Pitt No. 8 Among All U.S. Public Universities in Federally Financed R&D Expenditures

The University of Pittsburgh is ranked No. 8 among all U.S. public universities and 13th among all U.S. universities, public and private, in federally financed R&D expenditures for fiscal year 2009, according to a Sept. 28 Chronicle of Higher Education listing based upon a National Science Foundation report issued on Sept. 27.

The other top-ranked public universities in the listing are Michigan, the University of Washington, UC-San Diego, Wisconsin, Colorado, UC-San Francisco, and UCLA. The top-ranked private universities in the listing are Johns Hopkins, MIT, Penn, Columbia, and Stanford. Pitt outranks, among many others, Caltech, Chicago, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Minnesota, North Carolina, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, USC, Washington University in St. Louis, and Yale.

The listing also highlights universities’ 2009 rankings vs. their rankings in 2004. Here, Pitt advanced by one slot, displacing Harvard, which fell from No. 13 to No. 19 among all universities.

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the list “is a leading indicator of research quality because, unlike other financing sources, the federal government awards most of its academic-research dollars through national, open competitions.”