Liberation from Grant Support Posted on April 14, 2008 Working with students gives David Elkind (bio) the freedom to do things the way he wants to.

I’m sort of very independent. I did get grants early in my career, but my experience with funding agencies was that they often wanted you to do certain kinds of things. And pretty soon I gave that up and just used undergraduates to do my research and published most of my stuff with undergraduates. And if there was some funding, I would pay for it myself, and that gave me the freedom to do the kinds of things I wanted.

Not many students can do that, but I think there are a lot of times you can do a lot of stuff, and I worked in schools, and I used undergraduates. And I was able to do most of my research when I was unfunded, but it was published. And I got published in Science and all of the major journals. So one of the things: don’t feel constrained, sometimes find ways to do it on your own. And it gives you a lot of freedom that you don’t always have to have a grant.

I know certainly grants are certainly good for your reputation in the university too, but sometimes you can build a reputation without grants and then get grants because you had built a field that is recognized or built an area that is recognized. And I think that sometimes people are confined in their interests and what they feel they can do by the pressures of granting, and I think one should be liberated from that. And there are many things you can do without grant support.

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