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> I do realize that many commentators on HN believe that university research is scam, does not create value, and graduate students who choose to do a PhD are willingly making irresponsible financial decisions I'm not taking that position at all. Here's how I understand the current situation. A grant proposal would say something like: $1,000,000 Lab Equipment and reagents
$250,000 Post-Docs
$150,000 PI
$300,000 Phd students tuition waivers
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$1,700,000
x 1.2 university imposed overhead
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$2,040,000
The grantor writes a check for $2,040,000. Of that the university gets $300,000 (for tuition) + $340,000 (overhead) = $640,000. The PI doles out the rest.If this law were to pass the grant would instead be written up as: $1,000,000 Lab Equipment and reagents
$250,000 Post-Docs
$150,000 PI
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$1,400,000
x 1.457 university imposed overhead
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$2,040,000
The university would get $640,000 and the PI would dole out the rest.The grantors could decide not to agree to this second grant, while they would to the first, but they have no good reason to do that. From their perspective it's the same thing. |
Also, costs for graduate students do not linearly map to costs for Post-Docs and PIs. This would de-couple the funding for graduate students from the actual enrollment, and would make the computation of the appropriate overhead rate even more complicated and fraught than it already is.
The other important thing to note is that the grantors don't pay the overhead until the actual underlying cost is incurred. Trying to project what it would be would be very hard.