Abstract: Academic Geoscience Research - Survey Results

Katz, Barry J. - Texaco Inc.

The AAPG Research Committee has for seven years been conducting an international survey of academic geoscience departments. The purpose of this survey is to determine the health of the academic community and the nature of today's geoscience research.

Partial results of these surveys have been published annually in the "AAPG Explorer." Published findings dealt primarily with department demographics and employment trends. Included in these reports has been: (1) the observation that geoscience department size is becoming stable; (2) the documentation of the shift in departmental teaching strengths towards disciplines emphasizing environmental geoscience; and (3) the highlighting of an increase in the percentage of graduating students entering the petroleum industry and the concomitant decrease in the number of students entering environmental careers over the past three years.

Not often presented has been the nature and level of academic geoscience research. Globally, total academic geoscience research funding exceeds $260,000,000. This total funding level appears to be relatively constant over the past several years. Approximately 16% of this funding is through private sources, largely industrial. It is interesting to note that although environmental geoscience is an often-cited departmental strength, research activities do not appear to have the same focus (Figures 1 and 2).

Private funding of research is one measure of industry-academic cooperation. Industrial support for academic research is more than philanthropy. Available information suggests that there are three primary reasons for research sponsorship: leverage, regional expertise, and manpower availability. Many of the academic geoscience programs supported by industry are multi-company projects, where total research investment may exceed 10-fold any individual contribution. This financial leveraging may be further enhanced through partial government support. In addition to financial support, joint industry-academic cooperation often makes available state-of-the-art data sets that are often unavailable to many scientists in the academic community. This cooperation also provides a focus for academic research.

Commonly geoscience departments establish areas of geographic expertise. This expertise has proven quite valuable to many companies as new country entries increase and internal expertise is initially lacking. Often a department's expertise develops as a result of proximity, but not always. For example, many European departments cite portions of Africa as areas of expertise.

Limited manpower, particularly in research centers, has resulted in the need for supplemental manpower provided by academic institutions. Demographic trends suggest that there will be a need for greater industry-academic research cooperation as the experienced industrial manpower pool decreases.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90933©1998 ABGP/AAPG International Conference and Exhibition, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil