As you know the University of Chicago was the first higher-ed school in America to adopt a position of institutional neutrality. This was done in 1967, with the principle embodied in our Kalven Report. Kalven prohibits the University or its units, including departments and centers, from taking official stands on political, moral, and ideological issues—save in those cases where the issue is one that could affect the mission of our University. According to FIRE, which approves of this position of institutional neutrality, some 29 other colleges or boards of education have joined Chicago in adopting one.
Deviations from the position of neutrality are rare, but this morning we learned that our President, Paul Alivisatos, has declared official University opposition to the Trump’s administration of slashing “indirect costs” on NIH grants. “Indirect costs” are the payments the University gets on top of an award when a researcher or entity gets a grant. They are supposed to be used to support the research through university costs and infrastructure, paying, for example, for building maintenance, administrative costs, electricity, water, and other costs not directly involved in doing research. Each university negotiates its indirect costs directly with the NIH, and they typically range between 25% to 70% of the money awarded the researcher.
So, for example, if I asked for $2 million in research for monies for a three-year NIH grant, having calculated the costs of doing the research and paying grad students and postdocs, I would ask for that amount of money. Our overhead rate is 64%, so if I got the grant, the university would receive an extra $1,280,000 in overhead, so the whole award would cost the NIH over $3 million.
Now not all the overhead is used to support the specific research grant funded, as there’s no way to exactly calculate infrastructure costs. Universities therefore often put the overhead money into a big pot used to support the university as a whole, and often it’s not clear where that overhead money goes, nor is it clear that all of it supports research. But it is clear that overhead is crucial for keeping universities running and that a lot of it does cover the costs doing research (animal facilities, safety assurance, OSHA compliance, and so on). The Chicago Maroon reports that the cuts will cost our University $52 million in yearly revenue.
It was a big deal, then, when the Trump administration decided to cap the indirect cost rate on NIH grants at 15%, which would result in a severe loss of money to research-oriented universities—amounting in toto to billions of dollars. The NIH verified this in their own announcement. To President Alivisatos, this slashing represents an impediment to the mission of the University of Chicago, and so we broke neutrality, as delineated below his announcement below. I’ve put a screenshot of the announcement, but have put the words in larger type below it:
I’ve put the parts in bold where the University has taken an official stand:
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Harvard had similar objections:
Every scientific and medical breakthrough, whether in basic or applied research, depends on the people who conduct the research, as well as the materials and laboratory equipment they use. These components of research, readily attributable to a specific project, are funded as direct costs, but they do not encompass all essential aspects of research. The work also requires laboratory facilities, heat and electricity, and people to administer the research and ensure that it is conducted securely and in accordance with federal regulations. The expenditures for these critical parts of the research enterprise are called indirect costs. They are substantial, and they are unavoidable, not least because it can be very expensive to build, maintain, and equip space to conduct research at the frontiers of knowledge.
Implementing a 15 percent cap on indirect support, as the NIH has announced it intends to do, would slash funding and cut research activity at Harvard and nearly every research university in our nation. The discovery of new treatments would slow, opportunities to train the next generation of scientific leaders would shrink, and our nation’s science and engineering prowess would be severely compromised. At a time of rapid strides in quantum computing, artificial intelligence, brain science, biological imaging, and regenerative biology, and when other nations are expanding their investment in science, America should not drop knowingly and willingly from her lead position on the endless frontier.
Since this just happened, I’ll leave the lawsuiting to the University, though I note that a federal judge has put these cuts on temporary hold as the attorneys general of 22 states, including Illinois, have filed a lawsuit claiming that the cut would irreparably damage research. In the meantime, those of us in the free-speech community here are pondering whether and how the cuts really do endanger the stated mission of our university. It would seem obvious that it does, since part of our mission is to generate knowledge through research, but there are two caveats. Does the mission per se include medical research designed to save lives—that is, to create medical innovations? Is that part of our our mission statement? And does the mission of the university include protecting its operational budget, assuring a comfortable financial bottom line? If so, how much overhead do we require?
Clearly our university and others construe this as part of our mission, and I’m not going to object. But clearly we need to think harder about what the mission of a university like ours really is.
The last time the University of Chicago broke institutional neutrality was in 2017, when the U of C declared opposition to Trump’s cancellation of the DACA (“Dreamers”) act because having Dreamers here as part of the university was considered helping fulfill our mission, and deporting them would thus impede our mission. As the Chicago Maroon noted at the time:
The University declined to support the DREAM Act in 2010, citing the 1967 Kalven Report which recommended that the University generally avoid taking political stances, and University spokesperson Jeremy Manier maintained this position in an e-mail to The Maroon Tuesday.
“The DREAM Act encompasses issues that do not directly affect the University,” he said in the e-mail. “However, in general the University strongly supports efforts to address this issue through legislation that protects the ability of DACA-eligible students to live in the United States and pursue their education and careers here.”
That breaks institutional neutrality. Such declarations are rare here, and thus today’s announcement is a big deal for the University of Chicago.
This is a helpful illustration of how the neutrality principle is supposed to work. I wish the universities success.
(I think the first mention of 1967 is incorrect, though. Wasn’t that over grad-student draft deferments?)
Sorry. I don’t mean the first mention in the whole piece. I mean the first mention in the concluding section.
After being in academia for 26 years, it was clear that indirect costs are both necessary but also ripe for abuse. Harvard, for example, has negotiated a 69% rate. Yet they have a $52 BILLION endowment. The idea that they don’t have the resources for basic operating funds is ludicrous. After all, if for some reason they received no eternal grant funding this year, there is no doubt they would continue to operate all their facilites. It is noteworthy that most private finding agencias cap their indirects in the 10-15% range, yet no institution (including the one i used to work for), would ever turn down these grants. Many times, I had grants that required matching funds, costing the college money, yet again, we never turned these down because it was basically getting $1 for the cost of $0.20.
Precisely this. There is NO WAY indirect costs amount to 70% of a grant’s value and they present a substantial burden on faculty having to write (and get approved) at least twice as many grants to fund their labs instead of writing papers and doing research. This honeypot of a research tax gets redistributed to other depts in the university. And why does Harvard need (or should continue to get) taxpayer money with $52B in their coffers? That’s enough to provide free scholarships to all undergraduates for over a century! What is Harvard’s mission then – to become a hedge fund? And why does they need taxpayer’s help to do it? There must be a limit.
As a former academic, I suspect that much of the overhead pays for administrative and bureaucratic bloat.
For example, at one major university, we were charged separately for custodial services (mopping the floor, emptying trash, etc.), yet the same services were already included in our overhead, which was 70%. So the uni charged us twice. And this was only one example of uni double-dipping. They did the same to everybody. When we pointed this out, the uni bureaucrats basically told us that we were lucky to even have jobs there so shut up.
When I heard the news about IDC I immediately thought of the difference in overhead after moving from a University in the States to one in Canada: from 60% to 20%. And that at my previous institution that the overhead rates paid by labs and large-scale experimental collaborations, the ones that required the most infrastructure and university support, paid half the overhead that I did as a lowly theoretical physicist, who paid the full one.
So here’s the question then. Is there reliable data showing that IDC really achieves its stated purpose of reimbursing American Universities? I’d bet serious money it’s used as a behind-the-scenes funding mechanism contributing to the growth in administrative bloat we’ve all seen the past thirty years.
At least to me there is good reason to be skeptical that when American universities say they’re charging the taxpayers money to conduct research they’re using some of it to fund Sally in Student Life. I’d be happily proved wrong, and the simple way to address such concerns (and what should happen anyway with public funding) is financial transparency, matching monies in to costs out.
This is definitely a troubling thing. It isn’t just that university produces advancements in the medicines and technology. A university enables young people to enter business, manufacturing, education, and the essential social services. Even the Humanities have their parts to play. A university also employs people into stable work with benefits. It is a highway into the middle class for both the students, faculty, and staff at all levels. Wealth gained as a result is generational since the children of those in universities tend to stay in the middle class.
Now with that said, it is true that there a fair amount of waste (as in the explosion of dei-related administration). And aren’t ivy league schools with ginormous endowments able to use those endowments toward indirect costs?
Well, maybe, in the sense that someone without the “graduate” label would not be hired.
But maybe not, in the sense that that very same hired person might have been just as able to do that job, whatever it is, even if they hadn’t just spent three years writing essays comparing Shakespeare to James Joyce, or whatever (or, nowadays, getting ChatGPT to write their essays while partying and generally being a student).
But is it the actual education, or merely the badge, the labelling, that makes the difference?
Scott Alexander’s essay “Against Tulip Subsidies”, is worth a read.
Thanks for the Slate Star Codex link – it’s been a while since I read that one (side note: it seems like Scott’s writing lost something after he moved switched from SSC to the Astral Codex Ten Substack).
In many fields I fear that the university system is merely supplying a label so the hiring firm can check the box. When I got my BSME back in the 80’s, I worked with a mix of degreed engineers as well as engineers who had risen from the ranks of draftsmen and technicians into engineering roles. There was no difference in ability or performance, as the folks who were promoted into engineering jobs from other technical areas displayed a high degree of intelligence and mechanical ability based on years on the job. Plus, even though I learned about physical mechanical systems in school, we all still resorted to the same references when calculating out the effectiveness of our designs. Today, we only hire degreed engineers; the computer draftsperson or tech with only a certificate or AAS degree is not even considered, even though they may be a better fit than the kid fresh out of school. At least in engineering school the courses build knowledge that is required for the job; there are many instances, such as the need for a firefighter to just have any 4 year degree mentioned in the SSC article, that make absolutely no sense.
Mark’s point touches on the circular argument: a degree provides for a better job, but only because most jobs these days require a degree to even be considered for the job. Remove the requirement for the degree, and that opens the door to still obtain that better job but just without needlessly going into debt first.
In my opinion, the administration has a weak case for breaking with neutrality on the basis of mission here. Dropping indirect costs to 15% is a matter of budget management, not mission. As Jerry points out, he calculates his direct research costs which as I recall from overseeing NASA grants includes a certain amount of a professor’s salary (maybe all of it loaded in a few cases) , maybe summer support in others; grad student stipends, some publication costs, some travel, purchase of lab equipment including computer hardware and software licenses required for the research being supported and the researcher puts in a request for that. Then an amount called indirect costs are added by the university (in my cases at Nasa) and I must make available enough NASA money to support the total of direct + indirect costs. As I recall the indirect costs use is limited by federal law, but generally can go to things like infrastructure, (we used to joke about a new desk for the president and the dean’s new carpeting), but certainly for part of various deans’ or other administrators’ salaries and even summer support for humanities professors who may not have rich access to federal grants. So dropping indirect costs generally would mean a tightening of the belt for the university…maybe profs teaching more courses, not as many assitant deans, maybe fewer nonacademic activities for students, maybe increase in other income from tuition or fees. So yes it impacts how the university is currently run, but not neccessarily the actual mission of the university.
Sorry President Alivisatos, but this is just whining. What you can do, without breaking Kalven, is explain the specific impacts of what this decrease in funding means. How much it is and good examples of what would no longer be funded or must be funded by another source. You can educate about the situation without breaking Kalven by taking a political position.
Excellent explanation and suggestions!
Thank you. I just tried to add a bit more general info in comment 14 below.
It is interesting to notice how the use of money granted to fulfill “indirect costs” lacks transparency. It seems that there is plenty of room to questioning if the government money is really being used to its original purpose, that is, to pay for “indirect research costs”. I wonder what would surface if a deep audit is conducted on the top universities to find out which use is being made of that money, and maybe that’s exactly what the government should do.
Indirect rates are negotiated with individual colleges/universities, and constitute a form of contract between the university and the funding agency. Periodic audits are in fact conducted, and expenses are typically monitored by sponsored programs personnel. There are occasional violations of restrictions in the use of indirects, but universities that commit those violations can be sanctioned severely enough that there is generally a policy of over-cautious conformity to policy.
The problem is not that there is no waste or fat that cannot be trimmed. The problem is that a radical new limit on indirects created over-night is not the way to handle the management of these systems. The Trump/Musk approach seems less about improving government agencies and systems than about destroying them. At the very least, we know that the need to cut government spending is being created by the intention to pay for tax cuts to the well-to-do, including Elon Musk.
Barbara, do you mind commenting further on those audits? This is something I’ve tried off and on to get to the bottom of with little success other than getting some version of “trust us.”
I’m not sure what kind of information you need, but I can suggest a look at institutional policies, which are often online, and granting agency systems — for example, there is a Defense Contract Audit Agency that specifies guidelines for university audits of indirect costs for military-related research and development grants (the last one I dealt with was 27 pages of details….).
Of course, individual universities may differ in the rigor they bring to the audit process, and there are reasonable debates about the kind of costs that may be covered by indirects. But I’ve never heard of a college or university that does not have some process for overseeing/auditing the use of grant money, including indirect costs.
Hi Barbara,
Thanks. I’m not sure what I’m looking for either, but that’s a start. As I mentioned upstream, I’m still deeply confused about the wide discrepancy in overhead in the States (~60%) vs. in Canada (~20%). Another commenter below commented on overhead at his institution in Germany (~20%). I have colleagues at other institutions in the UK/France/etc which pay closer to the American rates, and colleagues in S. Korea/Japan that pay closer to Canadian rates. What explains such wild O(1) fluctuations in overhead amongst research universities with comparable research profiles? That’s a question that’s been bothering me for a while now.
I absolutely agree with you btw about the outrageous behavior of unilaterally ripping up contracts between funding agencies and universities and bullying a new version on the scale a week.
No comment on this story on how it is an unconstitutional power grab by the executive from congress which has sole discretion on spending, how it violates multiple years of congressional annual appropriations bills that specifically banned NIH from changing indirect costs from 2017 levels, nor how it violates legal contractual agreements by retroactively resetting negotiated indirect cost rates between the federal government and hundreds of institutions? There is a way to do this legally, but they have chosen not to bother.
I am not an expert in this area, so while I appreciate your comment, I do not appreciate your implication that I somehow knew this stuff but chose not to mention it.
From colleagues at CU-Boulder – their direct costs have been delayed. January funding did not yet occur.
A slight tangent, but when I was a postdoc my institution originally didn’t have a postdoc salary scale but later introduced one “based on” the NIH recommended minimum: “based on” meaning the same amount in the first year and progressively less than the NIH amount in subsequent years. I was paid about $7000 less than the NIH recommended minimum and was once told that my boss couldn’t afford to pay more because the university was taking such a large proportion from his grant for overheads. Is it common for universities to take more money for overheads than is specifically allocated in the grant?
Administrative bloat is a very real problem. For example, the public school system of NYC has ‘only’ 60 times as many bureaucrats (per student) as the Catholic school system. Of course, the problem goes way beyond NYC. Yale has more bureaucrats than faculty and more bureaucrats than undergraduate students. Yale does have a $41.4 billion endowment and had a 67.5% overhead rate. To bring this a bit closer to home, HISD has (2023) 27,197 employees of whom 10,879 were teachers. CPS (Chicago Public Schools) has 45,014 employees, of whom 24,236 are teachers.
For a typical article on the subject, see “Death By a Thousand Emails: How Administrative Bloat is Killing American Higher Education” in the Bowdoin Review.
Your comment prompted us (my wife and I) to check the numbers for “our” German university:
53k students
1k Faculty (German professors)
7k Scientific personnel (Post-Docs, PhD students, Technical Assistants)
4.5k Non-Scientific personnel (Administration, Maintenance, Team Assistants, Legal etc.)
Overheads on German grants are in the range of 10-15% with EU grants giving 25% since they are usually international collaborations which means you need to have non-scientific staff payed by the institution that can speak multiple languages.
What is the situation in other countries?
I am not really able to answer your question (which is a good one). ‘Kristan’ says that overhead rates are much lower in Canada and vary a lot around the world.
In some nations (eg, New Zealand) the overheads are not calculated on the entire grant but only on the workload relief for the researcher. The rate for these NZ university overheads is around 121% (give or take) on the workload relief, which for a Primary Investigator is typically somewhere between 0.2-0.5 of their Full Time Equivalent workload.
I’m sympathetic to Dr. Alivisatos’ effort to avoid this drastic funding change. But my sympathy is limited. For decades universities allowed or encouraged whole disciplines and departments to adopt progressive political activism instead of scholarship as their telos. So it should be no surprise when the orange menace resumes power and takes aim at that big fat progressive political target. And yet the universities are surprised, and are unprepared to respond or adapt.
I think the damage from this will be terrible for individuals and institutions, and politicians shouldn’t burn down our universities just to target what they see as their political opponents. But the damage is in part self-inflicted because universities allowed themselves to become partisan political orgs. We don’t deserve this, but we partly earned it.
Any of us who ever worked within the federal bureaucracy have heard the “just a drop in the bucket” line whenever advocating for cost savings. “We can save $15 million here.” The “bucket” chorus would begin, and the money would get squandered. We see a similar line being touted by politicians and their lackeys in the media: It’s less than 1% of the federal budget. Meaning: so, let’s spend it, and we need even more!
Let’s play that game another way. The University of Chicago claims that reductions to NIH indirect expenses will cost the university over $52 million annually. This amounts to barely one half of one percent of the university’s endowment in 2024. If the report I read showing an annual return of 8.4% on last year’s endowment investments is correct, then the loss of NIH funds is only 13% of last year’s endowment profits—lower than the federal tax rate would be if it were taxed.
Back to government spending. In talking about the cuts to USAID the other day, I mentioned a $3.3 billion allocation in 2024 to various gender equity programs. Let’s set aside whether any of these have merit and are not simply “progressives” trying to trans the world and push gender woo with one hand while holding humanitarian aid in the other—a stance that hurts us while the Chinese build schools, bridges, and roads without the proselytizing. Let’s also set aside that this was over 10% of USAID’s entire foreign assistance budget for the year. (By the way, the funds and responsibility for our humanitarian aid, which only accounts for between 15 – 30% of the USAID foreign assistance budget from year to year, will simply migrate elsewhere in State Department, meaning the current freak out about starving children and loss of medicine is a media and politically-fabricated stunt.) You got it: it’s only a drop in the bucket and is less than blah, blah, blah. So, let’s put it another way. That $3.3 billion “gender” drop in the bucket is equivalent to the entire tax contributions of 165,000 American families each paying $20,000 annually in federal taxes. Perhaps we can start talking in those terms, since tossing around billions here and millions there is too abstract for most people.
“The University of Chicago realizes that a $52 million reduction in our funding from NIH is equivalent to saving 2600 American families over $20,000 annually in federal taxes. As this $52 million is equivalent to only a 13% percent federal tax on our currently untaxed endowment profits, we will do our part in trying to reduce the unsustainable deficit and debt our country faces. For its part, we hope the federal government reduces the regulatory burden that drives some of our legal, accounting, and other administrative costs.”
I don’t know whether that is the right answer, but I’ve tired of all the hyperventilating from our privileged classes.
sounds like a pretty decent answer to me!
Thank you for describing the issue from the perspective of the people who, while paying the bill for the entire grant funding system, get almost no benefit from indirects or from any research directed toward fringe level but fervently held political or cultural beliefs. Moving fast and breaking things causes chaos for all and pain for the victims but it may be the easiest way to stop the federal government from funding and facilitating policies that, with undoubtedly benign intent, promote cultural disunity, child mutilation, misandry, bigotry and racism.
Nature index has put out a list of universities ranked by research output:
https://www.nature.com/nature-index/institution-outputs/generate/all/global/all
After looking at this list, can anybody really argue that “business as usual” is good enough? Maybe a shock to get the conversation started is a good thing?
A required part of my training at my NASA field laboratory before I was entrusted with controlling grant money, was a one-day course from a jovial, smiling, good ole boy who had retired from the agency grants office at NASA hq in DC. His name was pronounced “Chollie” and he was both informative and entertaining. This was probably around 1978 and there were 12-15 engineers unhappily spending our day in this session away from our labs, offices, and computers. But Cchollie was affable and very knowledgeable. When one of my colleagues asked why he should pay somebody to do something that he could do and maybe do better himself, Chollie said simply that the gov’t does not care. Since the end of WW2 and Vannevar Bush’s “endless Frontier”, the gov’t has aimed to support universities in science and engineering; grants are gifts, not contracts, but a gift of money to carry out basic research in some area of mutual interest both to Nasa and the professor. We had no deliverables other than an annual report on accomplishments. He told us that the indirect costs whichgenerally were 40-60% I think were negotiated between the Agency and university and again paid because it was in the nation’s interest to support universities in general…in addition to the directS&E charges. Chollie made it clear that the drivers had zero to do with effectiveness or efficiency….just about supporting the unis and hopefully getting some decent fundamental research accomplished and disseminated.
” Chollie made it clear that the drivers had zero to do with effectiveness or efficiency….just about supporting the unis and hopefully getting some decent fundamental research accomplished and disseminated.” +++
Absolutely! Back in my many years of research funded by NIH grants, didn’t we all accept that the indirect cost charge was just about supporting the unis?
However, the trouble is that the unis have been steadily expanding the definition of what constitutes indirect “support” of research. At my old institution’s SOM, they enjoy the services of a well-staffed Office of “faculty well-being”, administered of course by an Associate Dean etc. etc.—support with a capital S.
How will we pay for DEI and Gender Studies with just 15% overhead? How is going to pay Claudine Gay’s salary if overheads are cut?
Back the 1950s the NIH paid just 8% for overhead. The Federal NIH overhead rate may have raised to 15% in 1958. Private foundations continue to pay around 15% to this day.
The federal regulatory obstacle course of 270 regulations is one reason why there are so many administrative staff. Below is the current COGR affecting U.S. research institutions. Fix this!
https://www.cogr.edu/sites/default/files/1991%20Excel%20Database%20Dec%202024%20Update.pdf
I think I agree with your President here: biomedical research is indeed part of the mission of the universities where it is currently conducted. The very government that is threatening a drastic reduction in overhead allowances is largely responsible for making biomedical research a part of their missions when it began offering to fund such research decades ago. This incentivized universities to make major investments in laboratories and in training and recruiting scientist-professors, etc. By this time, this research has become such an integral part of what universities like U of C, Harvard, and others do that I think there is an essential truth in the claim that it is now part of their missions. That’s my gut feeling, anyway.
But even if it’s reasonable to say that this research is part of the mission of, e.g., U of C and Harvard, it doesn’t mean that the amount of costs that they collect is reasonable. I just don’t know.
But this did make me curious about the indirect costs awarded by other government funders, like the NSF, so I looked it up:
So, that’s why the NSF wasn’t included in the order to cut overhead allowances to 15% – that’s already their standard rate. This does raise questions though. Since scientific research of almost every sort is inherently costly, why have indirect costs for research in the field of biomedicine been so much greater than for research in the fields of geology or astronomy, for example?
Question from a French layman : in the USA, what are the other financing sources the universities can use, beside grants’s indirect cost and maybe tuition ? I hope there is some public (state or federal) financing attributed to the whole university, or even some research infrastructure, even if you’re in America ?
Not that i dont talk about endowment, because i want to know what it is for “small” universities, that don’t have a lots of donations (if i’m right). I’m not really concerned about very big universities with endowment larger than the GDP of a small african country.
Comment by Greg Mayer
States supply funding for their public universities (e.g., the state of Alabama funds the University of Alabama). Such state support has been going down for some time now in most states, so that I have heard it jokingly said that “state-supported universities” are now merely “state-located universities”!
There is no general federal support for universities. Both public and private schools can compete for federal grants and contracts (like NIH, NSF, etc.), and federal student aid for tuition (grants, loans) provides indirect support.
GCM
I don’t see why the reduction of indirect costs “would immediately damage the ability of our [University of Chicago] faculty, students, and staff (and those of other academic institutions and medical centers across the nation) to engage in health-related fundamental research and to discover life-saving therapies.”
The University of Chicago is a university with a big endowment to support research (its primary goal). The NIH grants help individual faculty (which is fine), but why should the federal government spend any money to support the research of the university in general?
Comment by Greg Mayer
Because the individual faculty don’t pay for heat, water, electricity, the library, computing infrastructure, building maintenance, etc. Individual faculty cannot do research without a functioning university around them.
There are also grants that are made to institutions, not individual faculty. As a grad student, I was supported for awhile by an NIH Traineeship, which was part of a bigger grant supporting a bunch of graduate students. Natural history museums get grants for facility development and collection maintenance and access (CT facilities, digitization, compacting, etc.) that are designed to support the entire research enterprise, not just a particular individual researcher.
The general purpose of the NIH and NSF is to support research. Money goes to both individual researchers and to institutions, because the former need the the latter; it would be pointless to pay for supplies and salaries if the researchers didn’t have a lab to work in. Both individual and institutional funding advance the general mission of the granting agency.
GCM
My point was that the University of Chicago, which is very rich, should pay “for heat, water, electricity, the library, computing infrastructure, building maintenance, etc.”
“President Alivisatos, this slashing represents an impediment to the mission of the University of Chicago, and so we broke neutrality”
In baseball, there’s a forced error.
If the mission IS impeded, then this is NOT an error.
If the mission is UNRELATED to the issue, then I’d call the break with Kalven a forced error, this is a clear error that might have been known a priori.
I for one would need to know a lot more, for instance, if the mission is related or not, and particularly by how much – a 10% drop to 15%? That would get ugly but – yeah – discuss. But – I still think people will silence themselves though.
On second thought, sorry, I think I’m overthinking this – because of the idea of the neutrality being “broken”.
It’s entirely consistent with Kalven – when the institution itself must have a say. So it is not really “breaking” anything, per se. It’s more “raising its voice”, maybe.
Anyway – semantics – I’m done!
“Now not all the overhead is used to support the specific research grant funded, as there’s no way to exactly calculate infrastructure costs.”
False. There are extremely detailed systems in place to calculate infrastructure (and other ‘overhead’) costs in place at NIH, NSF, etc, documented negotiation and dispute resolution processes, and audits.
“Universities therefore often put the overhead money into a big pot used to support the university as a whole, ”
Any university (or other grantee) that does that is committing (pretty easily detected) federal offenses. The idea that indirect costs just go into a slush fund that can be used for whatever, from scholarships to lap dances, is fantasy.
“and often it’s not clear where that overhead money goes, nor is it clear that all of it supports research.”
False. It’s only unclear if one’s unwilling to look into the details. Or unwilling to believe them because the tinfoil hat feels so nice on one’s head. It is very easy to find out what it supports. In more detail than a normal person likely has the stomach for. You just have to choose to know instead of to go with your feels.
I’m begging you, please stop spreading this PI folklore, this grudge/resentment fantasy stuff. One, it’s B.S. Two, it fuels and bolsters the anti-education, anti-public wreckers.
It’s maddening how senior scientists on one hand resent academic administrators/administration and feel hard done and exploited by them, and on the other hand seem to have spent their careers avoiding direct involvement in the actual management and administration of their institutions, at very least avoiding knowing personally relevant things about how they operate.
Kim, Maybe the stories you hear are from outside the USA. In some universities in the world it is not as clear cut as you describe. Some universities as a matter of policy do ‘share out’ the overheads to others — eg, at my last university, a large proportion of the overheads went directly to the researcher’s own ‘unit’ and a smaller proportion went to the university as a whole. The overheads were never considered support for the research/researcher. That support was the rest of the grant – the travel budget, the equipment purchases, etc. The overheads and any funding left unspent at the end of a grant’s tenure (funding specifically up to $9999) could be retained by the unit and spent according to the unit manager’s sole discretion. The researcher had no say whatsoever in the overheads or the $9999 remaining. This and other factors really did turn management against researchers.
Of course the University of Chicago and other colleges and universities will squeal. I would expect no less.
But I haven’t heard any convincing explanation of why 15% is inadequate and 60 or 70% is crucial. Actually, current rates have bad unintended consequences. They pervert decisions about how professors should spend their time and what research they should conduct.