Is Industry-Oriented Research Crowding Out Fundamental Science in Canada?

A recent nationwide review of Canada's science funding system revealed several challenges that have deeply affected academic research in universities across the country. This includes the erosion of aggregate support for basic research and the diversion of funds from unfettered, investigator-led research to targeted programs for university-industry partnerships and innovation. How have these changes in the research funding system affected academic science? We focus on Canada's largest research funding agency, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), which currently supports fundamental and applied work in the natural sciences and engineering on the order of C$1 billion per year. Specifically, we analyze NSERC's funding data over the past 25 years to examine whether support for industry-oriented projects has crowded out fields of basic research. Using data on program goals, project descriptions, grant amounts, and investigators, we code projects according to research field/subfield, aims, and size to estimate the relative investment in different research fields and sub-fields over time. We find evidence of a growing concentration of industry-driven projects in priority S&T areas over time, crowding out certain areas of fundamental science. This pattern is associated with changes in the Council's organizational structure to enhance the mechanisms required to evaluate collaborative, industry-oriented projects. This study thus offers grant-level evidence of a slow and steady shift in allocation of research funding by Canada's major research council, with material implications for academic science.