Congress may have awarded a record of nearly $2.25 billion in earmarked funds to academic institutions this fiscal year, but Penn will only see about $160,000 from the controversial grants.
However, the University said it is not concerned by that small sum.
In fact, it is not even planning to seek earmarks this upcoming year, said Bill Andresen, the head of Penn's Office of Federal Affairs.
Earmarks, sometimes called pork-barrel spending, are funds appropriated by legislators for use in their home districts.
Universities can receive funding from two different federal sources - earmarks and federal agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, whose funding levels are set by Congress.
And since projects funded by the NIH, unlike earmarks, are merit-based and peer-reviewed, Penn focuses on convincing Congress "to try and increase funding for those institutions," Andresen said.
For instance, in 2005, Penn was the second-largest recipient of NIH grant awards and received $471.4 million from the NIH alone. Because research grants can be received from several agencies, it is difficult to compile a complete list of funds awarded.
Penn's preference for peer-reviewed competitive funding is one shared by many top research institutions.
Cornell University, for instance, which received portions of several earmarks, typically only seeks earmarks for agricultural research, said Jacqueline Powers, Cornell's director of federal relations.
Cornell prefers peer-reviewed funds because it does not believe "science should be determined by political clout," she said.
Powers estimated that Cornell received $2 million in earmarks for this year, but said she could not be certain because many of Cornell's awards were shared between several institutions.
However, funding for competitive grants has virtually stagnated over the past few years, which could become problematic for institutions like Penn and Cornell, both Andresen and Powers said.
"The only way [Penn doesn't] win is if Congress spends research money on earmarks," Andresen said.
However, he said Sen. Arlen Spector (R-Pa.) is "probably the leading advocate for NIH funding," and both Spector and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) "reacted positively" when Penn discussed its desire to keep research funding apace with inflation with their offices.
In recent years, earmark spending has ballooned, and Congress recently passed legislation holding members more accountable for such proposals.
With the new legislation, "all earmarks must be identified and associated with the Member who requested the earmark, [so] bad projects are weeded out," Casey said in an e-mailed statement.
Mississippi State University received about $43 million in earmarks in 2008, the most of any university.
At Penn, the single earmark went to the National Center of Translation Therapeutics, a drug-discovery program in the Medical School.
