TL,DR - Mizzou updated their NSF Research Spending numbers on their website and it looks like FY21 went well and we will continue to climb up the rankings and are on track to get into the top 50 in the next few years.
Longer post
I’ve posted about this several times so people who have read those posts should basically know what this is about but I’ll give the general summary up front.
Mizzou is grandfathered into the AAU, the most prestigious organization for the top research universities in North America. This is mainly on the strength of the fact that Mizzou was a top 50ish research institution from the 1930s up until 1970 or so. It has been in decline for the past 50 years and fell all the way down to about #90 in terms of research. Because of this, Mizzou was at risk of getting kicked out of the AAU. This is not a hypothetical. Nebraska and Syracuse have already been kicked out, and Mizzou wasn’t doing much better than them. Other schools at the bottom of the AAU included kansas, Iowa State, Oregon, and a few others. We need to be in the top 60 or so to feel really safe. MU President Mun Choi has made it his #1 priority to fix this. He’s been at MU for around 5 years I think. They built a medical research center, The NextGen Center, for almost a quarter billion dollars. Also started the MizzouForward Campaign, which is supposed to pump $1,500,000,000 into expanding research at Mizzou over the next several years.
Returns so far. Mizzou was as low as #89 in research. For FY2020 they were #78. So that’s an improvement.
So here’s the latest news. I saw on Mizzou’s website that they’ve reported their numbers for FY2021. Research at Mizzou has gone up from $332M in FY20 to $389M in FY21, a 17% increase. If you look back a few years ago they were all the way down at $230M so we’ve seen a 70% increase in less than a decade.
research.missouri.edu
What does this mean for the rankings? By last years numbers $389 would put us at #68, just ahead of Carnegie Mellon and just behind Princeton. And ahead of kansas, Iowa State, and Oklahoma (who are all ranked similarly to us). But other schools are going to go up too. Looking around it looks like schools tend to go up about 5% per year. Mizzou is going up 17% so they’re beating that average. But anyway, I think this increase will likely get us to around #70 for FY21.
Keep in mind, we just started the MizzouForward Campaign and we just opened the NextGen Center so I think we’ve still got a lot of growth ahead of us. If we can keep increasing by around 15% per year we’re going to keep climbing these rankings and we’ll be in the top 50 in about 3 years. Maybe that’s too optimistic but I do think we’ll probably get there within 5 years or so based on how this is going and how much money we're pumping into this. That would put us on par with schools like Iowa, Colorado, and Virginia Tech. It would also put us at #5 in the new SEC, behind only Texas, Texas A&M, Florida, and Vanderbilt.
This is all great news in my opinion. I would absolutely love to see Mizzou become a top 50 academic school again and to not have to worry about getting kicked out of the AAU. It would be great for the university and for the state of Missouri.
Longer post
I’ve posted about this several times so people who have read those posts should basically know what this is about but I’ll give the general summary up front.
Mizzou is grandfathered into the AAU, the most prestigious organization for the top research universities in North America. This is mainly on the strength of the fact that Mizzou was a top 50ish research institution from the 1930s up until 1970 or so. It has been in decline for the past 50 years and fell all the way down to about #90 in terms of research. Because of this, Mizzou was at risk of getting kicked out of the AAU. This is not a hypothetical. Nebraska and Syracuse have already been kicked out, and Mizzou wasn’t doing much better than them. Other schools at the bottom of the AAU included kansas, Iowa State, Oregon, and a few others. We need to be in the top 60 or so to feel really safe. MU President Mun Choi has made it his #1 priority to fix this. He’s been at MU for around 5 years I think. They built a medical research center, The NextGen Center, for almost a quarter billion dollars. Also started the MizzouForward Campaign, which is supposed to pump $1,500,000,000 into expanding research at Mizzou over the next several years.
Returns so far. Mizzou was as low as #89 in research. For FY2020 they were #78. So that’s an improvement.
So here’s the latest news. I saw on Mizzou’s website that they’ve reported their numbers for FY2021. Research at Mizzou has gone up from $332M in FY20 to $389M in FY21, a 17% increase. If you look back a few years ago they were all the way down at $230M so we’ve seen a 70% increase in less than a decade.
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What does this mean for the rankings? By last years numbers $389 would put us at #68, just ahead of Carnegie Mellon and just behind Princeton. And ahead of kansas, Iowa State, and Oklahoma (who are all ranked similarly to us). But other schools are going to go up too. Looking around it looks like schools tend to go up about 5% per year. Mizzou is going up 17% so they’re beating that average. But anyway, I think this increase will likely get us to around #70 for FY21.
Keep in mind, we just started the MizzouForward Campaign and we just opened the NextGen Center so I think we’ve still got a lot of growth ahead of us. If we can keep increasing by around 15% per year we’re going to keep climbing these rankings and we’ll be in the top 50 in about 3 years. Maybe that’s too optimistic but I do think we’ll probably get there within 5 years or so based on how this is going and how much money we're pumping into this. That would put us on par with schools like Iowa, Colorado, and Virginia Tech. It would also put us at #5 in the new SEC, behind only Texas, Texas A&M, Florida, and Vanderbilt.
This is all great news in my opinion. I would absolutely love to see Mizzou become a top 50 academic school again and to not have to worry about getting kicked out of the AAU. It would be great for the university and for the state of Missouri.
