Obstacles and Opportunities: Funding Research at the 1890 Land Grant Institutions

Similar to other university faculties, faculty members at 1890 land grant institutions are expected to support their research programs with grants from sources outside their institutions. Although the expectation of securing grants has not received the public attention that the publish or perish dictum has, faculty at the 1890 institutions seeking promotion and tenure must increasingly demonstrate that they can procure grant funds. Numerous inhibitive factors, however, tend to attenuate the success of 1890 faculty in obtaining research grant funding and in implementing such research projects. In this study, three key factors are examined: political, research infrastructure, and faculty initiative. The perceived importance of benefits of conducting research is also examined. Descriptive statistics and analysis of covariance are used to evaluate potential barriers to research, faculty access to information about research grants programs, opportunities to compete for grants, and experience in obtaining competitive grants. Data for this analysis are taken from a probability sample of faculty members at the 1890 land grant institutions and Tuskegee University. Also, activities are proposed that need to be implemented in order to minimize the factors preventing many scientists at the 1890 institutions from obtaining more competitive grants