Fund or perish has been the law of the land for some time. At RO1s, if you lack funding you lose lab space and resources, like instrument and graduate student time. Your teaching load creeps up, taking your time away from research. If you don't get funded early enough you don't get tenure. Lacking funding puts you into a research death spiral that is very difficult to pull out of.
At PUI's and MCU's as pressure to increase external funding increases, to make up for general budget shortfalls, the fund or perish mentality is increasing. I have seen this at my home institution where resources continue to decrease, yet demands on faculty research to support tenure or promotion continue to rise.
I know some will point out that this is just the normal process of competition and a recognition that when resources are limited, the resources will go to the most able to produce. We already evaluate the PI's potential to achieve the goals of the proposed work on every grant. We knock people down for not publishing enough, for having a high teaching load, or for lacking physical or personnel resources. If you can't play in the big leagues, you have to go to the minors or get out of the game.
The problem is, lacking funding handicaps researchers and reduces their potential to get back into the game. If the funding failures occur following tenure (as they do for many of us) departments are stuck with faculty who can't get funded and who fill faculty spaces. Universities will have to become more strict on research requirements for tenure to increase the potential that the faculty member will never be without funding.
The whole thing seems a bit like professional sports where you are only as good as your performance in the last few games/matches. Would we get better play in baseball if any player whose batting average fell below 0.275 had to bat with one hand for the next two months. And, as with tenure, the team could no cut them. Of course, if we were payed like baseball players . . . .
Lastly, I wonder what effect a blacklist of unsuccessful funders will have on the risks people are willing to take in granting. It will be fine line to walk when one must propose to move the science forward but make sure that the reviewers will not find your ideas too far out and deny your application.
T.S. Hall
The funding game is definitely tiring. Only a few professors have enough money to release themselves of the federal funding game.
ReplyDeleteThe blacklist will definitely discourage many from even trying. Hopefully the U.S. does not follow the lead. PI's may need to start bringing their own money.