What is HERD?

The Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey is produced by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) within the National Science Foundation (NSF). It provides annual statistics on research and development expenditures at U.S. higher education institutions, including breakdowns by funding source, field of R&D, and (for federally funded R&D) federal agency.

What data is used in this dashboard?

This dashboard is built from HERD 2023 Tables 21–31 (institution-level tables). The original Excel tables were converted into tidy “fact” tables so they can be joined, filtered, and visualized consistently. These are loaded in the browser and aggregated on the fly for the visuals shown here. The fact tables include:

• Time series totals and federally financed totals by institution and year.
• FY 2023 funding-source mix by institution (federal, state/local, institutional, business, nonprofit, other).
• FY 2023 field portfolios for all funds and federally financed funds.
• FY 2023 federal agency composition for federally financed R&D.
• FY 2023 source × field detail for non-federal funding sources across fields.

How is the data displayed?

• Rankings & Growth: Top-N bars by selected year and metric; rank-over-time background for all institutions with selected highlighted; and trend lines for selected institutions.
• Funding Mix (2023): Stacked bars show the composition of funding sources; a source-specific ranking view shows institutions by a selected source; heatmaps show source × field patterns (log-scaled for readability).
• Portfolio & Agencies (2023): Grouped bars compare selected institutions side-by-side across fields and agencies; scatter shows federal dependence with selected highlighted.

What is the purpose of this app?

The goal is to make HERD institution-level data easier to explore interactively: compare institutions across time, understand funding mix and dependence, examine field specialization, and see federal agency composition.