About

The College and University Fund for the Social Sciences (CUF) is a network of higher education partners that are dedicated to connecting across disciplines and institutions to produce high-impact scholarship, and to expanding the funding infrastructure for social and behavioral science worldwide. Through CUF, the SSRC brings together university leaders and public and private funders of social and behavioral science to set a broad research agenda, build networks that will seek solutions to global challenges, and ensure that significant funding can be directed toward the most
impactful research projects.

Through the SSRC’s College and University Fund for the Social Sciences (CUF), we connect leaders of the nation’s most active research institutions with our network of public and private funders of social and behavioral science, including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Knight Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In 2014, the CUF was launched with a dozen founding university members. Today, that number has grown to more than forty-five institutions, predominantly AAU research institutions.

A critical goal of the College and University Fund is to build support for a significant expansion of the infrastructure for social and behavioral science funding. With rare exceptions, funding for social science tends to be relatively small grants awarded to single researchers. Funding of that scale is simply not adequate to conduct the kind of large-scale science needed to meet the challenges of our most pressing social problems, including pandemics, climate change, persistent inequality, and threats to democratic institutions. These challenges exist at scale, and demand a research response that is proportionately at scale.

Conferences and Initiatives

2023 College and University Fund Conference: Social and Behavioral Science as R&D
2023 College and University Fund Conference: Social and Behavioral Science as R&D
December 1, 2023

As a capstone to the Council’s Centennial year, this convening brought together leaders of consortium member universities, philanthropic foundations, and public funders of science to celebrate the achievements of 100 years of socially valuable social and behavioral science, and to explore new opportunities for social and behavioral science R&D to find cost-effective and scalable solutions to our most pressing societal challenges. Click here to learn more and read a full summary of the event.

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Why Leading Institutions Join

Convening Institutional Leaders
The SSRC regularly convenes institutional leaders from the College and University Fund for the Social Sciences together with leaders from our public and philanthropic funding partners. These annual conferences offer an opportunity for research institutions to sit down with research funders and share ideas about practices that can more fully mobilize the research community to develop bold solutions to the globe’s most pressing challenges. In addition to these in-person convenings, CUF partners are invited to participate in cross-institutional learning through a series of virtual workshops focused on sharing what works–and what doesn’t work–to mobilize social and behavioral science that is both policy-relevant and scientifically rigorous.
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Social and Behavioral Science at Scale
Public and private funding organizations, state legislatures, and donors increasingly expect universities to produce socially impactful and policy-relevant research. However, publication and promotion incentives may undermine efforts to mobilize the social and behavioral science research community to pursue policy-relevant research. Through its Agenda Fund, the Council is partnering with leaders of CUF institutions to develop new initiatives that can address these challenges by working directly with leaders of private and public funding organizations to identify high-value investment opportunities in the social and behavioral sciences.
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Increasing Diversity in STEM
Many social and behavioral science disciplines remain stubbornly unrepresentative. The relative lack of diversity in these disciplines may limit both the questions that are asked, and the innovativeness of proposed solutions. But several findings from the social and behavioral science on inclusion suggest that there may be ways of reorganizing university practices so as to increase diversity and inclusion in disciplines that remain less representative. In partnership with CUF member institutions, the SSRC is sponsoring an initiative to pilot evaluations of alternative university practices to increase the numbers and success of women in economics, and is working to expand this initiative to other disciplines.
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Increasing the Pace of Scientific Innovation
The rate of scientific innovation appears to be decreasing over time. Given the importance of scientific innovation for spurring increases in productivity and economic growth, this is a troubling trend. But several findings from the social and behavioral science on innovation suggest that there may be ways of reorganizing university-based science so as to increase the production of innovation. In partnership with CUF member institutions, the SSRC is developing an initiative to pilot evaluations of alternative university practices to explore a new frontier in the science of innovation: experimentation on university campuses.
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Estimating the Economic Benefits of Science R&D
In recent years, Congress has increasingly turned to geographically targeted investments in university-based science R&D to galvanize economic growth in areas of the country that have lagged economically. These investments have begun to reverse decades of declining federal investment in science. But continued bipartisan political support for these investments is conditional on credible evidence that geographically dispersed investments in science R&D in fact lead to geographically dispersed economic growth. In partnership with CUF member institutions, the SSRC is developing an initiative to engage social and behavioral scientists in estimating the local economic returns from university-based science R&D.
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