August 4, 2005, an OSU news release reported that OSU had in 2003 moved into 10th place among public universities, up from 12th place, and into 15th place among all research universities, public and private, up from 18th place.
"This is a remarkable achievement for the university and a tremendous testament to the work of our research faculty," said Karen A. Holbrook, president of Ohio State. "Their scholarship and expertise are the reason we are one of the nation's top research institutions."
Robert McGrath explained ""OSU moved ahead of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the University of California at Davis, and Texas A&M, all highly respected research universities. Ohio State increased its research expenditures by 14.8 percent between 2002 and 2003. During that period only three other top 20 universities had large rates of growth, and the average increase for all institutions outside the top 20 was 10.1 percent."
The actual data can be found at the NSF. The August 2003 reports for federal- and total- expenditures are available here. [Note: these are large files and load slowly.]
Below is some analysis that explains the growth has been in non-federal expenditures. In federal expenditures, OSU has not grown; indeed it is not growing as fast as not only its benchmark competitors but also all universities. The growth has been in non-federal expenditures -- namely, those that do not measure our scholarly reputation against benchmark institutions. The hope that these steadily increasing non-federal funds would help position OSU to take off in the federal competition is not visible yet.
In summary, OSU has since 1996 been among the top five public universities in non-federal expenditures; it was 4th in 2003, whereas it was 39th in federal. These two combined to put it in the top 10. OSU's success in competing for non-federal funds is summarized here, using NSF data.
2003 Rank of Non-Federal Expenditures Best Publics
In Millions of US Dollars
U/Yr 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 O3-TotRank 03-FedRank
1 UCLA 162 183 195 226 257 381 421 428 1 5
2 UWI 187 186 194 250 276 300 317 325 3 8
3 UCSF 122 137 147 184 194 247 270 300 5 11
4 OSU 170 167 166 188 229 230 255 298 10 39 <<==
5 UCD 137 162 164 183 223 277 280 274 18 32
6 UCB 209 218 229 261 310 238 257 269 9 27
7 UMI 202 187 163 174 188 204 229 263 2 3
8 UCSD 85 138 127 170 193 213 226 246 6 7
9 PSU 149 155 164 180 202 212 208 232 7 19
10 UIUC 141 130 143 172 180 196 213 227 16 24
11 UMN 164 163 153 164 181 198 199 215 8 22
12 UAZ 131 133 124 142 158 168 179 196 21 25
13 UWA 97 89 70 115 140 155 140 119 4 2
14 UTA 91 87 80 93 94 100 102 112 32 28
15 UNC 64 67 52 70 74 82 116 110 29 23
16 UCo 92 78 67 74 53 57 59 59 24 10
17 UAL 78 53 62 67 58 37 39 39 46 26
Note: The 03-TotRank and 03-FedRank are for all universities; public and private. The rankings on the left for non-federal expenditures include those publics above OSU in 03 Federal Expenditures.
Note:Original date can be found at Academic Research and Development Expenditures: Fiscal Year 2003
For difference view see College Guide that is based on "three central criteria: Universities should be engines of social mobility, they should produce the academic minds and scientific research that advance knowledge and drive economic growth, and they should inculcate and encourage an ethic of service."