美国联邦政府，尤其是美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation，NSF）是目前世界上较为发达的科技管理机构，其管理理念在美国联邦政府机构中具有一定的代表性，对中国政府如何管理高校科研有较强的借鉴意义。时代在发展，高校在国家科技发展中占据着重要的地位，高校的科研项目水平在一定程度上代表着国家的科研水平，政府如何管理科研工作很大程度上即是政府怎样管理高校科研的问题。改进政府对高校科研项目的管理无论是对于美国这样的发达国家还是对于中国这样的发展中国家都有着重要的意义。应当看到，中国与美国等发达国家相比存在着比较大的差距，存在着诸多问题，如高校的科研人员将过多的精力集中于争取项目立项上，而对于项目批准之后的实施过程监管不足，即所谓的重立项轻管理；项目承担人员未按国家规定实施项目，研究方案、技术路线、研究内容随意变更；高校科研经费预算编制随意，实施不严，中国的自然科学基金委员会对于高等学校科学研究的管理也亟待完善。目前中国各部委在申请管理中还存在着一些门户之见，其基金对学科资助的针对性不强,客观上造成热门学科搞重复研究,基础学科和冷门学科受冷落的状况，此时中国自然科学基金委员会在这种情况下并没有扮演好协调者的角色。本研究采用文献研究和个案分析法，分析了美国联邦政府尤其是美国国家科学基金会如何对高校科研项目进行项目审批、经费管理、过程管理和绩效管理，在此基础上反思中国的科研管理部门在项目审批、经费管理、过程管理和评估工作等方面存在的问题及其成因，并试提出解决的建议。

The U.S. federal government, particularly the National Science Foundation is one of the world's most developed science and technology management agencies; we can learn much from their management and concept. Now university research plays a more and more important role in the nation's science and technology development. The level of university research can reflect the country's scientific research. How the government manages the research work is how the government manages university scientific research. Managing the university scientific research well is very important. However, right now there are still some problems in our country's scientific research work. Such as we pay less attention to the management of research project, the research content and the technical program can be changed at will, some projects which have already be researched can be researched once again, the budget problem and so on. What’s more, we lay too much emphasis on popular research while basic research is ignored. Through this research, we believe that we can learn much from the USA.The research uses case analysis and literature methods and it analyses how the U.S.federal government, especially the NSF deal with the proposals. The passage also analyses the fund management, the process management and the performance management. Based on this, this passage reflects the reasons and problem of China's scientific research departments in the project examination and approval, financial management, process management and evaluation of other aspects of the problem, and try to address the recommendations.