutions reported planned new S&E research space construction in previous surveys for the following 2-year periods: 2008-09 (13.4 million NASF), 2010-11 (10.2 million NASF), 2012-13 (8.4 million NASF), 2014-15 (8.8 million NASF), 2016-17 (9.6 million NASF), 2018-19 (9.4 million NASF), 2020-21 (10.1 million NASF), and 2022-23 (10.6 million NASF). Data are available for costs of planned new construction projects for each biennial period in data tables from 2001 to 2021 at https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvyfacilities-legacy/.

5The federal government provided 16% of the anticipated completion costs for new S&E research space construction in FYs 2014-15. Although the $905 million of federal support was the highest total since data collection began in FYs 1986-87, over 60% of that funding was for the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University. The facility was completed in 2022.

6Data on institutional rankings by field are available in data table 3 in the full set of data tables.