HERD Visualizer
NSF HERD FY2024: university research expenditures ranked
Every U.S. institution in the NSF HERD Survey, with its total, its national rank and where the money came from. Free, no account, and every number on the page is NSF's own.
The FY2024 national picture
$117.7 billion
spent on research and development by the 925 U.S. institutions that reported in FY2024, up 8.2% on FY2023, when 895 institutions reported $108.8 billion.
- Average
- $127.3 million
- Median
- $5.1 million
- Largest
- $4.1 billion
Where the $117.7 billion came from
- Federal government55.0%$64.7 billion
- State and local government5.2%$6.1 billion
- Institution funds25.7%$30.2 billion
- Business5.4%$6.4 billion
- Nonprofit organizations5.7%$6.7 billion
- All other sources3.1%$3.7 billion
Shares of the FY2024 national total. The six sources add up to it exactly.
FY2024 dashboard
Cut the survey the way your question is asked
Pick any mix of filters. Every figure and row below follows. Type a name to light one institution up across the page without hiding the rest, or pick two to five to compare them.
You are reading FY2024 because it is the most recent HERD release: NCSES, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics at NSF, publishes one survey year at a time, well after that fiscal year closes, and FY2025 arrives here when NCSES publishes it.
Loading the FY2024 dashboard, about 108 KB. The top 25 below is ready now.
The 25 largest research universities in FY2024
Rank is national among all 925 ranked institutions.
Johns Hopkins University leads the FY2024 survey at $4.1 billion, close to twice University of Pennsylvania's $2.2 billion. Together the 25 institutions below account for $43.3 billion, 36.8% of the $117.7 billion spent across all 925 reporting institutions. Rank is national among all 925 ranked institutions.
Every ranking
Every ranking has a page of its own
By funding source
By field of research
By state and territory
- Alabama 14
- Alaska 4
- American Samoa 1
- Arizona 5
- Arkansas 11
- California 76
- Colorado 15
- Connecticut 17
- Delaware 2
- District of Columbia 8
- Florida 23
- Georgia 25
- Guam 1
- Hawaii 5
- Idaho 5
- Illinois 31
- Indiana 24
- Iowa 11
- Kansas 6
- Kentucky 10
- Louisiana 19
- Maine 8
- Maryland 17
- Massachusetts 38
- Michigan 23
- Minnesota 22
- Mississippi 9
- Missouri 15
- Montana 8
- Nebraska 5
- Nevada 8
- New Hampshire 4
- New Jersey 17
- New Mexico 6
- New York 88
- North Carolina 22
- North Dakota 7
- Ohio 27
- Oklahoma 11
- Oregon 12
- Pennsylvania 56
- Puerto Rico 16
- Rhode Island 10
- South Carolina 17
- South Dakota 8
- Tennessee 17
- Texas 56
- Utah 6
- Vermont 4
- Virgin Islands 1
- Virginia 25
- Washington 17
- West Virginia 9
- Wisconsin 21
- Wyoming 2
If you want to explore HERD data in a meaningful and productive way, Streamlyne’s HERD Visualizer is an incredibly effective and user-friendly tool. It is powerful and intuitive, providing clear, actionable insights into R&D expenditures by institution. It also allows you to segment by funding source and graph out year-over-year trends. I especially appreciate the ability to filter by top performers and benchmark against peers, which informs our annual strategic planning. The HERD Visualizer is a must-have for any institution that prides itself on data-informed, strategic decision making.
Dr. Can SayginSenior Vice President for ResearchUT Rio Grande Valley
The survey itself
Why institutions take HERD seriously
HERD is how the federal government and everyone else analyses where university R&D money goes and where it is growing. Georgia Tech uses it to answer questions like who funds university R&D, where growth has been strongest, and how much minority-serving institutions spend on R&D. Arizona State publishes classification guides so its administrators submit accurately. Northwestern notes that accurate data strengthens both the national analysis and its own standing among peers.
The data is public. The difficulty was always getting an answer out of it before the meeting you needed it for.
Questions
About HERD, and about the tool
What is the HERD Survey?
The Higher Education Research and Development Survey is conducted annually by the National Science Foundation. It collects R&D expenditures by field of research and source of funds from U.S. universities and colleges, along with types of research and expenses and headcount of R&D personnel. Over 900 institutions complete it each year.
Which survey year is this?
FY2024, the most recent HERD release, covering the 925 institutions that reported. Each institution's own page carries its totals back to FY2010.
Is this NSF data, or your own?
It is NSF's data. HERD Visualizer does not change the numbers. It puts them in pages you can browse and link to. The raw HERD tables are public and hard to work with, and this is the interface they never came with.
What does it cost?
Nothing, and there is no account. Every ranking, every institution page and the national totals are free to read and free to cite. We built it because the research offices we work with kept rebuilding it themselves in spreadsheets.
Why does the survey matter to my institution?
Two reasons that show up in practice. Benchmarking your R&D effort against peers informs strategic planning and where you prioritise future research focus. And accurate submissions strengthen both the national analysis and your own standing among peer institutions.
Do we need Streamlyne Research to use it?
No. HERD Visualizer stands alone. It is also included at no additional cost with a FundFit institutional subscription, which is how most institutions end up with both.
Data: NSF HERD FY2024, built from NSF's published tables on September 8, 2026. Page updated September 14, 2026.
Data: National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, National Science Foundation, Higher Education Research and Development Survey, FY2024.
Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.