I have a year and a half left of funding for my current project, so this means two things: 1) get busy publishing and 2) find a new gig. The Swiss National Science Foundation has a lot of generous offerings, and I’ve got some ideas that I think are important and would like to bring into the world. I’m going to apply for an Ambizione grant, which appears to be the appropriate funding instrument for my level. I’ve heard that the SNF has a higher acceptance rate than funding institutions in many other countries, and while I don’t yet have experience getting funding outside of Switzerland, I decided to find out what I could about the Ambizione.

Here’s what I found, taking into account submission, acceptance, and rejection data from 2008-2020.

I’m only looking at Humanities and Social Sciences data here because that’s what I’m most interested in. The first thing to notice is the dramatic climb in applications, represented by the peach colored line. I’m curious about the spike in 2016 and what might have driven that. 18 people applied for the Ambizione when it was first made available, and 146 people applied last year. That’s a 711% increase.

Next, each applicant has to go through an initial acceptance or rejection. The purple line shows those applicants who survived the first round to make it to Phase 2. Last year the rules changed and extended this process somewhat, but I’m ignoring this for simplicity’s sake.

Finally, the thick green line shows the number of successful applicants. In 2008, 11 Humanities and Social Sciences applicants were successful. Last year, 25. That’s a 125% increase. Nice, but it doesn’t quite match the 711% increase in applications.

Next, I looked at the percentages of applications that made it.

The marigold line shows the percentage of total applications in Humanities and Social Sciences that made it to Phase 2. What started as an outstandingly generous 77.78% acceptance rate to Phase 2 in 2008 has diminished to 26.71% by 2020. Still not bad at all in comparison to other countries, so I’ve heard, but still. Quite a drop.

The thick red line shows the percentage of Humanities and Social Sciences applications that were successfully funded. This line mirrors the marigold line almost exactly, and we see a drop from 61.11% acceptance in 2008 to 17.12% last year.

Finally, the dashed blue line shows the percentage of approved Ambizione projects regardless of discipline, including Humanities and Social Sciences. It’s an overall trend down.

These are tough odds. I know that scholars in other countries and cultures could easily critique me for complaining about the Swiss funding landscape, relative to their own. Be that as it may, I can’t help but dream of an academic funding culture that is less competitive and more supportive, and where funding better matches growth trends.

(I also think it’s not the best use of resources to ask applicants to work for months on a project only to have it rejected and then have nothing to show for all that work. Surely we can design better systems! But that’s another story.)

Anyway, all these numbers may seem abstract, but there are real people behind them. I have anecdotal experience that matches this data, unfortunately. I know six fine scholars who applied for the Ambizione, and only one of them made it. The rest had great projects, and it’s hard not to wish that we were back in the more lenient, less competitive, and better funded days of 2008.