Some Hard Numbers on Research Growth Through B1G/CIC Expansion

In a diary entry that got a lot of play last week, MosherJordan took a look at the research reasons for Big Ten expansion, specifically the CIC and if expansion could be an attempt to increase the B1G's share of the federal research dollars pie. I took a great interest in the topic, and I have decided to look at it in a few ways. As a caveat, I'm not a statistician, but I want to put out some data, and maybe more knowledgeable people can make more of this. First, here are all top-100 research universities in the US in pure rank order from 2009, with 1990 research dollar amounts in the middle, and percentage growth from 1990-2009 on the far right, and a national average at the bottom.

As a fairly important point, all current and future B1G members are in the top 100 as of 2009, with IU being the lowest. Also, total dollar amounts drop off pretty fast outside of the top 50 or so. Now, here are those same numbers from just the B1G schools in that time:

So, based on pure average, the B1G actually did a scoche better than the national growth average during that time in research dollars (the median number is somewhere around a 70% growth rate nationally, and 60% for just the B1G), but to some extent the fact that some of these universities actually had such large budgets to begin with could hurt their room for growth, with Albany(!) actually just about tripling their research, which is easier to do as it was small to begin with. Notice Hopkins didn't bump much percentagewise, as it had less room to go up. Here's the chart just for the top 25 research universities:

Now, the averages look a little better for the B1G, with 55% growth for the top 25, and about 60% for the B1G as a whole, and the B1G does the same on median here, with the previously stated 60% growth rate for the B1G, and only 55% nationally.

Expanded to the top 50, it looks like

70% national growth median, 60% for the B1G, and overall average almost exactly equal.

So, my conclusion right now is inconclusion. On pure average the B1G outperforms the national average in research growth during this time by an infinitesimal amount, but on median growth, not so much. Penn State, which would seem to have the most to gain from this arrangement, did not outgain the national median, though outgained the conference median, for what it's worth. So, maybe there is a new strategy that we might see in a few years to shuttle research dollars the CIC's way, but it's not apparent from the last 20 years of data.

EDIT: My lack of math skill was made very obvious, as in my original post, I simply averaged the percentage growth, which I went back and corrected.