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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Another thanks to the poster who explained overhead/capex sensibly.  I agree this is an insane move.

That said, Spouse & I are in research (not NIH), and I believe overhead has gotten bloated.  The PIs/profs writing grant proposals often grumble about overhead because we don't see benefits commensurate with the overhead cost.  This makes the proposal less competitive against other labs with lower rates.  NIH is different than other funders, in that they compete on direct costs, then pay the overhead.  NSF has a total budget, and if your institution has higher overhead, you can fund fewer researchers.

While I don't think there is outright fraud, University administration has zero incentive to keep the overhead low - it's the opposite.  The higher rate they can negotiate with a funder, the more income the university brings in.  People working in the labs scrimp and save to try to make the direct costs low, the university admin doesn't do the same.  The overhead doesn't come back to the lab or even the department, all of it goes directly into the campus budget and it is hard at our level to understand where.  Our buildings are not well kept, admin services are adequate at best.  Lawyers and compliance is part of it.  So, 15% starting tomorrow is insane, but some attention to this issues seems good.

I don't understand the conclusion that "research will be cut by X%", though.  If you reduce direct costs, then you lose even more of the overhead and more of the "research support" funds.  It seems like a death spiral for research.  Or, there will be no money for new facilities and maybe some of the support staff have to be let go?   I don't think there is a solution that will make 15% work with just some minor drops in research output.[/quote]

Spouse is also a researcher and in admin, none of the researchers like to believe that the university doesn’t make money on indirect but that is the case.  Much of indirect is due to NIH a requirements so if NIH wants to drop some of its requirements, then the universities could eliminate some costs.  [/quote]

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