The funding of university research: A comparative study of the United Kingdom and Canada

This paper extends previous work concerning the allocation of resources through the mechanism of peer-adjudicated grants in the Science Research Council to the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The aim of this research has been to draw comparisons between the flows of these research resources from the research councils to the universities in the United Kingdom and Canada over the period 1964 to 1974 inclusive. The paper analyses the data using two indicators; one which measures concentration of resources and another which measures the median level of support for a given field. The principal results suggest for both countries that the concentration of resources is not a function of their availability; that the concentration of resources has tended not to vary over time; and that concentration has increased with the level of institutional aggregation. The main differences between countries are that the Science Research Council tended to have the higher level of concentration at the level of the scientist but that the National Science and Engineering Research Council had higher levels of concentration at the department and university levels. With regard to median levels of support it appears that for both countries the levels of support have remained constant or declined over time; and that there are national differences in the costs of research in areas supported by the two research councils. The implications of these findings are discussed with reference to the dynamics of the peer-review system.