Higher Education Office of Research & Grants Management Benchmarks

This study presents data from 28 offices of research and grants management in higher education institutions predominantly from the United States and Canada. The 122-page report gives extensive data on office of research budgets, staffing, technology use, use of and spending on outside consultants and lawyers, use of social media, uses of staff time and more. The study includes extensive information on how offices of research assess their skill in reducing paperwork, gaining the confidence of faculty, establish mentoring programs, monitor and assess research progress and more. Other issues and practices covered include: spending for staff training, means of training faculty in compliance and other issues, use of grants databases for research, and policies in dealing with investigator budget development and indirect costs. Survey participants also name their most admired research offices and specify their sources of information and advice. Just a few of the report’s many finding are that: • Specialized research institutions such as medical schools that had hired consultants in the past three years to advise them on the development of their research office spent a mean of $119, 500.00. • In 2015, mean spending rose modestly for the research offices in the sample, to a mean of $1,525,079, an increase of about 2.1%, perhaps modestly surpassing the rate of inflation. • Only 21.43% offered their researchers use of the Foundation Directory Online; private colleges were about twice as likely as public ones to offer the Foundation Directory Online. • Only a few of the organizations sampled shared the cost of databases with the college academic library; it was mostly research universities that did this but even among them it was less common than not. • 46.43% offered classes or tutorials in conflict of interest. They were most popular among specialized research universities such as medical schools, of which more than 83% offered classes or tutorials in this area. • Research universities in the sample spent a mean of $13,543 on office of research staff training in the past year.