Survey of STEM Faculty in Higher Education, Experience of Export Controls

Survey of STEM Faculty in Higher Education, Experience of Export Controls

This study presents detailed data and commentary on the experience of higher education faculty predominantly in technology oriented areas, with their university export controls policies.

The study examines familiarity with policies and training programs, and their views on the ease of use, need for, and effectiveness of export controls offices in higher education. The report helps its end users to answer questions such as: how much do faculty know about export controls? How many have taken or plan to take export controls training? How do they view the effectiveness of such training? How much time do they spend on export controls and related issues? How could the process be made more efficient? How many and which faculty have authored or contributed to export control technology plans? How commonly is the fundamental research exclusion provision understood by faculty? How do faculty perceive requirements to take export controls training? What can export controls authorities do to make the process more seamless and productive?

Data in the report is broken out by many institutional and personal variables, enabling the study’s end users to pinpoint use of and evaluation of export control training and strictures by gender, ethnicity, academic field, level of lifetime grant receipts and other variables. Data is based on a survey of 240 faculty, predominantly from research universities and medical schools.

Just a few of this 124-page report’s many findings are that:

A significant portion of the entire sample (44.35%) reported having no knowledge about their university's export control and technology sanctions compliance policies.

7.53% of the entire sample have ever authored or contributed to an export control plan.

14.29% of engineering faculty in the sample understand clearly or very clearly what is generally contained in export control plans.